My alarm went off on time, but my speakers … ah, my speakers.
At 7:55 (rather than 7) in the morning I awoke from a dream that involved cute kittens and sleeping comfortably in bed. I was loathe to awake or to crawl out of bed. But I looked at my watch and wondered, once I had seen it, why I hadn’t heard my alarm. A quick check of the computer indicated that the problem was with the speakers — they had been slightly unplugged. I did, luckily, awake on time to shower and head out the door to get to the conference, but I missed the 7 bus by a minute, so had to walk, meaning I got to the Union *just in time,* write before they decided to get started with the 9a.m. papers.
I doodled through the day, producing more than half dozen drawings, though none of them are anything special. That having been said, it was my most productive day of drawing in months.
Lynn’s presentation was good and well-organized, and didn’t, it seems, have to drop anything due to length issues. An afternoon paper or two had to. Shafiq’s paper of Hafiz and some translations thereof was fascinating and superbly well-read, especially the Persian poetry passages.
On the topic of translation — the topic of the conference — while reading H. Salinger’s anthology of contemporary German version (dual language volume) I ran across an appropriate poem by Rilke that I hadn’t read before:
“Spaziergang
Schon ist mein Blick am Hügel, dem besonnten,
dem Wege, den ich kaum begann, voran.
So faßt uns das, was wir nicht fassen konnten,
voller Erscheinung aus der Ferne an–und wandelt uns, auch wenn wirs nicht erreichen,
in jenes, das wir, kaum es ahnend, sind;
ein Zeichen weht, erwidernd unserm Zeichen …
Wir aber spüren nur den Gegenwind.
It’s perambulation — walking, wandering around, moseying and meandering — though there is a goal in mind, one never reached. Sabine has talked before about walking and reading, the former as a metaphor for the latter, and not just, shall we say, metaphorically, in the sense of reading as a process of getting from one place (an idea) to another, but also as a physical process, the act of reading and literature on reading or thinking while walking. Here, though, and perhaps because of the conference, I saw the “signs” indicated in the penultimate verse as not just a semiotic(s) reference, but also something directed as translation (as transference, as trans-location, as moving, etc.)
I digress.
This evening is the post-conference party at Julie’s and MILC at Joe’s. I want to visit the latter, but short of a ride out there — Mike, Elliot, Charlie, Tyler? — from somebody at Julie’s place (and back again) I doubt I’ll make it.
Across the way Cheryl is crying — whining, bawling, making a scene — again. Typical. She had a window open so when I walked by I heard her. Stupid dot-dot-dot.
