The piano tuner

My grandma recently sent me her piano. She'd been wanting to get rid of it for quite a while, and last week it finally ended up in our living room. None of us play (I took lessons for a few months when I was like... in grade three), but this means I'm going to learn.

It's very rare that I hear music being played in person these days. In the past year I'd gotten used to being around it a lot, and it was so, so great. For me, finally being around people who played music all the time was like... like in those Claritin commercials, where that hazy layer gets peeled off the screen and suddenly the whole world is in the most vivid colour.

It's been a few months now since I've had that in my life, and that haze gradually settled back in. I only just realized this because, right now, there is a piano tuner downstairs who was plunking away for the past couple of hours, making my new piano sound like it should. And now, listening to her play bits and pieces of random things to test it out is making me want to cry. I'd forgotten what this felt like, this thing that surges up inside me. This thing that, once the silence resumes, vanishes almost as quickly as it came.

A felicidade é como a pluma

Que o vento vai levando pelo ar

Voa tão leve

Mas tem a vida breve

Precisa que haja vento sem parar