My landlady took the equivalent of a spa vacation this week at a resort near the mountains here in Austria. We would usually have conversations at night (basically me pointing at an object and her telling me what it is), but because she will be gone for a total of three weeks, I'm basically by myself in a house full of objects I don't know the names of. In my newfound latchkey kid solitude, a solitude Rilke and Thoreau could only write about, I find myself entertaining thoughts that highlight a markedly decreased cognitive ability.

The other night, while tucking myself into bed, I actually said, and without external prompting, “Yessss, but can you tango?” I rounded off the interrogative by applying a faultless impression of Antonio Banderas—the puss with the boots in that movie with the monster and John Cleese. Take some time to say what I said out loud to yourself, accent and all. Now why would I say something like that to myself before going to bed? Why in the hell would I ever say that to anyone?

I said that because there is a good chance I might be going crazy. Crazy because I'm alone at night listening to mostly English language music (see previous post), and during the day I'm trying to speak German! Any psychiatrist would have told you that it was only a matter of time before the patient succumbed to the inevitable: impressively accurate and heavily accented Spanish pick-up lines for dances that are actually Argentinean in origin and aimed at no one in particular.