Brazil Dispatch 32: Summer & Carnaval

The advantage in/advantage out of the condominium development project across the road continued to define our days after we returned from the USA. Quite elaborate weekends were set up for people inquiring about the future condos, including live music all day in an outdoor bar with hors d‘oeuvres, cold draught beer and caipifrutas, as well as massages, a children’s entertainment center, and a live concert in the evening on the lovely bamboo stage they built by the water. To our horror, they needed a second generator to sustain these activities and placed it precisely in the path of the wind off the ocean that blows into our windows and transoms. We woke up around 9:00 that Saturday morning to the perfect sound system delivering the live guitar and bossa nova singer from the bar. By 9:12 we had headaches and nausea from the generator fumes pouring through our windows.

We had an invitation from a realtor, so after returning from the beach, we went over to see the two elaborately furnished models and spend the afternoon and evening being served and entertained. It was really lovely. They spared no expense for the best musicians, elegant setting, food, drinks and service.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The following weekend we went to beaches and points south, knowing we’d be sick if we ate at home with that generator spewing away. We watched dolphins playing in the ocean from a little spot atop the falesias – cliffs of sand – while eating shrimp. Realizing that we could not stay away from our house the entire weekend to avoid the generator, we walked over to the development, asked for our nice realtor and explained to him that we had to hang out there to avoid being ill. That was another evening of entertainment and service. To our tremendous relief, the low turnout never justified such expenditures, so by the third weekend, the 2^nd generator did not materialize. We had an invitation to watch a soccer match televised at the bar, so returned for the afternoon with our friend Cleveland from San Diego, who lives part of the year in Pium. The caipifrutas (like caipirinhas, but usually made with vodka rather than cachaça and with fruits other than lime) were just beautiful. Here is one made with kiwi:

 

 

 

 

After this, only live bossa nova and draught beer were offered on the weekend. We woke up for the fourth Saturday in a row to yet another duo on guitar and vocals, realizing that all duos had the exact same repertoire of the most popular songs we had always loved…and were now beginning to find torturous. These people sang for HOURS both Saturdays and Sundays; we were contemplating violence. Latest report: this weekend there was silence. The turn-out just wasn’t happening, so they dispensed with all measures. Silence.

Here is what the coconut field used to look like (that’s our house on the left, second-from-the-beach); and here is a rendering of the condominium plan from the ocean side, which clobbers the field from side-to-side, as you can see:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Interspersed with the daily drama of the development, summer also brought neighbors and their parties to the beach houses on the other three sides of us. Loud, bad music is usually the norm, with a blinding spotlight some nights through our bedroom window that precludes TV or reading in bed. The bass speaker from one neighbor was so out-of-balance that we were quaking to the thump in our office, despite having shut every window that direction. The music and voices usually persisted till the wee hours during January; February continues the festivities only on weekends, though there were occasional silences that we duly praised!

Our beach is always very animated through the summer, an up-side to the neighborhood coming alive. We particularly enjoy watching dogs and children negotiate the surf with even doses of exhilaration and hesitancy. Newton took some intermittent kite surfing lessons; we broke in a new maid – Marcos’ new tiny 26-year-old wife, who is perky and energetic, if not able to retain any information! We like her and her cooking and cleaning, so the two days a week of illogical foibles are not making me crazy. We hung out at favorite restaurants and music venues with our local American friends, Cleveland and Larry from Los Angeles, also a serial resident of Pium. Our friend Maurizio from Sardinia who owns the lovely local Zen Bar had a wonderful birthday celebration with lots of jamming musicians. Here are Maurizio and Cleveland, and Larry and I cutting the rug à la American Bandstand:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Carnaval festivities started the weekend prior to Carnaval at many bars that would be closed during actual Carnaval. I found the hot night, the airless interior and the pulsing, dancing crowd inside one of our favorite places, Buraca da Catita, just too much for me. By the third time a stranger had came up and draped a sweat-soaked body over me and tried to pull me into the dense crowd to dance, I just lost it and started screaming. This last one said she understood completely and covered my hands in slobbery kisses. Newton stayed on inside, loving the great live “frevo” and marchés do Carnaval , and I survived my Americana curse by stepping outside and maintaining a couple of feet of air around me, while also loving the music from the great 9-piece band. I’ll chalk my coping challenge up to claustrophobia that is particularly sensitive to a lack of air and obviously, a plethora of body fluids.

Directly ahead of actual Carnaval, we went to a new Blues club and to a dinner party the following night, so this would add up to seven nights out in a row…I’m just saying. I made Newton the “Carnaval Chairman,” as he is the one who knows what feels like real Carnaval to him. Besides hanging out at the beach everyday and cooking very little, our Carnaval evenings looked like this:

-Friday: We went downtown in Natal to a beautiful wrought-iron-fenced courtyard surrounded by three colonial buildings that are dedicated to the arts. One of our favorite singers, Crystal, was performing Carnaval music onstage with a band, and the crowd, while enthusiastic about celebrating, was just the right size to allow for dancing space and air. A strolling brass band followed with Marchés do Carnanval, and a teenage girl with a tiny umbrella (a classic Carnaval prop) was added to my list of favorite dancers. She moved like a feather and was a vision of rhythm, loop-de-loops and frevo footwork.

- Saturday: We started with feijoada, the national dish of Brazil, accompanied by a samba band at our Singaporean friend Hian’s new botequim near Ponta Negra beach. Both Cleveland and Larry came along. Here we are with our friend Ana Paula, Hian’s Brazilian wife:

We ventured on to Gringo’s bar where many of our friends had gathered to watch the live music & giant puppet parade in that neighborhood. This was also a homecoming for our friend Tom who had been pirate-hunting in the Indian Ocean.

-Sunday: There was a chance that we would have stayed in this night if it weren’t for a power black-out in our neighborhood. We headed to the bowels of the city for the transvestite competition. Though the crowd was the poorer inner-city population - which means we stood out rather conspicuously - the Potiguars are gentle folk and we never felt that anyone was targeting our pockets. The ridiculously funny competition ended early and we returned home to lights and power.

 

- Monday: This was Men-in-Drag Day in Pirangi, the next beach town south. I was the only female in a wig; I had just bought it at the beach.

This was definitely the best people-watching imaginable, with 90% of the males in drag…some of them outrageous, some of them extremely pretty, some just funny. All the guys enjoyed being in make-up and bikini tops and dresses, flirting shamelessly with any man who did not come dressed for the occasion (Newton), some dancing up a storm in high heels…hilarious!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The music was on top of large trucks doing their best to pass through the crowds in the street. While this was already beyond loud, parked cars with gigantic speakers in their open trunks were often situated near each other playing competing ear-splitting music. Little crowds danced around the car of choice. The deafening din became overwhelming. Don’t miss the spectator wearing the wedding veil in the background of the photo to the right:

We escaped after some hours to a serene Italian restaurant, wig removed, for wine & pizza on a quiet balcony. We were surrounded by very tall palm trees and NO MUSIC!

 

 

- Tuesday: Our last night of Carnaval was spent in Ribeira (downtown by the port) on a closed-off street with a huge stage at each end. Real Carnaval music was playing on one end with our friend Gilberto on trombone and lots of dancing, beer venders, and the university crowd we often see in that neighborhood. This gave way to horrid heavy metal rock at the opposite end (NOT very Carnaval-like), during which we took a walk on deserted streets; next was a rockabilly group from Rio – very fun.

On the way home we stopped at Pastel Paulista (meaning from São Paulo) – Newton’s favorite place for his favorite Brazilian snack – meat or cheese, etc. inside a fried thin pastry. This ‘establishment’ is a van that pulls up in front of the Bridgestone Tire store every evening, converts into a kitchen, puts out plastic tables & chairs in the small parking area in front of the store, and stays open till 3:00am, nourishing late revelers every week, not just during Carnaval.

We went home to bed, though the music from the town plaza in Pirangi thumped across the beach and into our bedroom till 4:00am.

The following week would have shifted into the start of my Portuguese for Foreigners classes at the university, but shifted instead into my first illness since moving to Brazil more than four years ago. It was basically just a cold, but I thought a truck had hit me. I just rested and let my immune system have its workout.

I’ll interject here a catch-up on some of my favorite recent reading:

·The Eerie Silence by Paul Davies of the SETI Institute (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) is a remarkably satisfying, thin volume of surmises, imaginings, observations, projections, theories and hard facts from a real scientist who dreams of SETI finding success, but cannot attest to any success yet. There is a real elegance to this scientific search and to this man’s explanation of it.

·Angle of Repose by William Stegner was on a list of the 100 best novels of the 20^th century. Even though it was written in 1970, it is timeless – an historical account of the 19^th century settling of the West, based on the diaries of an actual New York illustrator who married a mine engineer and roughed it out West for the rest of her life. I was actually in Colorado for part of this read, so had the appropriate backdrop.

·Just Kids by Patti Smith. I don’t know how to adequately describe this elegy to Patti Smith’s soul mate, Robert Mapplethorpe, and to their era. This book is so poetic, so moving, so riveting in its depiction of artists’ sensibilities, such a portrait of ‘70’s bohemian life at the Chelsea Hotel in NYC with the likes of Janis Joplin, Jimmy Hendrix, Bob Dylan, etc., that when I finished it and stopped weeping, I couldn’t open a new book for a week…so enveloped was I in the little spell it cast.

·Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann was recommended by my Nyack friend, Lucia, in time to buy it live before returning from the USA. It is an astounding, haunting modern novel inspired by two World Trade Center events.

·Blow-up and Other Stories by the Argentine, Julio Cortázar, in excellent translation, gets me back to the short story form, a favorite of mine. This was recommended by my friend Marie Arana, the Peruvian/American author, whose novel, Lima Nights, I also loved. Cortázar was a genius and a master of the magical realism for which Latin American writing is known. He spent his adult life in Paris, so many stories take place there. The ‘70’s film ‘Blow-up” was inspired by the short story. I’m partial to the story where the apartment guest continues to vomit a bunny between two floors on the elevator up. He is writing a letter to the absent apartment owner, describing his attempts to hide the bunnies from the housekeeper and documenting the increasing signs of damage from the now twelve bunnies…as funny as absurd gets! Better still are simply Cortázar’s words…his amazing use of language.

By the end of the week I was feeling well. The week had been an unusual one without much wind, so while Newton had no chance of taking up his kite-surfing lessons again, the sky was clear and the colors extremely vibrant. The waves came in at an odd diagonal, and I noticed the hummingbird and the yellow butterfly were happy to chase each other around the hibiscus blossoms – a new one. The exaggerated beauty culminated in the ‘Super Moon’ party organized by our friends on the small beach beyond the falesias at the end of our beach. We hiked down from the highway under a strange blue vortex defined by the lighting and the clouds. The moon rose around 5:30pm. We were perched on a rise near some rocks, but as the evening pulled the high tide back out, we could not resist running down to the flat expanse of sand and dancing and spinning in the other-worldly moonlight. It was a heavenly event, with all present sharing a sort of giddy happiness and sense of well-being, induced as much by the children’s sense of freedom to run around and write their names in giant letters in the sand as by the dramatically lit, black and white seascape in front of us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Love,

Sandy

Winter in the USA Dispatch

Our late January stay in New York City was a whirlwind of rendezvous’ amidst a whirlwind of snow!

We especially appreciated “our” neighborhood at 98^th and Amsterdam where Elise lives, with its quiet streets, church bells, and restaurants of every imaginable stripe. Now that Elise will be moving to Los Angeles at the end of April, we know our visits to Manhattan will be curtailed, though not terminated!

Elise and I arrived with sushi at the apartment of our longtime friend, Carolyn McMonegal, and her cat, Kayli. Carolyn was staying in with health troubles, but rallied plenty and entertained us royally. Kayli is the picture of health. You can see here that Carolyn’s beauty has not suffered at all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That night Elise, Newton and I met up with longtime friends Joe & Guadalupe Warren and Nancy Taylor at the Broadway notables’ hangout, Joe Allen’s on West 48^th. I was ready for a perfect martini, since any version is hard to come by in Natal…and I was NOT disappointed! The food was excellent, as well. Joe and Guadalupe have just sold their beautiful Manhattan apartment and will forthwith be residents of Cleveland, Ohio and Buenos Aires only. World traveler Nancy had just returned from Europe, but her year included Syria, which she loved, and Iran…not so much.

 

 

 

 

 

After a day of delivering Oklahoma mementos of my Mother’s to our storage unit upstate, Newton, Elise and I joined Newton’s old cohorts from his first job for dinner in New Jersey. It looks like there are no longer any guys holding-out for marriage and children, so we love catching up with the growing families.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We actually had a lazy Saturday with lazy snowflakes out the kitchen window, Netflix, and order-in pizza. That was topped off with a meet-half-way dinner in Morristown, New Jersey with my sister Donna and her husband Larry (coming from Lawrenceville, NJ), and niece Sara and her husband Rob (coming from Freehold, NJ). It is impossible not to love any event with Donna!

 

 

 

 

Sunday morning sent Elise and me to a happening place in the Village for brunch with some long-lost cousins – actually the three children of my Oklahoma City cousin Tad McCracken, only one of whom I had met years ago. They are all lawyers in Manhattan! I found out for the first time that Tad is not really my cousin’s name; he is named Donald after my uncle, whose nickname in the army had been ‘frog’ because of his deep voice. Tad is short for Tadpole.

While we were up - or down, rather, Elise and I spent the cold afternoon shopping (mostly window shopping) in Soho. It had been a while. We bought some sale T-shirts at the kitschy Japanese store, Kid Robot.

 

 

 

 

Newton was off to Japan on Monday, but drove me up to West Nyack for my day at Blue Rock School before returning the rental car at Newark. I savored every minute with my great staff and student friends. My lunch duty was with the 6^th, 7th & 8^th grade class – the children I had known since preschool! I told them about my travel peaks and valleys during lunch (see previous dispatch). My dear friend Lucia drove me all the way back to Manhattan after after-school coffee with Caty, the school director, and a great Indian dinner.

Newton took this great photo of Mount Fuji from the bullet train:

Las Vegas was my next stop. It was brief but fun, with Jake and I going out, shopping, and hanging the framed posters we had given him for his birthday. I made my Mother’s obligatory macaroni and cheese recipe for the dear boy! Unfortunately, Jake now has a trivia game that relies on strategy (his strong point, my weak point) as well as knowledge (both reasonably strong on this), so I was not able to prevail every game. And this is my only chance to beat him at anything, though we haven’t tried Chinese checkers (in storage) in years.

I connected through the Phoenix airport to arrive in Durango, Colorado. Just want to say that the Phoenix airport is one of the nicest I’ve seen, with several wonderful installations of “The Museum at Phoenix Airport,” not to mention airport shops with exquisite southwestern offerings. I tried to see my niece Amanda, who works for Southwest airlines there, but it was her day off. I was visiting my nephew Brad and his family in Durango, home also of my sister Dorothy and brother-in-law Bill, though they now spend winters in Scottsdale. Brad and his wife Tracy have a new “green” house on a hill with huge picture windows on the town in the valley, the surrounding mountains and the snow-capped peaks beyond them. It is such a beautiful place. The temperature was mild for winter, with snow on the ground, sun in the sky and not a cloud in sight. Brad took me on an extensive tour of Tarpley RV, the business Bill owns and Brad runs. I got to ride in the old VW convertible (top down!) that the shop there had transformed into an electric car. I viewed several recreational vehicles (trailers) of varying sizes, and studied the solar panel display that Brad offers for RV electric power. Brad has such dependable employees that his own time is greatly freed-up for percussion practice, percussion gigs in rock-n-roll, jazz, country, and the timpani with an orchestra, plus time dedicated to coaching and chauffeuring his two sons to their extensive wresting and ice-hockey commitments in the surrounding states. Tracy and Brad have four extraordinary children – two older daughters who live elsewhere now: Emily, on a two-year trek with her boyfriend to Mexico, Central and South America (we’ll be seeing them in Natal eventually), and Mary, a professional dancer in Chicago. Because Emily – the first great-grandchild in the family – was born just three months after Jake – the youngest grandchild in the family – Brad and I bridged a generation by raising our children concurrently! Nick, 15 and Bradley, 13, are the two handsome, consummate athletes. I was wowed by both of them at their respective ice hockey games. Luckily, no one’s teeth were knocked out or anything on my watch! Tracy and I had loads of gabbing time and we saw the harrowing film, “Black Swan,” together while Brad did sports duty. The three of us had some rounds of Bananagram crossword after an elegant dinner at the famous Victorian Strater Hotel in town. I was happy to just be around and see Brad’s family in action, as our paths cross so infrequently.

My next stop was Tulsa, Oklahoma, my hometown. I put Tulsa on the itinerary because I had had so little time to talk with cousins at Mother’s funeral in November. I stayed with longtime friends Vivian and Mike Nemec, who live in the house where Vivian grew up down the street from me. I continue to look away when passing our old house, now remodeled, as I cannot bear to remember it any other way than as it was when I had the happiest childhood imaginable! On the first day in town I managed to go out to breakfast with Vivian and high school friend, Jan Rogers Magee, shop and run errands and then get out to the edge of town to see my father’s cousin, Mary Alice and her daughter, Mary Kay, from my grandmother’s “Little” side of the family. We had a great time and I got loads of information for the extensive family tree that Newton is growing online. I made it back to Vivian’s just before the snowstorm of the century struck: 15” of snow and cold temperatures and very little city plowing. They are not used to this quantity of snow there, so their 38 snow-plow trucks did very little effective clearing in the subsequent three days. This meant that the dinner planned with our junior high friends the next evening was impossible and that the Oklahoma City cousins’ dinner I had planned for the next evening – usually a two hours’ drive on a turnpike – was even more impossible, as the turnpike was still closed. Vivian and Mike were the ideal hosts for this refugee, as our snowed-in hours flew by with the endless conversation I absolutely adore with these marvelous two. We three shoveled my rental car out in front from its snow-trap.

 

 

 

Newton had returned from Japan in the meantime for the annual company ski weekend at Lake Tahoe and trade show in San Francisco. We each discovered around midnight the last night that both of our flights to Houston had been cancelled, as 2” of unheard of snow was expected there. We spent half of the night resolving this via Skype phone and, sure enough, I was able to pull away in my car in the 10° below zero morning – sans gloves, which I lost in New York, and creep my way to the airport to catch my flight. LUCKILY, I met Newton at the Houston airport (ahead of the snow onslaught) without incident! Our flight to São Paulo wasn’t until 10:30pm, but our reunion day was lovely, between the Continental President’s Club and an outstanding wine bar/restaurant in the airport. Even though I was back in coach, I got to fly all night in those tiny seats draped over Newton!

Disembarking in São Paulo was the usual trek ‘through pork soup,’ as I always describe the heavy humidity and heat that hit one in the jet way when arriving from winter. The next six days were spent with Newton’s parents, Alfredo and Jannice, sister Lilian, and nieces and nephew, Mariana, Mayra and Michel – going to dance and music performances, eating in and out, running errands and sweltering in the heat.

Newton had schlepped his scanner every mile of the trip so he could dig out the old photo albums in São Paulo and scan photos of his relatives. These included pre-digital photos of Elise & Jake, as well! What great fun. Many of the ancestors’ photos will appear in the family tree project.

 

Our last flight took us home to Natal. AHHhhhhhhhhhh.

Love,

Sandy

Travel Peaks and Valleys Dispatch

Usually when Newton and I travel, he is on business and my ticket is free via airline miles and American Express points. I usually fly Continental and its partners on Star Alliance. This allows me to make a reservation that is held for three days while American Express points are transferred and reservation adjustments are made.

On our recent 3-1/2 week trip, Newton had an elaborate ticket from Natal to São Paulo to New York to Tokyo to San Francisco to Houston and back to São Paulo and Natal. My free ticket with the two allotted layovers got me from Natal to New York and from Tulsa back to Natal, with 6 days layover in São Paulo. My other planned USA stops in-between were purchased tickets.

Newton and I arrived at the airport a little late at midday and rushed over to check in. The agent showed no reservation for me. Newton whipped out his laptop and earphones and called Continental on Skype. He discovered that the reservation had been cancelled back in December because no miles were ever transferred from American Express. He had forgotten about this last step, and I had never confirmed that he had done it. He then tried to arrange a new reservation for me while I raced to the TAM airlines counter to see if I could get on Newton’s flight to São Paulo. There was some talk about getting on the waiting list, which meant joining a crowd of people not in line around an agent who continually left her post. With ten minutes left before Newton’s flight and a dropped call to Continental, he just had to go through security and catch his plane. I found out that my name on the waiting list was too far down for any hope on any other TAM flight to SP that day, so I raced to the GOL Airlines counter to buy a ticket. All they had left was a flight at 1:30 AM, which I grabbed for the last minute price of US$500. What this 3-1/2 hour flight meant was that there was a chance I could get the TAM day flight the next morning from São Paulo to NY.

You see, Newton surprised me on Christmas morning with tickets to the New York City Ballet over our upcoming NY stay. I had been completely moved that he would think of this perfect gift for me! I had selected that next evening since one of my favorite Jerome Robbins ballets was on the program. The tickets were waiting at Elise’s apartment.

Newton managed to reach my Brazilian cell phone on his barely working cell at the last minute and we had a plan…I would go home and get a new award ticket reservation – now from São Paulo – and transfer the American Express miles for it.

Our caretaker, Marcos, drove me home from the airport and I thought I’d go down the beach for lunch once I had everything for my trip in place. What ensued was continued surreality, as calls to Continental were on hold for 20 minutes, and only after the third try did I guess that they could not hear me because the mike was not working on Newton’s computer. I dug out my just-stored computer and reached them after another 20-minute hold. I could get on that TAM day flight to NY and get back ONLY as far as São Paulo now...with an additional 17,000 miles from American Express to add to the original 100,000 and another purchased ticket returning to Natal. I was thrilled anyway!

I followed Newton’s instructions for transferring miles from the American Express website. We have had plenty of occasions where the internet connection we have via radio here by the beach shuts down for some minutes or hours, but what happened next was just twilight zone. I followed the instructions and at each click to proceed on the site, thirty minutes would pass before the needed page would come up. I was going crazy enough, but then noticed the statement on the site that it may take 24-48 hours for miles to transfer. Now I panicked and called the contact phone number. Five minutes later, the miles were transferred and I was ready to call Continental back to ticket the reservation. A small peak in an afternoon of valleys.

I had reached Newton on his São Paulo layover, and he confirmed that he would pick me up at JFK the next afternoon in his rental car, as his flight would get him in very early. I thawed out a chicken dish from the freezer and waited till midnight, when Marcos drove me back to the airport.

My first concern was the fact that the flight was delayed till 2:30AM. This meant a shorter window in São Paulo the next morning to catch the international flight. My next concern was that there were no seats left in the Natal airport, so I stood waiting till 2:30…then 3:30, experiencing increasing panic that there would not be time to make the NY flight. When we boarded at last, I was reminded of that other feature of last-minute booking besides higher prices: the ‘B’ seat in between two sprawling guys. If I folded my arms, I still had to tuck my fingertips under to avoid touching the guy. There were no pillows for my lower back and no snacks.

Once in São Paulo I raced to the baggage claim, eyes on the clock…waiting, waiting…finally grabbed my bag and ran to the international terminal, praying the entire way that TAM, being a Brazilian airline, would not enforce the closing of flight check-in one hour prior to the international flight. They did. But a sympathetic agent, seeing the gasping of an aging woman, took mercy and let me check in. As he handed me my boarding pass he said, “Here’s your first class boarding pass.” I said, “first class?” and an entourage of people ushered me into a swanky office where they figured out how to get my bag on board in time. An agent escorted me through immigration and security in minutes, then handed me over to another caretaker on board who led me past the full business class section into the 4-seats-across, deserted first class cabin.

The next nine-and-a-half hours were ample compensation for the hellish previous twenty! Immediately came the pillows, comforter, slippers, all kinds of products, incomparable breakfast, champagne, huge flat-screen movie, more champagne, nap on the completely horizontal bed, incomparable lunch with the best white Bordeaux of my life, two desserts, and a beautiful bathroom all to myself. And as if this were not enough, when I disembarked another agent escorted me to US immigration and met me beyond with my bag.

I went out and headed directly to the pick-up sidewalk. I was watching carefully for Newton, as I didn’t know what rental car to expect. I waited. And I waited. After about two hours I decided I had to go in and try to call Elise. I had no cell phone for the US and knew that Newton was expecting to buy a new phone while there. I was petrified that he would arrive as soon as I went back into the terminal and mistakenly decide that I had caught a cab…to where?...but I was getting desperate, colder and colder as darkness fell, and the ballet curtain time was approaching. I found a phone that took credit cards, figuring it would be complicated to get cash machine bills and then change. I got Elise’s voicemail and left a tearful, anguished message, then raced back outside in case Newton had arrived. After another hour passed and I was in tears and it was virtually too late to get to the ballet on time, I thought about getting cash and catching a cab to the ballet or to Elise’s apartment…but what if I just had to stand outside in the cold, abandoned, there? I decided to go back in, get cash from a machine, buy a phone card and try to call Jake in Las Vegas to see if he could try to reach them. I thought I’d just try Elise once more first, and presto! – we were both suddenly screaming into the phone, “WHERE ARE YOU?????” It turns out that Newton and Elise had been waiting outside immigration for three hours, thinking I still had not come out. I hadn’t looked for them because Newton had used the words “pick you up,” not “meet your plane,” and they did not see me when I came out. We had been tripped up by syntax, missed views, missed call, and assurances to Newton from workers around there that it could, indeed, take that long for me to come out. He had already confirmed with the NY City Ballet box office that we could get in without the tickets that were still at Elise’s apartment.

From this valley - me frozen, all of us incredulous and going over every faux pas repeatedly - we took off for the ballet, knowing it was just starting. We had fully planned to change at Elise’s first, so all of us looked skuzzy. They let us go in twenty minutes late. There I was back in the New York State Theater, my ‘church’ for nine years from 1978 to 1987 when I had a subscription every season, fourth ring, front row center. Chopin’s etudes were being played on a piano while romantic couples and groups interpreted various interludes of Robbins’ gorgeous Dances at a Gathering. A peak. This was followed by Robbins’ late ‘60’s NY Export: Opus Jazz – as fresh, athletic, colorful and inventive as ever.

The remainder of the trip was fun and eventful, but less dramatic than this first 36 hours.

Love,

Sandy