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The dudes in Choibalsan I hang out with

Greetings from Choibalsan, the town in far eastern Mongolia near the Russian and Chinese borders where Altai has some mysterious business. She took me along in the jeep driven by border patrol officers for the 13 hour drive from Ulaanbaatar last Sunday.

Altai returned from her James Bond-style mission to the border last night. She hadn't bathed for three days. "I'm too dusty to talk to you," she smiled, so we trooped at 9pm to a hotel and paid to use their sauna and showers. Six policemen/border patrol officers entertained me during her absence, and I got to walk into clubs with them. They fed me. They sang with me. They taught me words, including Mongolian miliary-ese for "Soldier Ming at your service! For the country of Monoglia!" They gave me beer. They sat silently in their uniforms in the club, filling the booth in the corner. I think it's the only time I'll know how it feels to have bodyguards, an entourage, a posse.

"Translation is impossible, but one of the most worthwhile things to try."

One of the smartest things I did as an undergraduate was take Forrest Gander's Advanced Translation Workshop. The reasons why are numerous, but today, as I work on Altai's stories in an internet cafe and the elementary-school boys who like to play computer games here hover over my shoulder, curious about what I'm doing, my being reminded of that class (and the conversations we had in it) has to do with what a gift it is to translate contemporary literature and have the means to travel: I got to meet Vicky Allyon in Bolivia. I get to spend time with Altai. I get to sit next to naked Altai in the sauna and be naked myself and talk about all sorts of things. Vast are the amounts of literature to be translated, the years over which said literature was produced, and languages into which to translate; rare are the moments when the creator of a piece of literature and the one doing the translation get to hang out in a sauna.

I close my eyes and smell the warmth coming off the skin of the little boys breathing next to my head and looking at the English on my monitor. The off-the-record, offstage moments the ones with which I am endlessly preoccupied. Paula Vogel said what's happening offstage to the characters in her plays is what fascinates her the most.

Moments from last year in UB:
Luke ironing his clothes in the morning in my apartment before going off and being his industrious self (I myself hardly ever used that iron, and when I asked him how to iron correctly, he merely said, "Make it flat");
Todd pointing out that I'd managed yet again to get sprinkles on my cheeks and/or in my hair after my choco-latte arrived at Bestspresso, the place with wireless closest to the UB Circus, and managing to convey utmost affection while doing so;
Sticking my ipod in my armpit (otherwise it'd stop working) for the walk home from the gym in the -40 Neptune-iceworld Ulaanbaatar turns into midwinter, taking care not to step on the black tiles on Sukhbaatar Square, as doing so causes one to slip, banana-peel style, one one's butt.

Moment from the five months spent in NYC:

A boy around 8 years old, disproportionately big backpack on, book two inches in front of his nose, shoelaces untied, sits on the subway. He's clearly in the middle of a Big Grow, all gangly and ankles showing because his pants are too short. When he gets off the subway he doesn't break stride or break eye contact with the page; his growing self is walking but his head is somewhere else. All over the world, man, if you give a kid a book.

Moment from this stint in Mongolia:

Tony Whitten, a Senior Biodiversity Specialist at The World Bank and a wonderful friend whom I met at the British Embassy's friday-night drinking hole Steppe Inn during the coldest month (-40!) in Ulaanbaatar, asking me the other night as we weaved through the throngs emptying out of the Wrestling Palace after Indian food with a German colleague of his and a Spanish economist, when I asked him what to do about MFAs and more student loans etc:

"Ming, do you have something inside you that needs to come out?"