A first

Because there must always be one.

I am to be published this month. Although it's not really my work, not as I would have imagined it.

It's a translation of some prose I had accepted to work with in one way and ended up working with in an entirely different way. But, as the author and I agreed - and said in that jinx kind of way - my work with that text was written to be otherwise.

As I said, it's a translation. Which is hilarious if you know me. I have so many issues with translation. I, obviously, see the utility of translation. But it's so complicated and so multi-layered. And, despite what you might think, the more comfortable you are in the second language, the harder it actually is to translate. Because you feel how close the perfect word is. You know how near to the truth you can get. And accepting anything less is like eating aluminum foil. It hurts your teeth.

And as much as I believe in and live everyday the quantifiable and qualifiable and reassuringly mathematical aspects of language, when you translate something that, in its original language has the power to move you or whisper to you or take you somewhere else, you are confronted with everything about language that is just the opposite.

Its unqualifiable color, its unquantifiable aura, its unmathematical harmony. Very hazy, all that. And I don't usually spend much time in hazy.