I don’t know if I ever responded to this, but your translation is really good. I like it better than mine! Reading mine over now, I realize it was sloppppy! Oh well- maybe will redo it someday.

Amber

Consider this: let’s stop
being you and me.
Leave your sleeping body,
leave my body at your side,
abandon them.
Leave your name and mine,
abandon this painful distance between us,
and let’s take a break
from ourselves, with ourselves;
let’s pretend that we were
still together, but in different forms.
Now without bodies and without names,
let’s try new shapes,
beings, to see if we can live better
in something else.
Let’s try being trees;
two trees that, despite having
trunks far apart from one another,
will search for one another from above,
will find one another with their leaves,
will embrace one another with their flowers.
Let’s try being waves
that run one after the other,
separate and playful,
until finally in the warm sand
they cease being two.
And let’s go even further than physical matter.
We can be two silences, so close together
that no one can tell that the
silence around them
is double, because two voices,
quieting themselves, form a
silence so they can better understand one another.
And if you want even more, we can try
to be light,
you one ray, me another ray,
you one half, me the other half,
that in order for light to form, it needs
both of us
and it contains both of us.
And we can still
escape further!
Pretend that we don’t exist,
live
in a prenatal world
where being together is
to be immensely lost,
one in the other, indivisible,
like the sea and the sky, before
God separated them.

And later you will see how wonderful it will be
to return to ourselves,
to find myself with you,
with me, despite the pain,
with your voice and with my name,
You’ll see, you’ll see, what a miracle
it is to see each other, to touch each other,
you’ll see what a revelation
it is to see ourselves, to really see ourselves again,
in these sad faces
that reveal how our souls had lived apart.
Having pretended that our love
never existed,
how genuine will it now always be for us!
What a bond
will be born, so happy,
so secure, out of this separation!

Perhaps I’ll see you before you graduate. I’m coming back from Madrid on May 8th. I’ll be back at Swat on the 11th’ish.

- Steve from Voice Workshop

Anyway, I am enjoying your stories on teaching, and the ups and downs of dealing with all kinds of kids. Reminds me of some things that Shirley says. Teaching can be exhausting, but exhilarating too.

Wow on the bungy jumping!! Looks fantastic. Keep the pics coming!!

Love, Mom

PS spoke with Dave, and going to look for disc and try and have him do re load on Thursday. The hard drive was bad, so he replaced it. That was the problem. Hope I find the disc!

Nancy is MY kind of girl!! Send her over here, and she can be my helper.

Yes, 5 hours of sleep is all we need!! The rest is a waste! I’m changing my usual 6 hours to less as of this minute!

How about the kids? How old, how smart? How come they like school when American kids at middle school age don’t.

Issy—you want to go to Ekkydoor now?