December 23, 2011


The possibilities of my expanded vacation days send me into unexpected adventures. I drove yesterday, for instance, to Hendersonville, thinking there might be some inimitable holiday cheer to be had there. It was warm, and I regretted my heavy jacket, but it allowed me to have cappuccino at an outdoor table on Main Street at the winter solstice. I had not brought my journal, and I feel naked just sitting in a café drinking without scrawling my little notes about the progress of the world. The guy in the piano-and-Jewish-holiday-decorations store showed me how he had souped up his electric pianos so that they sounded way better than they had coming from the factory. The cappuccino girl and I formed an instant bond. But I had the feeling that I had gone there for some purpose, and was moderately frustrated and not discovering that purpose. Now that I’ve written that, I suppose it’s the summary of most people’s lives. In any event, I passed the window of a music shop. In the window was a second-hand concertina that the talkative clerk said had been left there a long time ago. I bought it. I asserted it was my reason for going there. I’ve already discovered that there are differences between the English and the German concertinas (mine’s German), and different notes are played when the bag (if that’s what you call it) goes in from when it comes out. Awaiting my instructional manuals’ arrival in the mail.

Reading the bible in Italian from my Kindle as I tread the treadmill at the Y. Have made it to Genesis 3. Tom remarks on how odd it is to say the sentence, “I’m reading the Italian bible on the treadmill at the Y.” I’m all the time trying to translate things into Italian, which is working better than it once did, and I usually remember to double check the gender and the verb ending. Sia luce! Et cosi fu. Italian is not hard-edged enough to have been the language of creation.