Last week, a mile or two away from my house, a barn burned, animals perished, fire engines screamed. Meanwhile, I was calmly feeding my cat. This morning, the people of Mexico are shuddering under a hurricane while I am sitting quietly at my kitchen table. Sometimes I am appalled at the ignorance of my body.

And yet years pass, and my fingers still flash across the violin strings. They'll never forget how to strip milk from an udder, how to shape pretzel dough, how to play games with a baby--"here's the church, here's the steeple, open the doors. . . . "

Memory and ignorance, hand and mind. Calm and destruction. Are they really so arbitrary?