My vacation is officially over. I will return to work on Monday. I spent some of my time off dealing with technical issues and tech support over an upcoming equipment upgrade, so I feel like I am maybe owed an extra day off. Unfortunately, The Man will probably not see it that way.
For the first time this year, I feel relaxed, refreshed, and restored. This was exactly the right time to take a vacation, and it was exactly the right length. I completed some of the tasks on my to-do list, volunteered for a couple of events, read a lot, wrote a lot, ate some really good food, and even escaped Grand Rapids for a couple of days.
As this post goes live, my partner and I are participating in the first Ashby Row Block Party. I am probably out on the street, talking to people, drinking a drink, and assisting Zyra as she cooks up a big pile of meat on a stick.
Reading
I am rounding out the month with The Essential Neruda, edited by Mark Eisner and published by City Lights books. This is a bilingual collection – Spanish on the left, the English translation on the right. My Spanish is quite limited so I am mostly sticking to the recto, though I occasionally wander through the verso and in doing so pick up a couple of new words. Or words I already knew in new contexts.
I feel like I am also picking up some Latin, which makes sense, considering Spanish. It’s also interesting to see the differences between the Latin-based words of Spanish, and the Germanic-based words of German. I imagine the translators used the Anglo-Saxon words on purpose in order to not too closely repeat the original text of the poem. Borges has written about the possibilities inherent in these choices.
Writing
I am still working on my poem for the Hello, Future! project. Yesterday I read all of the drafts I have written so far, then sat down and brainstormed for an hour, writing down words, fragments, thoughts, ideas, all in no particular order. I will probably repeat this exercise once more to find if this limited form of automatic writing points be to what the final version should be.
Weekly Writing Prompt
Subject: Economics, Artificial Intelligence
Setting: Labyrinth
Genre: Dystopian
Listening
Tears for Fears, “Famous Last Words,” from their 1989 album Seeds of Love. I picked this one from the comment in the review of Roland Orzabal’s book, below, which said that Tears for Fears once offered this song to Tom Waits. That would have been amazing!
Interesting Links
- “The Madness of Roland: a review of Welcome To Your Life, by Roland Orzabal” (Phil Christman, Saccades and Fixations)
- “Press Coverage of French Protests Broadcasts Neoliberal Message That Markets Matter More Than People” (Richard Murphy, Naked Capitalism)