Tales from the Towers: Winter singing

Saturday evening we had a performance given by modern dancers. No doubt this is great art, we admired the dancers' unbelievable flexibility, their harmonious work with each other, they were a group of pretty girls dressed in unadorned black. Yet I was not completely happy with it, the black was bothering me as well as the fact that this was dancing without music. Completely silent dancing on our so-called stage... The problem was my own mood which was not the best on that evening I fought a bout of depression and was not at all susceptible to black and dance without music. There is an additional difficulty to this soundless dancing - one simply doesn't know when it is over. Suddenly they all stand still and is this just a short pause or is it the end of the dance and are we supposed to clap now or wait for what is coming? Well, in short, I admired it all but I hardly got involved as I usually do with dance programs..
 
It is still cold and hard to get out of bed in the morning.

"The day is here!" says my daughter-in-law when she tries to wake my son in the morning.

"Please", he mumbles, "tell the day to go away and come back later!"

This morning I finally understood completely what he means...
 
I have a hard time lately in the gym. It's "Australian Open" time, and everybody watches tennis on the TV screen. As the saying goes, if you can't fight them, join them. I hate to appear ignorant, so when they shout "bravo nice shot!" I shout bravo too without having any idea why or for whom. This reminds me of the day in California when we were riding in the car to the stadium to watch a soccer game. Still at home, my grandsons had started to explain to me the rules of soccer and while in the car, they were still explaining. Omri, seeing my uncomprehending face, said to me in total resignation:

"Never mind grandma! Leave it! When you hear the others cheer, you cheer along!" But getting back to the tennis. Later, and with complete discretion, I asked our trainer:

"Tell me, is there also an Israeli tennis player representing us in Australia?"

"Mmm", he hesitated, "not exactly, maybe we will still have one, maybe two, in the doubles perhaps!"

"So if there is no Israeli there, what is all the commotion about, why are they all shouting here? And why should I cheer for tennis players which are not mine? Which I don't even know whom they belong to? You should have told me!"
 
I am sure that you know what I mean when I tell you how sometimes a certain tune gets hold of you and it wanders through your head without you being able to get rid of it. I think this is called a "worm tune" or something like that, because it worms its way into your mind and you try to sing to yourself other tunes like "Mary had a little lamb" or "ciao ciao bambina" or whatever but as soon as you've finished the rival tune, the worm is back. This happened to me on Tuesday evening when I couldn't get rid of the old song "Wild is the wind". No matter what I tried, the wind kept on being wild until I realized that there was a valid reason for this. There was really a wild, wild wind outside and all I could do is hope for better weather next day.
 
I am sitting in the cafeteria with a friend who will be 80 years old next week.

"I am giving up love and romance”, she says to me musingly, "it's so tiring, flirting and pretending and being nice to a man!"

"But you are so good at it!" I protest looking into her still so beautiful eyes, "Toscanini was still conducting at that age, Michelangelo was still creating masterpieces, whatever you do well, you should do well until you die!"
 
I hope you all who read this will agree with me!

Lucca