I had a pretty good afternoon, after Helena left with the kids (ours plus a friend of Sam’s who’s here for a few days) to an aquapark and suddenly there was silence and I could actually think in English.
There were three things I had on my list to get done while they were out. I had to proofread two chapters of an Iranian novel, which is basically just one, long festival of blood and gore. A lot of Iranian communists and nazis killing each other during and shortly after WWII, with some honor killings, an occasional accidental death, a suicide here and there, one guy died of tuberculosis, and a few savagings by wolves. Plus lots of ghosts and, in this latest chapter, a vivid description of a man’s leg from the point. Then, a fantasy book by a Czech author about the house where the sun sleeps at night, which is more pleasant reading, but not easier to translate.
I got all that done plus read a couple more chapters of Feast of Crows, watched a Woody Allen movie I’d never seen before (Zelig), and some stuff on Discovery about artificial intelligence, aliens, and the battle of Midway.
Zelig was kind of brilliant, typical Woody Allen stuff, of course, about his neurotic desire to be somebody else, somebody normal, but I can’t think of a single film in which he did it better.
Some might consider it a lazy afternoon, but for me, that’s actually more productive that average.
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