Our upstairs neighbor has a record player that she keeps on the floor of her apartment and uses to play extremely loud music that shakes the ceiling of our apartment and is centered exactly above our dining table. At the moment, she appears to be listening to a frenetic and rather shouty polka tune, to which she is dancing in clogs. This is besides the extremely loud sex she has whenever her boyfriend comes over, and the mysterious, intermittent rumbling noises that emanate from up there every few evenings or so (we think maybe her hedgehog has a wheel that it likes to run on at night? It is very hard to know).

Ah, city living.

Dinner with Hal last night was late, but wonderful; we ate at a little Mexican place we’ve been meaning to try for ages and I consumed a gigantic carne asada burrito that must have been about twice the size of my stomach (amazing how the human body can adapt to that kind of thing, isn’t it?). We enjoyed a delightful conversation with him and his design colleague Walter, who calls himself a “ponderer.” Walter somehow manages to be a successful artist in the spare time he carves out from work, and this made us all, I think, feel rather lazy and inspired. It was a good feeling; good for me, anyway.

My Kafka class met for the first time on Wednesday and we have a wonderful Czech teacher with a sharp dry wit who is a translator (I believe she speaks Hebrew as well as everything else) and used to work for a children’s publishing company—good portents all! Also, four students who had taken previous classes with her returned for this one, obviously a terrific sign. One of them said, rather prettily, “You could be teaching a class about Elvis Presley and I would still be here.” I was the youngest person in the room by at least fifteen years—we shall see how and if that turns out to matter!

The music has stopped now, and has been replaced by a laughing chat on the phone. Perhaps peace will follow. If it does not, that is all right too. Life is rich. It need not be quiet.