Monday, April 25, 2011
home
my new home? dark dive bars with flickering red candles. a place where men with forlorn faces hang their heads over their cell phones, which rest on the bar counter. biding their time, waiting for something to lift them.
Friday, April 22, 2011
so i think i'm short circuiting
Monday night. About 8:30 pm. 4th floor of the Mills Building in San Francisco’s Financial District——a historic 22-storey building that has greed-mongers like Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch as its tenants——and the legal translation firm I tool away for. My boss, Nicholas——a quirky, ridiculously intelligent 30-year old man who grew up in the Czech Republic and Germany has asked me over to his desk to help him with a Spanish translation document he is working on. He is wearing a Boston Red Sox cap, staring at one of the two large flat-screen monitors standing on his desk. He asks me to read the original legal document, which is in Spanish, in order to determine if the English translation makes sense. He hands me the printout. There is a passage that doesn’t sound right to him, one that doesn’t read sensibly. So I read it. The lawyer who wrote the passage in question is trying to state that his client has the right to introduce some evidence or testimony——that if this ability was taken away it would “castrate” and “hinder” their ability. Awkward wording, but that is what was written. It is one of those overly-wordy-typical-lawyerly run-on sentences that is difficult to understand in its original language, let alone translate. But there was Nicholas, a brilliant humble young man who studied theatre, getting flustered about the translation after I told him that it seems technically correct.
But that doesn’t make sense, he says. It just doesn’t make sense how the translator worded it.
It’s all bullshit to me so I was all too eager to go back to the ridiculous, pointless, soulless work that I was working on at my work station. But there we were, debating the phrasing of a translation, devoting our piercing attention, our life——the fleeting, finite amount of breaths and heartbeats within us——to this pointless minutiae. Part of me wanted to crack, bend over and put my hands on my thighs and laugh and laugh and laugh. This is our life, Nicholas, I wanted to say. This is what we’re doing with it. Pathetic. Just fucking, pathetic. Can't you see?
And I care for him. He was excited about my trip to New Mexico for my artist residency, didn’t hesitate to give me six weeks off to go and chase my dream.
This is what we’re doing with our lives, Nicholas. How can we get out of this?
Part of me wanted to walk out, say peace out, but of course I sat back at my desk and went back to work.
But that doesn’t make sense, he says. It just doesn’t make sense how the translator worded it.
It’s all bullshit to me so I was all too eager to go back to the ridiculous, pointless, soulless work that I was working on at my work station. But there we were, debating the phrasing of a translation, devoting our piercing attention, our life——the fleeting, finite amount of breaths and heartbeats within us——to this pointless minutiae. Part of me wanted to crack, bend over and put my hands on my thighs and laugh and laugh and laugh. This is our life, Nicholas, I wanted to say. This is what we’re doing with it. Pathetic. Just fucking, pathetic. Can't you see?
And I care for him. He was excited about my trip to New Mexico for my artist residency, didn’t hesitate to give me six weeks off to go and chase my dream.
This is what we’re doing with our lives, Nicholas. How can we get out of this?
Part of me wanted to walk out, say peace out, but of course I sat back at my desk and went back to work.
Dream on April 20, 2011
In my dream, I was stepping out of the front door of my parents’ home in suburban Fremont with our dog, Cotton. He’s the chubby, fluffy American Eskimo we had growing up. He’s been dead since 2005. Since he died, I’ve rarely——if ever——recalled dreaming about him.
The sun shone high in the cloudless sky which hung over our residential neighborhood. Cotton and I were trotting out to the front yard so that he could run around in circles and take a poop. Right after we giddily dashed out the front door, I came to a stop when I saw that the small tree in the front yard was teaming with a flock of white cranes. They took flight——all twenty or so of them——flapping their majestic wings, their necks craned toward the sun. I gawked and watched them soar away before I turned my attention back to Cotton.
The dry grass and weeds in our front lawn was uncharacteristically high——about a foot high. That’s when I saw a red snake lunge at my dog, seemingly biting him in the rear though Cotton didn’t yelp. All the cranes apparently had captured snakes in their talons and let them go as they flew away from us. I bent over and petted Cotton, making sure he was okay. I couldn’t tell if he had been bitten, but I guided him toward the front door area at a safe distance from the snakes.
Once he was safe, I turned back to the front lawn. My eyes danced and alertly glanced over the ground, searching for the snakes. But they were gone, leaving our lawn scattered with foot-long carcasses of the skin they had shed.
* * * * * * *
The sun shone high in the cloudless sky which hung over our residential neighborhood. Cotton and I were trotting out to the front yard so that he could run around in circles and take a poop. Right after we giddily dashed out the front door, I came to a stop when I saw that the small tree in the front yard was teaming with a flock of white cranes. They took flight——all twenty or so of them——flapping their majestic wings, their necks craned toward the sun. I gawked and watched them soar away before I turned my attention back to Cotton.
The dry grass and weeds in our front lawn was uncharacteristically high——about a foot high. That’s when I saw a red snake lunge at my dog, seemingly biting him in the rear though Cotton didn’t yelp. All the cranes apparently had captured snakes in their talons and let them go as they flew away from us. I bent over and petted Cotton, making sure he was okay. I couldn’t tell if he had been bitten, but I guided him toward the front door area at a safe distance from the snakes.
Once he was safe, I turned back to the front lawn. My eyes danced and alertly glanced over the ground, searching for the snakes. But they were gone, leaving our lawn scattered with foot-long carcasses of the skin they had shed.
* * * * * * *
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