03 October 2008

The wonders of home

I'm in the middle of translating an excerpt from Zanahorias voladoras (Flying Carrots) by Antonio Ungar (one of the Bogotá 39), and happened across an interview that made me a little homesick:
"Creo que el placer más grande del mundo es montarse a un carro o a un bus y salir a cualquier destino lejano en Colombia. Absolutamente cualquier cosa puede pasar. Y esa incertidumbre permanente, ese mundo frágil pero también muy vital y muy creativo que hemos construido en una geografía hermosísima, hacen de Colombia uno de los mejores sitios para vivir del mundo y el mejor para viajar (a pesar de sus miles de muertos y sus injusticias inmensas)", afirma el escritor.
Ay, sí.

["I think that the greatest pleasure in the world is to get in a car or a bus and leave for any far away destination in Colombia. Absolutely anything can happen. And that permanent uncertainty, that fragile yet very vital and very creative world that we've constructed in a gorgeous geography, makes Colombia one of the world's best places to live and the best to travel (in spite of its thousands of deaths and immense injustices)," affirms the writer.]

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"...that fragile yet very vital and creative ..." As the adaptation to Colombia strengthens, the desire to taste the vital and creative of Colombian travel likewise increases. Fragile, too, yet human. Such words affirm what you know.

amcorrea said...

Thank you, Rick. I continue to feel incredibly privileged to live there.