Friday, April 12, 2013

a day in the life...


dawn. wake up, get up, walk animal(s), feed animals, turn on computer, make coffee, sit down at computer...
it's just another workday.
so i warm up with a little press clipping for a corporate client. i could skip coffee, but i can't start working without this warm-up. facebook also helps pass the time. when i finish that i get down to real stuff.
these days's it's been a friend's father's memoirs. the serb uprising against the fascist croatian puppet-state in the second world war. i finished it last night, but it's been a hell of a trip the past three months. the guy's got a good sense of humor, and even though he's talking about various killings (some that he witnessed first-hand) it isn't a difficult read. but his language is complicated. we're temporally, geographically, linguistically, and educationally distant. it was a good challenge. and it was nice to exchange comments (mainly linguistic) with a 90+ year old by email.
but i spent three months in someone else's head. and it can be tiring. to consider the person's life experience, everything possible i could learn about them and the place/time that they describe, to make educated guesses about that which i cannot know, time and  again... the entire time thinking about the reader and the explanations that i might have to add. and then keeping the integrity of the text, the language, the style...
and then it's over. it's like a child you raised and its time to release it into the world. you've done what you've done, and its time to say farewell. these experiences stay with you...

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

its been almost four years. the tree has grown.
i still play tennis in the same place, but many other things have changed. i won't get into that now. i just wanted to break the ice.