Why I like Alan Spence so much
Almost two years ago, I was living in Glasgow, Scotland, and feeling very much at home there. I kept postponing doing a one-day trip to Edinburgh, until I saw that John Irving was going to the Edinburgh Book Fair just a couple of weeks before my intended return to Spain. I thought hed be signing books. So I went to Edinburgh to meet John Irving after having half-heartedly avoided the place for months.
John Irving wasnt going to sign books. He was going to do a reading of extracts of his books, and the tickets were sold out. I had gone to Edinburgh for nothing. I might as well do the tourist thing and take a look at the books to sale.
And in the poetry section there was a book called GLASGOW ZEN. Genius. I leave Glasgow very reluctantly and I find a book that translates classic Japanese haiku into Glaswegian Scots.
Jist this,
Jist this,
And still
Its a world of dew,
Only that, a world of dew,
And even so
Sólo un mundo de rocío,
Sólo somos rocío,
Y sin embargo....
I dont dare translating it into any Southern Spanish dialect, although it would be easy for someone with a better ear to do so. This is a haiku that a master whose name I cant remember (Issa?) wrote after the death of his only son. The first is Alan Spences version and the other two are my paraphrases of the original. World of dew is a common Buddhist metaphor about the brevity of things.
Oh, and I didnt go to Edinburgh for nothing. A museum had the best temporary exhibition of Monet paintings ever done, gathering paintings from dozen of collections. Good things turn up when you least expect it, specially in Scotland.
John Irving wasnt going to sign books. He was going to do a reading of extracts of his books, and the tickets were sold out. I had gone to Edinburgh for nothing. I might as well do the tourist thing and take a look at the books to sale.
And in the poetry section there was a book called GLASGOW ZEN. Genius. I leave Glasgow very reluctantly and I find a book that translates classic Japanese haiku into Glaswegian Scots.
Jist this,
Jist this,
And still
Its a world of dew,
Only that, a world of dew,
And even so
Sólo un mundo de rocío,
Sólo somos rocío,
Y sin embargo....
I dont dare translating it into any Southern Spanish dialect, although it would be easy for someone with a better ear to do so. This is a haiku that a master whose name I cant remember (Issa?) wrote after the death of his only son. The first is Alan Spences version and the other two are my paraphrases of the original. World of dew is a common Buddhist metaphor about the brevity of things.
Oh, and I didnt go to Edinburgh for nothing. A museum had the best temporary exhibition of Monet paintings ever done, gathering paintings from dozen of collections. Good things turn up when you least expect it, specially in Scotland.
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