In the beginning, there was nothing but emptiness. Emptiness that came from within, reflected without, and turned back inward, carrying with it an infinite chill.
Unfortunately, the queen had spoken in Sanskrit, a language at which the king was a complete dunce. He thought she wanted sweets. “Have all the sweets in the palace brought to the pool side!” he ordered his retinue. The queen who had spoken in Sanskrit felt embarrassed for him.
She reached to flush the toilet again. The head sputtered, “N-no, just a minute—"
She stayed her hand and looked down at the head in the toilet.
It was probably more accurate to refer to it as “a thing that vaguely looks like a head” than an actual head. It was about two-thirds the size of an adult’s head and resembled a lump of carelessly slapped-together yellow and gray clay, with a few scattered clumps of wet hair.
Life is filled with strange happenings that are hard to fit into our understanding of the world. Many we let pass in order to get on with our days. But this was not something I could let pass. I talked to Tiechan’s neighbors and his friends, his family members and his enemies. Slowly, I pieced together what had pushed my friend to his tragic end. This is what I discovered.
At eight years of age, I almost stopped sleeping. When I did manage to fall asleep, I found myself in the worst of nightmares. My ability to remain aware in the dream and to control the surrounding dream world lit me up like a beacon in the darkness. Every moment I felt the unkind attention of Morpheus upon me.
Тогда, в восемь лет, я почти перестал спать, а если всё-таки засыпал, оказывался в худшем из кошмаров. Моя способность осознавать себя во сне и управлять миром сновидений подсвечивала меня в темноте. Каждое мгновение я чувствовал на себе недоброе внимание Морфея.
The boughs of the olive tree branch out on the large room’s window, which opens onto a folktale repeated by the villagers about a spider inhabiting the old house on the plateau. A distorted spider whose shape swelled as it captured profane spirits. Alien faces to the village were caught in its nets: men with unkempt hair and beards, unpleasant faces in veils, and jelly-like features that came to hide in the spider's web.
As someone who thinks of myself primarily as a writer, I first became interested in translation three years ago when I started working on a novel inspired by the tropes of wuxia (martial arts fantasy) fiction in English.
