Wednesday, November 6, 2019

I get to the dance center much earlier than I’d planned. An unexpected pedestrian path leads me from work to an express bus, and I walk efficiently from the bus to the center without getting lost. I sit for a while outside checking my email. The classical guitarist is there again, playing a version of the Moonlight Sonata. I remember to toss some shekels into his case this time before I wander on. A larger plaza awaits on the other side of the center. At a restaurant at a far corner, recorded crooners serenade well-dressed customers with songs that seem to have hung in the air there for decades. Beyond the tall windows of a studio next door, two men run at each other, crash, swing each other into the air, then back up and do it again. Just past the studio, a white-haired woman sings a song about water to a little girl. She holds both the child’s hands as she helps her learn to walk, splashing in a stream that runs through a carefully laid gap in the cobblestones. Two boys, only slightly older, kick a soccer ball past them and around the other people standing outside. A pedestrian street heads away from the plaza. Rather than the usual bollard, an ice cream cone, as tall as I am, stands where the road starts. The gelato shop just past it looks tempting, but I’m still full from the shawarma I ate while walking here. Maybe I’ll stop there after the show.