isolated incidents

locust tree

An acquaintance left work at 2:30 in the afternoon, like every other day, and set off on his motorcycle to pick up his wife. He drove about five blocks and the city started spiraling around him. He stopped somewhere along the street, and flagged the attention of some old men cooling it outside the cafeneio. “Get me down,” he said and lost consciousness at once. They helped him off the bike, and off with his helmet. They found his wife’s number on his cell phone; they called her and an ambulance. It was quite a scare, but in the end, they all got to be heroes: he for not being as sick as it seemed; they for saving a stranger; and she for keeping her cool after “seeing it all” in those few hot minutes, and then long hours in a long cold corridor, of not knowing what had happened.

There was a power cut at school. The lights went out at the exact moment a student finished reading a paragraph about the inverse proportion between consumer demands for energy and the existence of non-renewable sources to provide it. We all complained when the room got hot.

I helped a linguist by editing an article in English. I learned that drug druga means “each other” in Russian. I’m proud of that. I’m hoping that a little comprehension will compensate in equal measure for my being subjected to every single word -- spoken, shouted, or sung -- by my noisy Russian neighbors. It’s summer. We all keep our doors open.