Dear Piers,
° I had just left the Live at the Met transmission of Tan Dun's The First Emperor--I was whistling the only musical bit I could recollect, "Will our sufferings have no end?" Couldn't help but compare how many musical remembrancers I took home with me from I Puritani the preceding weekend. Still, an aural spectacle, the stone drummers alone were worth the price of admission. And to see the Met Orchestra chanting! Where was the Musicians' Union? Of course, Gone with the Wind. And though I felt right bad for the Chinese conscripts longing for death, I couldn't help but notice that their longing could've been selffulfilled, had they really been as miserable as they claimed--I'd left the Colliverdi Cinema and here walks up to me a very handsome, wellgroomed, welldressed, very nearly natural blond, and he says, says he:
"Can you help me? I'm short 50 cents for the bus to downtown?"
I, of course, still thinking of the Chinese taxed half to death, and having just seen a lame man to remind me of Francesco, replied:
"I'm sorry."
And walked on into the mall.
§
° I was sorry to be heartless.
° But it was the victim's fault.
° He asked for too little, and he didn't look the least bit pitiful. He didn't fit my parameters for almsgiving.
° But it does nag me.
° I mean, that I didn't find out what he was fixing to do when he got downtown.
° Ever tenderhearted, Giac.
