Sarah Thoughts
I am a Cafe Cup by myself at 7 am in the morning and why I think translators are the biggest nerds around.
I am at Cafe Cup by myself at 7 am in the morning. Earlier, I had taken my parents to the airport so that they could cross the country to meet their Thanksgiving Day plans. That left me leaving the airport at 6:15 am. On the drive up, the sky was dark and passionate—filled with a selection of blues that gave depth and shape to all the night sky hid. But as I drove away, the sunrise was in full effect. Each one so unique and fleeting—never to be seen again. And now that I’m writing this several days past, I have nothing else to say about it but that I can still see the cacophony of color in my head.
The last time I was at Cafe Cup was with my father during a pandemic nadir. It’s a small cafe that only accepts cash. The menu is not overly creative and that is its charm. Sometimes you just want a really good omelet or pancake or both with a hot cup of coffee that gets refilled over and over.
I sat in a booth all by myself—my chin held up by my hand—and I thought Sarah thoughts. What is the nature of these thoughts? I could not tell you! It is whatever you think when you converse with the ocean. So many things, and yet, the only artifact to share is how I watched a vee of geese through the restaurant’s window fly east in the early light.
—by Sarah Dzida (Nov 2022)
Author’s Note: I first heard about the author Clarice Lispector many years ago in a translation panel. I love translation panels; they are my favorite type of panels. IMO translators are the biggest nerds on the planet! 99% of them literally become translators because they read some author and could find no other resource to share that love. She’s best known for her fiction, but I tend to only encounter her non-fiction. I’m making my way through her right now, and I’m loving it.
In the intro, the translator Giovanni Pontiero says that crônicas or chronicles are a genre peculiar to Brazil. They allow poets and writers to address readers through aphorisms, diary entries, stories, etc. For Lispector, hers come from the column she published in the Saturday edition of the Jorno do Brasil, and well, here in this substack are mine.
Pontiero also writes how Brazil’s other great writer (João Guimarães Rosa) once said, “I don’t read [Clarice Lispector] just for literature, but in order to learn about life.” Is it pretentious, ambitious or humble of me to hope that you all might be doing the same for me????
You write beautifully Sarah. Love those Sarah thoughts! <3