Away

Outside all afternoon. There are only a couple of more days to soak up sunlight before the temperature starts sliding back down and the clouds return. If I'm to be frozen by that mass of Siberian air said to be headed this way, I want to absorb as much heat as possible before it arrives. The birds probably feel the same way. The afternoon was full of them, though they were mostly quiet. They were busy eating, eating, eating. Maybe I should take that as a sign.


I came across a website about an obscure Mexican-American composer named Cenobio Hernandez who died in 1950. Many years later his grandsons discovered a box full of music he had written, most of it dating from the decade of 1940-1950. A few brief clips of a half dozen of his compositions are featured on the website, as played on the piano by his grandson Ricky Hernandez. It's very odd listening to this music that was hidden away for so many years, and the strangeness is intensified by the fragmentary nature of the clips. I've been listening to them for half an hour, and I'm pretty sure they've pulled me through a time warp and into a dim taverna on a dusty San Antonio back street more than half a century ago. I'm not sure I want to come back.


( Sunday Verse )