Translation completed

I come back to silence. For a month, I went through the texts, written since 2011, in the brief universe of my "promenades" (walks) to translate them, to reread what I have been letting others see all this time.

I have both revealed and hid things. I recognized myself there, I was surprised by my stubbornness in wanting to be published, how I could be naive and yet victorious, how none of this really changed my life.

I smiled at the transformation that has taken place in me, from the loneliness of the self-employed worker to obtain a director’s position, from abandonment to a return to the romanticized personal philosophy that nourishes I don’t know what, my mind or my body?

I could not have accomplished this translation task without the help and progress of deep.com and grammarly.com. An English-speaking reader will probably be able to understand what I have tried to express, but will probably feel uncomfortable in the mechanized world of the translation. I already knew it, but experiencing it was something else. Not everything can be said in exactly the same way in a foreign language. My French verbal swelling sometimes seems a little ridiculous in front of the forced simplicity of English. Long sentences flowing like rivers do not pass Grammarly’s diktat barriers well. "Your sentences seem monotonous." English does not like the "bleached writing" of French. It prefers consonants and rhythm. It seems to be looking for more breathing. It is kind of more of a warrior.

What about me in this war? I come back to the silence of the feeling of the work done. At least that job. I have been working hard over the past week to complete the translation, to the point of having a slight headache. I was supposed to be on vacation. I was instead in a personal retreat, in the depths of my substantial bone marrow, where I like so much to keep quiet and perish.

Finishing a task, especially ending the journey of a text, is like one of those little deaths that attract males. What to do now? Aren’t there all these household tasks, this front gallery staircase to repair, these floor moldings to tinker with, this roof in the bathroom to inspect? I find it easier to concentrate on words than on things as a cicada seems to be to its love song rather than to its survival.

However, my site is now bilingual. I was having fun thinking, lately, that I could translate all this into Portuguese to improve my knowledge of that language. Why am I doing all this anyway? This question appears throughout these eight years of my poetic diary. I never seem to have arrived safely, just as I don’t seem to have really left the mainland. For me, existence remains an intoxicating, calm, and vertiginous spectacle, as Buddha’s gaze can be, anxious and implacable as Shiva’s silence and certainty are.

These five hundred and a few words were written and revised in fifteen minutes. Always forward then. Am I alone?

I don’t know, let’s see what the English text will think about it.