is a short piece by Mauro Giuliani, beautiful and melodious but difficult. It’s extra hard now that there hasn’t been a lesson for two weeks, and in the interim I’ve torn my thumb. March Break will interrupt the learning progress next week too, it appears.
It’s one of those nasty cuts that looks like it’s healing nicely, but one wrong bend of the thumb-joint opens it again, deeply. And unless I’m dehydrated (cardiac meds can sometimes do that) water immersion’s pretty much going to precipitate a yowl.

The only thing worse than this kind of cut is the kind in which the top of the thumb is sliced off – usually in the kitchen with a dull knife-blade – one gets that horrible sensory shiver when one realises one’s fingerprints are sawn off. It’s an unpleasant, queasy, papery feeling.

Then again, cardboard cuts also come to mind; they are their own type of hell. I have illustration board that’s a good eighth of an inch thick, and a slow slide of the thumb across the edge of that is a special torture.