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double switch
May. 8th, 2019 11:30 pmThere is a small repeating pattern in my life right now, where to make electrial systems work I have to flip two switches on two different floors until they align. This afternoon, I spent half an hour running up and down three staircases from my attic computer to the basement router, switching them on and off until I convinced them to see each other again. To get the overhead light in the front hall to turn off, the last thing I do before I go up to bed, I have to flip the switch at the top of the stairs several times, then flip the switch at the bottom of the stairs several times, then flip the switch at the top of the stairs again. Only then will the connection release.
This is a coincidence, or a reflection of how finicky electrical systems can be in old houses when the weather changes, but it is also very much like the door-switch timing puzzles that exist in two-player video games. However, I am one player collaborating with myself across levels.
--
There is a poet, Juan Martinez, who sometimes translates bits of my published work into Spanish for his own enjoyment (with my permission) and then shares it with me. It's incredible that this happens. It's a large compliment that anyone thinks my writing is worth that kind of scrutiny and consideration. It's also very valuable to me, because he is a good translator. (I can read Spanish ok, particularly on my computer where I can check a dictionary. I can read Spanish the way English people read French in Bronte novels.) Reading his translations lets me understand what at least one other person (whose writing I enjoy) thinks is important or notable in each of my sentences, and how the tone comes off, and which themes rose to the surface. It lets me see what I wrote without being distracted by what I intended to write.
He recently translated my "There once was a zombie so dead" anti-limerick (I wouldn't have thought you could translate an anti-limerick) and the translation is hilarious and profound.
One of the things that's particularly notable about it is that his translation suggests some viewpoints which I hold but didn't realize were in the poem. Having looked back at the original: yes, they are right there. It's nice that the things I think I think also seem to be the things I think when I'm not thinking about them, when I am distracted by doing something else.
This is a coincidence, or a reflection of how finicky electrical systems can be in old houses when the weather changes, but it is also very much like the door-switch timing puzzles that exist in two-player video games. However, I am one player collaborating with myself across levels.
--
There is a poet, Juan Martinez, who sometimes translates bits of my published work into Spanish for his own enjoyment (with my permission) and then shares it with me. It's incredible that this happens. It's a large compliment that anyone thinks my writing is worth that kind of scrutiny and consideration. It's also very valuable to me, because he is a good translator. (I can read Spanish ok, particularly on my computer where I can check a dictionary. I can read Spanish the way English people read French in Bronte novels.) Reading his translations lets me understand what at least one other person (whose writing I enjoy) thinks is important or notable in each of my sentences, and how the tone comes off, and which themes rose to the surface. It lets me see what I wrote without being distracted by what I intended to write.
He recently translated my "There once was a zombie so dead" anti-limerick (I wouldn't have thought you could translate an anti-limerick) and the translation is hilarious and profound.
One of the things that's particularly notable about it is that his translation suggests some viewpoints which I hold but didn't realize were in the poem. Having looked back at the original: yes, they are right there. It's nice that the things I think I think also seem to be the things I think when I'm not thinking about them, when I am distracted by doing something else.
