I bumped into Jon Dooley on the hotel terrace. Together with his wife, Meg, he owns a house at the bottom of Borgo. They are staying at the hotel, though, for the house is not yet finished. Worst of all, they have no running water. Even though we had not seen each other for almost a year, it took us a short while to establish a good rapport once again. A Cambridge graduate, he is a pleasure to talk to. And so we talked about all sorts of things that ail the world. Soon enough we started blaming it all on entropy. That is, increasing entropy. We laughed a lot, too. And so it has taken me a few hours to remember that entropy is always increasing in a closed system. It cannot but. What actually ails our world is that entropy is now increasing at an increasing rate. And maybe even faster. I can hardly wait to bump into Jon again so as to discuss this fine point of our, well, theory.

Addendum (June 3, 2016)

I saw Jon and Meg a few times after their house was finished, but only fleetingly. We had never had a chance to return to our merry talk about entropy, as well as many other subjects besides. After a few short years, the two of them disappeared altogether. Some of their friends appear in the house from time to time, but never for more than a few days at a time. Earlier this year, though, a sign showed up in one of the windows. “For sale,” it says blithely. Unfortunately for Jon and Meg, there are quite a few such signs on Borgo already. Well, they are all over the hilltown by now. And in English, as well. Increasing entropy, or what? Now that it is increasing at an increasing rate, there will be ever more houses in Motovun with the very same sign. Sooner or later, there will be hardly any house without it left. Until the signs start fading, peeling off, crumpling, and falling off…