Curtain Call

Playing house with Debra these past two weeks has triggered memories of my former identity as one of two. I am surprised by how distant these memories feel. Has my life really changed that much? Am I now officially "the single guy?" Of course I had to note the equal remoteness of my memories of my former wife. Life is strange.

We've been to lots of concerts, restaurants, and parties. Despite the fun I noticed a curious melancholy in my emotional background. It took me a few days to realize that it was caused by the looming imminence of my departure from Armenia. I have conveniently blocked this fact from my mind. (I always do that.) I am used to my little life in Yerevan. I have friends, students, and shop keepers who depend on me. It's sad to leave even though I leave to ultimately join the friends, students, and shop keepers in California who depend on me.

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Debra is as amazed as I was by the way men and women dress in Armenia. The women wear party dresses to take the garbage out while the men wear the same dull uniform: black pants, black T-shirt. And of course there are the shoes. The men favor black shoes with an elfishly elongated toe while the women wear gold lame David and Goliath shoes with 7 inch spike heels. Debra also noticed that the men don't seem to respond to the women in their sexy outfits. Even a troop of belly dancers in full costume couldn't get them to look up from their sidewalk backgammon games. But the women notice each other. Debra says passing women scan her from head to toe, but quickly dismiss her when they get to her boring flat sandals. "Look mommy, that lady doesn't even have magic shoes."

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All summer I have been trying to see the Armenian Navy Band. I have narrowly missed them on several occasions. One time a guy who butted in front of me in a queue bought the last ticket to one of their concerts. As luck would have it, they announced a last minute engagement at the Astral Club to take place only two nights before my departure. I made two trips to the club to buy tickets. The first time they told me tickets wouldn't go on sale until the next day. The next day they told me to come later that night, but I demanded to see the manager and forced him to give me tickets.



The manager remembered the anxious American when Debra, Jennifer, and I arrived at the door. He whisked us past the line of people hoping to get tickets and led us to a table a few feet from the stage.

In The Art of Travel Alain De Botton tells us, "There are few emotions about places for which adequate single words exist... But at the beginning of the Eighteenth Century, a word came to prominence by means of which it became possible to indicate a specific response towards precipices and glaciers, night skies and boulder-strewn deserts." De Botton's word is "sublime." In his philosophical treatise on The Sublime, Edmund Burke complained that the word was not merely synonymous with beauty. Rather, he insisted, it is a beauty that makes the beholder feel weak and small. I prefer to define it as a beauty that confounds the beholder.

It's doubtful De Botton encountered the Armenian Navy Band in his travels, but if he had, he might have added it to his list. The band's ability to bounce from sizzling jazz powered by their horn section to soulful haunting music played on traditional Armenian instruments leaves the audience happily resigned to their fates as tellers, clerks, and professors. How could we imagine making music like this? Our job was simply to raise our arms above our heads and dance.



Travel Bog

Some readers may have noticed Travel Blog's major barf-a-thon last week. Lots of entries were lost. I have recovered most of my text, but I need to upload photos again to some of the blogs-- a major hassle. I'm probably a fool for posting all of the pictures for this entry, but ego trumps reason every time.

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