Nov. 14th, 2020

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Regular readers will recall (or not) that I sent off my oil painting of Vietnamese Woman In A Forest (or whatever) for an official paint conservator person to address the cupped and flaking paint problems thereupon. It's been a year since I sent it off, but also we had Pandemic and shit and so the painting kept not being done. A lot.

I am not a patient person and I expect that the poor painting conservation guy got tired of hearing me call about my painting. But anyway. It's done and back home. I am very pleased even though it was a little more expensive than I'd hoped for.

How does painting conservation work? You send off your picture (assuming it's a size you can send off) and the conservator looks at it and tells you what needs done and gives you an estimate. If you agree, you sign the paperwork and hand over some $$. And then you wait. When it's done, you pay any outstanding balance and get back your picture and a description of what was done to it and a CD documenting the work. So, basically, it's like hiring a contractor.
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The new spanish-language book is La Sombra del Viento (the shade of the wind, I think) by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. I am not sure if this is a book I will be able to get through, but I am going to give it my best shot. It's real literature for grown-ups and not a for-youths book. It may be beyond me.

I'm not sure what it's about yet and there are a lot of words that stick me, but when I actually *get* it, it is beautiful.

Todavía recuerdo aquel amanecer en que mi padre me llevó por primera vez a visitar el Cemeteraio de los Libros Olvidados. Desgranaban los primeros días del verano de 1945 y caminábamos por las calles de una Barcelona atrapada bajo cielos de ceniza y un sol de vapor que se derramaba sobre la Rambla de Santa Mónica en una guirnalda de cobre líquido.

"I will always remember that dawn when my father took me for the first time to visit the Cemetery of the Forgotten Books. It was one of the first days of the summer of 1945 and we walked along the streets of a Barcelona trapped below skies of ash and a hazy sun that spilled over the Rambla of Santa Monica in a wreath of copper liquid."

So it's more... flowery than La Ciudad. There is figurative language. (I am not sure what work "desgranaban" is doing ... it seems to mean "shell" or "harvest" or "select" with a side of "being picked or sorted from".)

We have a hero Daniel, who starts the book as a ten year old boy. He lives with his father, a dealer in books (collector's editions and used books and rarities and such). His mother is dead from catching cholera when he was four. They go to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books and Daniel selects a book. The book that he selects is called La Sombra del Viento.

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