Why I love my new guitar

1. It was $10.
2. It was sitting on the far end of a garage sale a block from my house. Finding something a garage sale is good, but if it's off on the side, then it is even better. I have been duped by sidelined classical guitars at garage sales twice before - "Oh that's not for sale, that's just to give me something to do if no one stops by," says the wily proprietor each time. It's also to lure guitar types like me to your otherwise lousy garage sale. I'm on to you, Segovia...
   
3. I caught its out of the corner of my eye, and everything is lovelier when caught out of the corner of your eye.
4. I've been wanting a classical guitar since forever but could not really justify the expense of one, nor had a place for it.
5. A $10 price tag trumps those things.
6. It is a "new guitar*" - that is enough right there.
7. It does not have a brand or manufacturer logo on it, just a weathered sticker proclaiming "MODEL FG-309" on the inside. I love the mysterious air of a no-brand guitar. Who made this thing? Since it was obviously a cheap knockoff purchased decades ago, it must have been loved by someone all this time to have survived. Surely someone learned their first song on this guitar, or maybe even wrote their first song, and that person has drifted on through sands of time and left only the possibility resonating in this instrument.
   
8. I had to buy new strings for it and the guy I know at the music store pulled me aside and told me about his trip to Argentina to study tango.
9. Restringing a guitar is the finest among procrastination strategies - it is markedly productive, makes a contained situation better, requires a mid degree of escapist meticulousness and momentarily makes you (me) sound like a better guitarist when you play that first lick.
10. And writing about restringing guitars and gazing up at it on the wall on the little hanger and thinking about it is an even better procrastination strategy.
    

* New to me.