you were unkind.
You will never regret being kind, even when it didn’t work out.
Author: Jinx
-
That morning Michael had asked to to find out if there were any (relatively) cheap seats to that night’s ballet performance of Onegin.
The Sydney Opera House seemed more crowded than it had been when Michael and I visited earlier, and this time, as I approached from the park, I saw up on the highest peak of the building two tiny figures, men black with distance, moving slowly. It looked as though there was actually a staircase of sorts curving over that rooftop, one with railings. Was it possible to get permission to climb up there and enjoy the view? If so, nobody but those two apparently were willing to do it. God knows, I wouldn’t. They were moving, but moving exactly the way I would if I were up there — veeerrrryyy slowly, with both hands on the railings. I waited until they had disappeared back behind the roof before going on.
I walked up the stairs and around the back of the opera house along the bay. It was another sunny day, and there were more people about, but the crowds felt in a weird way more serious and less aimless. Everybody seemed on their way someplace else. Between the Circular Quay and the Opera House, I found a small kiosk where a thin lady in her sixties was dispensing information.
Librarians and ladies managing info desks in Sydney tended to be slender, dashing women either elderly or in late middle age, with still-abundant hair and a flair for using makeup. (And when better to use it than when you actually need it?) No doubt there are overweight people in Sydney, but they didn’t seem as prevalent as in the US.
Where there cheap seats available at tonights performance?” I asked her. Oh yes, she said. Some were as low as $85. If I went into the box office inside the Opera house, they’d show me where the seats were.
So I went back and climbed the stairs and went into the opera-house’s cathedral like lobby, with its miles of polished floor and and peaked ceiling that seemed to swallow up all sound so that every voice was hushed. Approaching the box office, manned by a single clerk, was like approaching an altar.
No, the young man behind the desk told me. There were no $85 seats left. The cheapest were $120.
We would not be going to the ballet tonight.
Outside, the sunlight was a little dazzling. The broad white patio between the water and that side of the opera house was crowded. As I left I noticed two groups of teenaged students, boys on one side in blue jackets and ties, girls on another in blue skirts jackets and hats, about to begin a tour of the Opera House.
-
When I was a teen-ager, my idea of hell was a housing development I’ll call Shangri-La. We didn’t live there, but friends did, and every now and then my family would get in the car and take the long drive out for a barbecue or dinner party or some other celebration.
The friends were nice. Their kids were nice. Their dogs were nice. The house was nice. But if it were a daytime event, and we lingered too long, and the food was consumed and the conversation petered out, the vaccuum that was Shangri-La would start to close in.
“Go out and do something,” one of the adults would say to us.
And so we would walk, block after stultifying block, past new, identical brick ranch houses with sliding glass doors and identical front yards planted with young, skimpy trees. There was no shade, no thick-boled live oaks or bunchy, low-branched magnolias, no spanish moss, no interesting wooden two storied houses with ghostly histories, no hills (this was Louisiana, after all), no bodies of water beyond square blue pools, no ruins to peek into and explore.
There was nothing, absolutely nothing for teenagers to do in that well-manicured, upscale, cropped green desert but sit on the monkey-bars and smoke pot at the deserted local school. And I hated pot. It made me feel stupid.
All of the teenagers we hung out with there seem to have grown into nice, law-abiding adults, but for years, I was convinced those suburban pools of sensory deprivation were hatcheries for incipient school shooters and serial killers.
-
Madness on the job which included a missed Zoom meeting. Still getting the hang of working remotely.
Yesterday the sun did come out in the afternoon, and I ventured onto the roof and strolled over to where it overlooks the back garden. All you can see from that part is the top of the sweet olive tree, but the air there is very fresh, and looking down at the green leaves with the white sprays of unopened buds is easy on the eyes. I heard a woman laughing. In the roof gazebo next door, I saw cushions pushed against one of its windows, long blonde hair, and the sun catching a glass of white wine held by a woman’s hand. Beyond that I could see a table set with hors d’oeuvres. The people next door were entertaining again.
Maybe it was because of Passover, maybe it was because of Easter, maybe it was just because, but by dusk it seemed to me every roof had people on it. Next door I made out about five people in the gazebo, standing, holding glasses, chatting. The roof next to that had a row of eight people sitting on its ledge with their backs to me, shoulders pressed against shoulders, perhaps watching for the sunset, and on the roof next to that, the one where the fellow keeps setting up the little black recorder, four people sat smoking something on a mat.
Michael stood at our window swearing at the lack of social distancing. If they’d looked in our direction, he might even have shaken his fist at them. “They’re young,” I said. “They’re enjoying themselves.”
“I know! Why do you think I’m so angry?”
Most of them cleared away after the sun went down, but the gazebo party went on and on. It wasn’t noisy, just trickle of sounds we’ve become unused to, people laughing, faint music… At 10:00 pm I looked out the window to see that they’d lit their fire-pit and three pretty women danced in a row, still holding their full wineglasses.
-
It was invented in New Orleans, I believe, by an apothecary named Peychaud. That’s why Peychaud’s Bitters are an important ingredient. Here is the recipe my brother gave me:
Chill an old fashioned glass in the freezer. Get it really really cold, thirty minutes ahead of time.
Put a sugarcube (or two) in a cocktail shaker and douse it with Peychaud’s Bitters. The cube should be saturated. I usually add a small splash of water.
With a cocktail muddler (or some blunt instrument), smash up that sugar, bitters and water until you’ve got a syrupy mixture in the bottom of the shaker.
Now add ice and two ounces of Rye Whiskey to the shaker.
Pull the chilled glass out of the freezer and add enough Absinthe to coat the inside of the glass. Rotate the glass sideways so the Absinthe swirls around and covers the inside surface area. Since the glass is so cold, the Absinthe should thicken and adhere to the sides. Dump out any excess Absinthe in the sink.
Strain the cocktail shaker into the glass. Twist a lemon peel around the rim and drop it in the drink.
-
CAPTAIN LONGSTAFFE AND DEEP GERTIE “A man is but a candle-stick
A woman is the holder…”“The Light in the Cove” is a ribald ballad in English about an old woman lusting after the ghost of a young man. Everyone on the island knows both the melody and the words, though few respectable women or wise children will admit to it.
It was originally a wistful native song called “Elaro.”
But that’s forgotten.
-
I don’t care whether they agree with me or not, so long as they don’t take disagreement as a personal affront, and are interested in talking about it.
-
We had a house-guest for the film festival, Jon, a tall, tall man, a chemist, with pale gray, amost white hair, and wire-rimmed glasses. He’s a member of a film club Michael helps moderate in San Jose, and he slept on our couch in between trekking off to the Kabuki or Castro to watch films.
Jon lives out in the countryside near Palo Alto in a communal complex where meals are taken in a large house close to the road. His own house there was purchased for a dollar, sawn in half, and moved to the commune by truck, carried slowly down the road in the dead of night. When they got it to its lot, they discovered the two halves no longer quite fit together, and they had to use a jack to make the house whole again. Jon showed us the seam in his wall once when we were there for dinner.
As soon as he arrived, he and Michael took off for the festival. We all agreed to meet at the Kabuki at 11:30 pm, and so late that night, after fortifying myself with a cup of cafe au lait, I dressed in my standard party costume (black jeans and black sweater) and walked to Japantown.
Youth lingered, though I did not consider myself young back then. These days I cannot imagine agreeing to begin a night out at 11:30 PM.
Jon still lives in his uneven house at his little communal community and still sleeps on our couch during the film festival. We are such fast friends now that we spent last Thanksgiving weekend together, the three of us renting an air b&b in Nevada City and spending three happy days walking, hiking, drinking wine and playing dominoes.
Pam Troy 