Budapest 4

October 9, 2016

The second performance was better, tighter than the first, and to me more moving, as I came to understand the concept better. A half moon rode over the Duna, and I pointed to it and asked the taxi driver “What is that?” He said, as though I were the stupidest person in the world, “Moon.” Maybe he thought I was testing his English. Discovered later that “moon” is “hold.” I bet the driver has told the story of the stupid American more than once. Stately Istvan, the man who might have been king, was there, and noted that I look much better than I did before, when, though he couldn’t diagnose with what, I was clearly ill. Perhaps I was, but I don’t remember being ill, though surely ill-at-ease. I have away five copies inscribed of Blood Rose to people who had been important to the cause. I’m far enough away that I won’t expect to find them in a second hand store in a few weeks. The taxi apparatus was smooth as glass this time. Allen and Jellena and I ate at the hotel lounge afterward, everywhere else being booked up for Saturday night. Jellena is a pre-school teacher in Slovenia’s second largest city, that I forget the name of, with two children, whom she left with grandparents to come and meet Allen, whom she likes.

Went outside to test the temperature when I heard the Hallelujah Chorus being sung in front of the opera house. A band and chorus were there, it turns out, to make still more festive the Budapest Marathon being run today. I listened to Handel and Verdi while thin muscular men with determined expressions–thousands of them– chugged by. At places in the avenues there are bands and drummers to provide traveling music for the runners.

The Fs have people coming from Germany and the US and the UK and Italy and God knows where to see The Birth of Color. I can’t get people to take the train from Brooklyn to see my work in Manhattan. A is in Prague and decided not to bother with this. One shrugs.