Day 3, Coldly, Sadly descending

The cheeping, whistling, chipping, whirring bird calls. The mandolin and fiddle and E’s voice explaining chord progressions, LL’s voice talking story, B laughing. (He'd been describing the neighbors across the street, and she of course knew them and all the backstory. We're Yankees, she's local.)  Cool-warm air: cool in the breeze, warm in the sun. Distant dog bark.

.The three of them, our host C (B's wife), E and LL, have started playing Liberty. B talks to me about everything and nothing. I’m on the screened-in back porch, leaning back on the chaise longue. I'm trying to write about the prompt. He wants to be host, so I look up from the iPad, smile, ask a question, show interest. More mandolin music forms the soundtrack to our talk, but it's really where the action is, two rooms away, but so close in this small bungalow, with all the doors open and the resonance of wooden floors. I want to get up and play with them, but I don’t have the nous. I know the pieces they are playing but not in that key. I don't know chords, don't have the tunes under my fingers.

B leaves and I return to my words. What "coldly sadly descends?"  Fog on the hills? A woman on the stairs? Water along a streambed? What sort of thing descends? Objects, matter, air, water, sound. Thoughts, lives in a downward spiral, night... all quiet, methodical, dark, falling falling falling. But what is happening now is intent, cheerful, in the moment. Good sounds, good times. And that’s the case with most of the lives around me. Busy, involved, focused. Maybe controlled and repetitive, but with an element of surprise, of improvisation, a possible tumble of notes, a possible change of pace

In the room, two doors away, I hear them working out the chords to The Star of County Down. I set down my iPad, walk through the house to the living room, where E's violin case sits open on the couch, and B sit's nearby on the other couch. The sun streams through the window, warm, happy. Nothing cold or sad about it. I start to fiddle.