Life is a journey.
Sometimes literally, sometimes spiritually… and sometimes finding your way in the labyrinth of new languages.
Languages are the most intriguing inventions of the human mind. Although they, the languages, don’t exist, or better to say, don’t live in void spaces – they co-exist intertwined with the cultures they define. Others say the cultures define the languages… but when you immerse into them yo don’t really start thinking about their primordiality.
Once I’ve translated in a novel a sentence that goes like this (in the English translation of the same novel done by a translator with the help of the author himself; and which I translated from Russian into Hungarian): “while [she] would sail away somewhere into the depths of the house, leaving all doors open and forgetting the long messy bunch of bluebells on the lid of the piano”.
Many many years later, on another continent, learning to speak and write in another language, while desperately trying to make a living by interpreting simultaneously back and forth among three languages… one day this image of that lady “sailing away” through many rooms that open into each other and creating a fascinating perspective through all the open doors, I started to imagine that every room must be for a different language and my life is a constant pendulum-like commuting between all those language rooms; I even had this vivid picture of classic dark mahogany library furniture in all the house with thousands and thousands of hardcover books on the shelves…
… and that fairy-like sailing lady in the distant perspective of the long line of the open doors seemed to be something to be chased like an ancient Greek muse or demigod or a dream or an idea that we pursue in our life regardless of the geographical coordinates that want to tie us down to some despicable mundane reality piece.
I do travel geographically to interesting places on Earth (where I take lots of pictures for my travel writings) and I also still travel through those neverending open doors to savour the unmistakable unique scent of each language in their own room. Sometimes it is difficult to tell which kind of travel is more enjoyable. In between, while standing in the doors, I like to do many things: cooking, reading, gardening, designing websites and teaching.
Want to join me on my journey?
Did you see my book?