¡Hola! Writing this from my hotel room in Cáceres, in the Extremadura region of Spain. I’m here for the “Samuel Beckett International Conference: Literature and Translation” conference hosted at Universidad de Extremadura.
I came to Spain a couple days early to take a pre-conference mini-vacation in Madrid, where I: stumbled around museums, jetlagged but blissful; had a sangria at Las Cuevas del Sésamo and listened to a lone pianist play “Something” by the Beatles; had a café con leche and toast, finished my current read, and bought a couple books en español at La Central. It was nice to go back to Madrid. It’s been over five years since I did my study abroad semester there, but I was reminded quickly by the living memory of the city that Madrid was where I learned how to be alone. It’s a simple thing, but that lesson gave me the space and confidence to take on the challenges that made (and make) me my current self. So cheers to that.
Tomorrow I’m presenting my paper, “Beckett’s Mexican Translations: Resistances of Literary Diction and Conviction” in one of the afternoon sessions at the conference. Beckett is not my principal research subject—or my secondary one, or my tertiary one, etc., etc.—but I’m approaching this from my side of things, which is to say the side that tips toward Mexican literature and translation studies. It comes from a side research project that my advisor, Christopher Ricks, guided me on this fall.
And I’m happy it got me to Cáceres, which is beautiful. Wish I had more time here to explore, but I’m taking the train back to Madrid right after I speak tomorrow, so that I can catch my my flight Saturday without any trouble. Wish me luck!
& ‘Ta luego—