Flashback The Hague

“I don’t want to go Dad!” Darius exclaimed.

“You will enjoy it, Dar,” I replied. Unconvincingly.

“It’s Mom’s idea. I bet you don’t..”

“It’s a good idea.”

“I won’t understand it. I’ll be bored.”

“The kid is smart.” I thought as I recalled my efforts to make sense of the ‘plot’ of The Nutcracker.

“Will they tell the story in English?” Darius continued.

“No, Dar. it’s a ballet.”

“So it’s going to be in Dutch?”

“No, it’s going to be in dance.”

“Dance? Are you..”

“It’s a simple story: Romeo and Juliet.”

“Shakespeare? You’re taking me to a Shakespearean dance?”

“It’s more like West Side Story,” I replied. “Except that both lovers die in the end,” I thought.

“A dance?” Mitra interrupted. “A dance!? That’s great! I love dance.” (At the time, I didn’t realize the predictive power of this assertion.)

“I made sure that Mom got good seats, Dad.” Melika said. “I found the Congresgebouw seat map and did a cost/benefit comparison of the loge, balcony, stalls, mezzanine and box seats.”

“Really? Was the Royal Box available?”

“The Queen will be using it Dad.”

End Flashback

Giselle was performed by the Royal New Zealand Ballet (with guest artist Gillian Murphy playing Giselle and Xi Huan as Duke Albrecht). It was beautiful. In addition to enjoying the dance and the music, I actually figured out the plot of Act I. (Veracity note: Almost figured out the plot. I thought Giselle had poisoned herself, in fact, she died of a broken hea rt.) Buoyed by my success, I decided to decipher Act II without an assist from the program. I was..

“... hopelessly confused, Nazy.” I confessed later. “All of the girls were dressed alike. I couldn’t tell them apart and I couldn’t tell what was going on. Giselle died in Act I, reincarnated (?) she was dancing (with a zillion other similarly costumed ghosts) in Act II. It gave me the Willis”.

“Did you enjoy the ballet Dan?”

“Well, Yes. But..”

“Good.”

“I also enjoyed (and understood) Dave Barry the week before,” I thought.

“There is no plot to Dave Barry” Nazy concluded - reading my mind.

This is a rather lonely week for us. After a month-long visit, Darius returned to Lebanon. My sister Marjorie (responsible for the rain) is back in Boston. Melika (+½ and Tom are vacationing at Whistler in Canada. This latter venue was...

“Ill-chosen,” I thought. “I assume that Melika is not going to be skiing..”

“We can go down the Olympic bobsled run!” Tom enthused.

“Who, exactly, do you mean by ‘we’?” I asked. “I’m sure that Tom remembers that Melika is pregnant,” I thought.

“Well...not Melika,” Tom replied while Melika frowned.

“No bobsled, no zip-line and no skiing?” I asked.

“Everyone is going to be having fun and I’ll just....”

“... go shopping, Melika!” Nazy exclaimed. “It’s ideal.”

House in Venice

Finally, this week, while Nazy was at an exhibit of her art, Marjorie and I went to Los Angeles to see Mitra and Stefan. We walked through the Abbot Kinney district in Venice. The shopping street had an eclectic mix of interesting shops. We also walked through a residential area that has a unique collection of homes. It’s impossible to adequately describe (or photograph) the streets or the homes. They’re on narrow walking alleys and usually feature diverse, idiosyncratic art and plants in the yards. One house, for example, had giant ‘jack’ from the balls and jacks game in the front lawn. Another had several chandeliers hanging from trees and one had a variety of bronze heads on poles (and a garbage can) in the front yard.

Another Venice house (with bronze heads)

While we were in LA, I mentioned that I had a small headache.

“A Tango lesson will fix that!” Mitra claimed.

“Really?” I replied.

“Of course,” Mitra replied. “Tango will solve world hunger, cool global warming, bring peace to the planet and make the Republicans like Obama, too.”

“I’m not sure about the last one, Mitra.” I replied.

Marjorie and Nazy during the visit