Hello blog. As an attempt to keep the writing muscles intact, I'm writing a bit now and then. I'm trying not to focus on whether these words have much by the way of inherent value, nor edit or refine them too much. The aim is just to put thoughts down.
I've been reading The Journey to the West. Anthony C. Yu has done a marvellous translation of all one hundred chapters with all of the poetry translated, including dozens of explanatory footnotes per chapter. What I'm enjoying about my reading of JtW is that I can lend however much weight I like to it - if I want to go off on a tangent into the footnotes, I can; if I want a lighter reading of a particular chapter, I can simply read the text and only dip into the footnotes if I really don't understand a particular word or concept.
Another thing I really enjoy is how much I've felt amused by, fond towards and in awe of a piece of 16th century Chinese literature. This book has transcended time, space, society and culture to come to me, a white twenty-something in the UK, and make me grin like a loon whilst sitting on my garden wall in the sunshine.
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