Author: Gandalf GreyGandalf Grey Date: Jul 28, 2006 10:11
Joyce Marcel: 'A dance of death'
Joyce Marcel
"Want a little warm-up?" asks the waitress as she splashes more coffee into
my cup. "Need more milk?"
We're sitting in front of huge plates of eggs, bacon, home fries, and toast,
my mother and I, in a diner in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. It's our annual
immersion in the New York City Ballet - 11 ballets in three days - and we're
still in a state of bedazzlement and wonder.
The diner is packed, maybe because there's a downpour outside. Waitresses
and busgirls hustle by us, going in all directions, while people crowd into
booths and jam themselves around large tables.
Everyone is eating large amounts of food off larger plates. Massive
hamburgers, piles of fries, stacks of pancakes with ice cream scoops of
butter melting on them, bacon and sausages piled on big fluffy omelets, all
the coffee we can drink, individual servings of cream, toothpicks that come
in their own plastic wrappers.
In the background, on a large television screen, terrified people are
fleeing Lebanon.
| 
