Sculpin

I had a lot of fun with this. Gromit posted a beautiful Italian poem with his translation of the last five lines. (And, Gromit, I hope you do not mind my reposting this. Please let me know if you do.)

POETI DIMENTICATI

La meraviglia vive nel silenzio
come i fiori respirano la luce.
Questa è forse la vostra sorte
amici poeti, già accolti
nelle ombre profumate del Lete:
ma ancora parlate, a convito,
dal popolo infinito dei sogni.
Cantaste la terra buona,
la ferrea età che ci incalza,
l’amore, il polline, le gemme,
la morte, carezza d’oblio.
Siete rientrati nel vortice
lievissimo della bellezza,
per sempre verrete a incontrarci
nel tremito delle libellule,
nel magico crepitio del fuoco,
dal nero di spente rose
al sangue di roventi spine.

-Alberto Frattini (1991)

…
forever you will come to meet us
in the trembling of the dragonflies,
in the magical crackling of the fire,
from the black of lifeless roses
to the blood of burning thorns.

That’s so gorgeous that I was impatient to read the first lines. So impatient that I decided to just make up a translation off the top of my head, without that little intermediate step of, oh, learning Italian. My draft mistranslation:

The observed miracle lives in silence
and breathes light into flowers.
A question’s impulse becomes the voice
of a friend of poets, always beloved,
your shadows perfumed by Lethe,
while a knit skein calls together
the people of the infinite god of sleep.
You sing of the good earth,
the iron of our own armatures,
love, onions, precious stones,
the dead, beloved obligations.
Again in your beauty you come
to the flimsiest of crossroads
and always you will come to meet us
in the trembling of dragonflies.

I am particularly proud of translating “ancora parlate” as “knit skein”. Proud in a sick way. Mistranslating things is fun. How would you translate these lines, Gentle Reader?

I’d like to try something like this some time: cutest cookies ever. Though I wonder if I could eat something that adorable.

“All species of livestock will follow the leader. This instinct is strong in cattle. The single file chute should be long enough to take advantage of this tendency. The minimum length for a single file chute is 20 ft. (6 m)… Cattle, when isolated, can become agitated and stressed. When a lone animal refuses to move, the handler should release it from the crowding pen and bring it back with another group of cattle.”

(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Via Peter:

“And now you know.”

Even the National Weather Service forecasters are starting to sound a little punchy after 22 consecutive days with measurable precipitation. We’re coming up on a local record for soggy days in a row.

LONG TERM…SURPRISE SURPRISE…NO CHANGES MADE TO THE EXTENDED FORECAST. MODELS STILL HAVE ONE SYSTEM AFTER ANOTHER COMING INTO THE AREA WITH RAIN AND SHOWERS AND VERY BRIEF PERIODS OF NON-PRECIPITATION IN BETWEEN.

“Very brief periods of non-precipitation in between.” I’m getting a little punchy myself.

A class description in the catalog of Discover U led me to the website of the Washington State Ghost Society. (Josh exclaimed, “There’s a Washington State Ghost Society? How could I not have heard about this?”) The website has a nice little collection of Washington State ghostly phenomena. I used to work in one of those allegedly haunted places, the University YMCA, but I can’t say I ever felt any spooky presences aside from a couple of the patrons.

More on local ghostly whatsits:

• Ghosts, Critters, and Sacred Places of Washington and Oregon
• HistoryLink: Burnley Ghost and Other Local Apparitions
• more HistoryLink: Neysa Longmire on the Ghost at the Admiral Benbow Inn (scroll down a ways)
• Ghost Tours at the Pike Place Market
• Ghost-hunters at Fort Warden with their startling, or perhaps just smudgy, photos.
• Seattle Museum of the Mysteries, “Washington State’s only Paranormal Science, UFO History, Bigfoot and Ghost Museum”, where you can communicate with the dead, learn to cure warts, test your psychic ability, get a swig of oxygen, celebrate Bruce Lee, attend a Weird Science Salon, and I know not what.

Things I think late at night: “apple” is to “apical” as “tipple” is to “typical” and “topple” is to “topical”. Also, less neatly, as “vessel” is to “vesicle”. I start thinking things like this around 3:30 a.m., hoping that juggling words will help me sleep, and then they wind up keeping me awake even later.

Oh, I wish for some good reason to say in conversation, “My typical tipple is to topple the topical.” Unfortunately, I’m not quite sure what it might mean. But it’s fun to say. (Come to think of it, there’s a passage in Ojos de Brujo’s “Zambra” that sounds an awful lot like that.)

Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit. Happy New Year, everyone.

I wish you all the best in the coming year. Especially certain friends who’ve been beaten soundly about the head by 2005 — you know who you are.