A collection of my translations~ and other things.
Night ruined! No soulful walk to the station, no street bopping, another five minutes of speaking saying nothing. I see a soulmate as I get out of the car. I fumbled getting into the car unused to the length of my skirt, or more like even being used to it I can't throw myself in the back door -- fumbled jokes all night but not jokes just repeating what they'd all said before. As a call back, my speciality is finding opportune moments to remind people of a joke they already find funny and I don't have to make Content and I don't have to be a human being. I can be a human being at the station because I don't know anyone I dance up and down the grill. Soulmate stays up under the coverings. Every stranger blurred wants to kill me or wants to fuck me. I'm so soulful now, give me a minute alone and I can get it all back. I'll make a lot of money then I'll quit this crazy scene! Says Joni which is easy for her to say considering she's already in a scene. The train hasn't come and I can't see the screen. I can go up and look how long there is left but people will see me do it and I'll cease to be alone. If you're conscious that you're being soulful, and encourage it with sad Christmas songs, is it still a soulful moment? I can't feel anything without noticing that I'm feeling it. I watch the brightening lights of the train curve around the track and the track flashes brown and grey and white and I think about how I'm thinking about it. Train -- trying not to look at anyone only Soulmate 2 who has a shaved head and seems to be looking at me too, but I take my headphones off and he's looking down the aisle at some drunk shouty boys. Only liking someone if they seem like the sort of person that might like me, based on how we have so much in common, namely being in the same train car. We're stopped at Parliament for five minutes or something or ten say for dramatic effect. Maybe it's the drunken fight behind me, which I can't turn around to look at for fear of giving Soulmate 2 the impression I care. But I turn the sound off on my phone because I love drunks. He are we sitting in a tin can, completely reliant on the system, nobody here can operate this train so we sit and wait for the grown ups to fix everything. One man steps out, looks to the left, looks to the right, appraisal of the situation complete. Returns to his seat to look at his phone. Am I going insane! We would sit here for an hour it seems if the announcements told us to. Though it would be quicker to walk and bypass whatever obstruction there is we prefer the static temperature of the train where you're not allowed to look at anybody. Only when the train has been stopped for an unusual period of time can you make eye contact and shrug. Drunken boy shouts, "Brother we are not fucking moving!" Only alcohol can induce us to state the obvious but what obviously needs to be stated. Only alcohol can induce us to say "what the fuck is going on?" I'm not bound to Earth, nor am I bound to this train in any way. I could leave and save myself the wait. But Soulmate 2 would see me and so would Soulmate 1, at some point spotted in the next car in front. They would see me caring about a wait, see me break every rule of being Parisian and bored looking. I laugh at the slurred revelations behind me, unbound by the shackles of social convention! "If we sit in this train long enough everything will work out, as my aches and pains disappear when I go to sleep, as my computer becomes unbroken when I turn it off and on again," society operates as a system, and systems are systematic, and if a train sits in a station for an hour doing nothing with all its passengers in a vegetative state, eventually someone is bound to notice and come to our rescue. Someone notices and makes an announcement. No audible human language can be heard from the speaker only static and noise and platform numbers and street names, a garbled mess. Often I wonder how you would know what was going on at a train station if you were deaf or blind, now I know you would be on the exact same page as anyone else retaining their hearing. So the message is go go go, I do pirouettes on the platform trying to see which way is the exit, and I make eye contact with Soulmates 1 and 2 as they disembark, neither comes to propose to me. Drunken child half bumps into me though it was my fault for doing pirouettes, and he says "sorry" and I think man, I love human beings, each so polite deep down. All the people seem to be stomping in time to my song so I laugh out loud, or about as out loud as a sane person can laugh: which is not at all, I whisper a laugh. Visually I won't suppress it because maybe I look aloof, auditorily I don't want to be annoying. I turned off Joni Mitchell because as much as I was enjoying my soulful christmassy mood it's hard to maintain when you have to keep removing your headphones to hear a blast of white noise play over a train station speaer. So I go jump -- you go your way and I'll go mine, only your way is the escalators and my way is also the escalators. I've heard about these escalators, their abnormal length and slanted ceilings contribute to some loss of depth perception or vertigo or something only I can't remember if it killed people or only injured them. The sensation is unnerving and a littl apocalyptic, I could imagine a bunker with an entrance like this, only the escalator would continue for a kilometer instead of these fifty metres. When I look forward I feel like I'm being pulled back by my scalp into the tunnel, and when I look backwards I feel like I'm falling. And when I look backwards again I make eye contact with the guy behind me wearing a fanny pack and I don't look behind me again. These people are my comrades, but I get out onto the street and they disperse. I lose my solidarity and gain my soulfulness. Soulful walks work best in an unfamiliar part of the city. This is my home, just an unexplored part of it, it's all my home, this is my universe, solipsism enclipses. And the good mood and effect wear off when I reach the familiar parts -- the parts where I recognise individual empty soy sauce fish on the pavement and can refer to them by name. The parts where I know to dodge certain sections of pavement because it will smell of sewerage. I'm me again and the song feels inappropriate and I turn it off. "Are you home safe yet?" -- "Yes, I just got back" I say, despite not being back yet, in the hopes that if I get kidnapped nobody will notice to come look for me until I'm long dead dead dead.