From: galligan - Santa Olaya, PR
To: Fred - Oaxaca, MX
Subject: Otra libro
Fred:
Have you ever read Steinbeck's "Travels with Charley"? I'm reading it now, in short doses, between other things. I'd just recently heard about it somewhere and last week made an order via Amazon which showed up Friday in our mailbox. Fast, efficient, painless. They have a tool on their website for calling in questions. You enter your phone number and they call you in about 15 seconds. 10 more on hold for a sales assistant and in under a minute, your question is answered.
Charley is Steinbeck's poodle who reminds me of your dog. I picture you and him as I'm reading. The book is a record of a three month trip around the US, starting in Sag Harbor, north to Maine, west across the northern reaches, south along the California coast, east through Texas, with a stop in New Orleans, then north along the West Virginia mountains and ending back in New York City. On page 50 he writes:In Spanish there is a word for which I can't find a counter word in English. It is the verb vacilar, present participle vacilando. It does not mean vacillating at all. If one is vacilando, he is going somewhere but doesn't greatly care whether or not he gets there, although he has direction. My friend Jack Wagner has often, in Mexico, assumed this state of being. Let us say we wanted to walk in the streets of Mexico City but not at random. We would choose some article almost certain not to exist there and then diligently try to find it.
from my Spanish/English dictionary: vacilar: Mex. to go on a spree; unhesitatingly J.Galligan
75GRAND/SUR
Santa Olaya, PR