I have barely had time this week to sit down and make sure I still have all my fingers and toes, much less collect my thoughts into anything worth sifting into this little white box. There are beautiful things right outside my window (honestly! you should see the clouds today) that I'm fighting to tie down inside my brain until I'm able to find a moment to wrestle them onto the page.

I'm about to head to California for the amazing Broad Summit, and just when I thought I could completely relax and enjoy my preparation for the fun ahead, I get word that my translation skills are required to bulk up a fragment for the Frankfurt Book Fair next week. So! I will be spending the flight trying not to be too distracted by the enticing smile of the woman sitting next to me, and instead decorating sheets and sheets of paper with red pencil, trying to find translations for words that I don't think actually exist. (This is where I try to creep closer to calling myself a translat*r.)

Thus: a theme for the links below. Or at least as far as I could shape them into some sort of theme in my addled, busy, westward-gazing brain.

• Living in Riga brings appreciation for heat
  From now on you can just assume I'm going to link to everything my friend Rich writes, because descriptions like this deserve to be shared: Juris looked like an exiled officer from some Russian novel, fallen badly into disrepair. His long tangled hair spilled out from under a greasy fur hat that he apparently wore all year round. He had only a couple teeth left in his mouth, which emitted a putrid stench laced with garlic and sausage. And on his feet, jutting out from under a ratty brown overcoat, was a pair of pink bedroom slippers with embossed golden letters which, when placed together, spelled out the words "TOO SEXY."


• The invisible hand
  Sounds like translator Anne MacLean could probably teach me a thing or two. (via Bookslut)


• Formal
  Jim has no idea, but he's just taken a picture of the inside of my brain when I'm translating. Or, alternatively, what a translation feels like when it's nearly done. (I love this picture. So much. I wish there was a word for it, in any language.)