Anakana Schofield

Dithery weather. Persian Radio. La Nuit

Today, this evening to be precise, well 9pm to be even more precise, I discovered by chance Vancouver Persian Radio. It is fab! I love the music they play and there was a report on today’s election. I couldn’t understand the report because I can’t speak Farsi. But I could understand the music because, well, that’s how music is. The station only plays once a week at 9pm.

I also recently discovered the Lacha Cercel & the Roma Swing Ensemble. It also was a Saturday. I conclude musical delights reveal themselves on Saturdays.

To celebrate Bloomsday manana I watched two documentaries: one to help me muster the will to wash the dishes, on the proliferation of nuclear weapons and amateur pedlars of enriched uranium and then a piece about alien abductees in the UK. Neither have any relation to Bloomsday except I think it calls for variety. Worrying nuclear facts also have a speeding up effect on doing the washing-up.

I am reading Michele Bernstein La Nuit or The Night in a translation by Clodagh Kinsella and its sister book After The Night — a detournement set in London, which I already dug into because I couldn’t wait and am reading it concurrently rather than consecutively. I concurrently have Brigid Brophy’s Beardsley and his world on the perch and Don’t Never Forget.

The weather the past two days has been dithery. Overcast and then a bit of sun before it resorts to dithery. There was a terrific rain event on Wednesday morning past. I have titled it the Timpani and Gush event. In the afternoon a tornado hit Edmonton. I like to imagine the two events were connected. I think the science would prove otherwise. I practice interpretive weather observations rather than the solid factual pointy point type. Also, weather naysayers with their heads stuck in a bowl of lime … you can never run out of things to say about the weather. If you do, make them up. Obviously.

Excited

..to read this translation (by Clodagh Kinsella) of Michelle Bernstein’s The Night. Congratulations to Bookworks for doing what many have til now not managed. Now who would like me to pay to review it for their newspaper/journal ?

Also, enjoyed this interview with Cesar Aira and especially his description of what he likes about small publishers and how a reader who really wishes to find his work will find it.

Also, was keen to learn that Senor Aira translates work, perhaps he might translate Malarky to Spanish someday? I can think of no finer pairing than Aira and Our Woman.