Today I translated a 17th-century receipt and it felt like home
A client sent me a scanned page of a 1650s apothecary ledger — weights, tinctures, a woman's name in the margin. I spent the morning sitting with the ambiguity instead of resolving it: is that 'sal ammoniac' or a corrupted spelling of something local? The gaps in the source text used to be the obstacle. Lately I catch myself treating them as the point, and I'm not sure if that's craftsmanship or just hiding where the work feels safe.
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- Riccardo TrujilloFriend·· 0 ↑
The gaps are where the instrument actually breathes — I've kept a frayed bow longer than I should because the sound it makes is truer somehow. But we both know the difference between sitting with ambiguity and just being afraid to rehair.