Sane Inside Insanity: I HATE WORK

venerdì, gennaio 29, 2010

I HATE WORK

Lo traduco se sopravvivo al weekend.

OK, I hate work. Not like you all office people or whatever you do (short of being a prostitute, a hired assassin or the like) might say "Oh, I hate this", usually with very good reasons. No, I hate work like people hate spiders, heights, planes (wait, I hate all those things too). Which amounts to say I'M SCARED SH*TLESS OF all the above, to the point that I CAN'T FUNCTION ANYMORE when I'm near one of those things. Translations, in my case, which I used to LOVE - just like planes, heights and spiders - no, scratch the latter.

Reasons are complicated: keep an eye on this blog and you'll see I discuss them sometimes. Basically: FEAR OF PEOPLE. Especially when those people are there to judge my work and are likely to kill me if I'm late, or not pay me - let's keep the priorities straight.

I've reached the point that I can't get near work without being Xanaxed to the gills, and even so I can't work for more than half an hour straight, then I explode. Solution: do your half hour of work every day, after all you're fast and you're good - you know this. So at the end you'll practically find it done by itself. Yeah, then something happens and I don't do it. That's why you all are ORDERED to torture me each day, asking whether I've done my daily half-hour, otherwise you'll destroy my Brynden "Blackfish" Tully portrait (anyway nobody knows where it is, except my aunt and Bro who saw me slip it inside the house documentation folder.)

But when I reach this moment when I'm almost a week late and STILL can't do more than half an hour each day, it's death. No Xanax works anymore; anxiety is too strong. Which is a paradox: finish it soon and you'll feel better, right? Wrong. It doesn't work that way. My brain is much crueler and more devious.

OK, thanks for listening. Now I'll put in the TWO lines that my translation is still missing, then get drunk on Strawberry Wodka (beer is not enough anymore to stifle the terror), put on my military music compilation and crank it up to the max, possibly singing along (UNSER ROMMEL! SINK THE BISMARK! BELLA CIAO!) and send it.

I have here two more books to translate in the coming months. I have to find a solution for them. I HAVE TO.

QUOTES

Heart shall be bolder,
harder be purpose,
more proud the spirit
as our power lessens!
Mind shall not falter
nor mood waver,
though doom shall come
and dark conquer.
(The Battle of Maeldon, translated by Tolkien)

He who has a treasure, or a demon in his heart, cannot hide it. (King Theodoric the Great)

I' mi son un che, quando
Amor mi spira, noto, e a quel modo
ch'e' ditta dentro vo significando.
(Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio)

The lambs will stop for now. But, Clarice, you judge yourself with all the mercy of the dungeon scales at Threave; you'll have to earn it again and again, the blessed silence. Because it's the plight that drives you, seeing the plight, and the plight will not end, ever. (Hannibal Lecter)

Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Masai 'Ngaje Ngai', the House of God. Close to the western summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude. (Ernest Hemingway)

Would I embarrass you? Yes, it is possible. You see, I... I am crazy. I take the newer medications, but I still see things that are not here. I just choose not to acknowledge them. Like a diet of the mind, I choose not to indulge certain appetites. Like my appetite for patterns. Perhaps my appetite to imagine and to dream. (A Beautiful Mind)

Night gathers, and now my watch begins.
It shall not end until my death.
I shall take no wife, hold no lands,
father no children.
I shall wear no crowns and win no glory.
I shall live and die at my post.
I am the sword in the darkness.
I am the watcher on the walls.
I am the fire that burns against the cold,
the light that brings the dawn,
the horn that wakes the sleepers,
the shield that guards the realms of men.
I pledge my life and honor to the Night Watch
for this night and all the nights to come.
(GRRM)

Never criticize a person until you walk a mile in their shoes (Atticus Finch)

A warrior for peace is no less a warrior (General Korrd, unwittingly reminding of Yitzhak Rabin)

What was there to be gained by fighting the most evil wizard who has ever existed? Only innocent lives, Peter. (Sirius Black)

Whatever makes a soldier sad will make a killer smile (Leonard Cohen)

I'm rightly tired of the pain I hear and feel, boss. I'm tired of bein on the road, lonely as a robin in the rain. Not never havin no buddy to go on with or tell me where we's comin from or goin to or why. I'm tired of people bein ugly to each other. It feels like pieces of glass in my head. I'm tired of all the times I've wanted to help and couldn't. I'm tired of bein in the dark. Mostly it's the pain. There's too much. If I could end it, I would. But I can't. (John Coffey)

Oh, life! 'tis in an hour like this, with soul beat down and held to knowledge, - as wild, untutored things are forced to feel - Oh, life! 'tis now that I do feel the latent horror in thee! but 'tis not me! that horror's out of me! and with the soft feeling of the human in me, yet will I try to fight ye, ye grim, phantom futures! (Starbuck)

I have dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they've gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind. (Charlotte Bronte)

If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Will the air over the plain quiver with a color that I have had on, or the children invent a game in which my name is, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me? (Karen Blixen)

Do not you recognize me, Dumas? I am the rearguard of the Grande Armee. I have stood at Kovno, and thrown the last muskets in the Niemen. I am Marshal Ney. Give me a bowl of soup. (Attributed to Michel Ney).