19th Dec – My son cooked dinner for the six of us in his apartment. It’s his 24th birthday but he spoilt us.
20th Dec – In my household, 4 things have an imperfection in their 4th working part:
One leg has rusted off my fashionably pre-rusted outdoor table;
One of four glass feet on a blue heirloom vase broke off and rejects the strongest glue;
Our dog’s fourth leg hangs limply since he broke a ligament;
One candle on a German Christmas carousel burns out before the other three. But here it is, running on 4 pistons:
21st Dec – Received an email from a publisher’s employee with the Dickensian name of Robert Puffett.
22nd Dec – On a shady bench in the Sculpture Garden, away from visitor paths, I read my translation aloud into a recorder.
23rd Dec – At 7 am as I wandered in the garden, bees buzzed about my ears and eyes. I looked up into the fig tree and saw and heard a swarm of them gathering sweet sticky honeydew left by a plague of aphids.