San Francisco author Nina Schuyler wrote a gem of a novel called The Translator. Like many who grew up acquiring more than one language, perhaps easily, the translator’s stream of consciousness feels real. And for many who have attempted to translate more than just a few tag lines, second-guessing your translations become routine. When the original Japanese author rejects Hanne’s translation of his novel, it isn’t surprising that she falls into the abyss of failure that all who have pride in their work experience when critiqued. It helps to seize the hermetic feeling of the protagonist’s mind that following a brain injury she can only speak Japanese while the rest of her consciousness can perfectly hear English. And it helps that Japanese language and culture are hermetic too. We follow Hanne as she traces the fictional Jiro (to add to the feeling of mental confusion, she had a husband called Hiro) to the real Noh theatre actor Moto, and spends a few days with him. Together they unblock each other, he in returning to acting, she …

A penny there on the path, the made-up path by non-conforming pedestrians who won’t take the official planned sidewalk, and I don’t pick it up. I would pick it up from a marble floor – someone could slip on it. It would be worth a penny. It would be useful to avoid receiving four pennies in change. The penny, having been dropped for its lack of value or a hole in a pocket, might mean something to you if you picked it up. Just don’t assume it’s supernatural that the year corresponds to a life event of someone who’s watching you from the sky. What if it doesn’t? Will you toss the coin? You can’t write to Dear Abby any more, to tell her you found a penny with no significant date on it. On second thought, an imagined message sounds better than any real message from real life. Yes, there are useful messages, every first Wednesday there’s a voice in the sky telling us the siren is just a test, otherwise we’d be asking …