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Translation process in my laboratory today.

Brain freeze. I feel memory in my subcortex. Old Soviet school taught me physics and math, but never languages. When I was forty, I learned Italian for work. I spoke it well. But two years later... nothing. Zero. Everything is gone.

«…soon it seemed she wasn't running through a tunnel but across the stars, jumping from one to another and burning her feet.» Sometimes my characters wake me up before dawn. So, I lead. And this is where we end up — in the middle of an Approximation Error (§ 32.1). A flooded dungeon, a runaway girl, and a dark-gray dog that swims away from inevitability. I am 66, and translating my own weird mind into English is a journey of its own. But the water is washing away the drawing, and the sharp details are emerging. Read the full Approximation Error on my Blogspot Need more pillars on this foggy path? Find the continuation — "The Hidden Child" (§ 33) and "A Nose for Freedom" (§ 33.1) — in the free EPUB on my BMAC. Grab a cup of coffee with me while you're there.

Imagine a cat. Someone opens the door to a frosty blizzard outside. He peeks out, touches the cold, nasty snow with his paw, shakes it off in disgust, and thinks: To be or not to be, that is the question...

Oops, cats can‘t think like that. He just stares blankly outside and decides: stay inside and howl with boredom, or go outside and instantly regret it.

I stand like Buridan‘s ass — a shopaholic ass — in front of two piles of hay, trying to decide which one to choose: the one I have to or the one I don’t have to. I could flip a coin — I have a special one, YES-NO.

Read the full tri-lingual archive about the Tao of laziness on my blog

They say the English language is full of hidden pitfalls. Step across the border into Germany, and a lovely "Gift" becomes literal poison, cyanide. Tell a paraglider that you hope things "fold perfectly" for him, and he will panic, because in his world a fold is a useless rag and a freefall. For a beachgoer, "we are swimming" is a triumph; for a sailor, it means the ship has gone down.

How am I, a 66-year-old, supposed to translate my book into English now? In a sea of gifts that are poisons, folds that mean freefall, and swims that mean shipwrecks... how do I stay afloat?

A word is a sharp blade. Watch who hands you the shot glass.

Full tri-lingual text on my blog

Out of the murky, icy water of memory, my own linguistic ghost slowly climbs out. It shivers in the wind of absolute zero. It pulls out a ball of bright red thread and begins stubbornly darning — lapits — the gaping holes in its ghostly robe.

A hole where the English perfect tense used to be. A tear where forgotten Belarusian words have vanished. Hopeless? Absolutely. The ghost will never gain flesh, no matter how hard it tries.

Will I stop trying? Not a chance. In my personal Tao, the Goal is not the point — the Way is the point. It keeps me sharp, and it keeps me from freezing solid.