Flute, Oboe, Horn, Bassoon, Piano, Clarinet

Danzi, Beethoven, Strauss. That's what I heard tonight sitting on the very back row of a full auditorium facing three enormous arch-shaped windows showing a billion city lights. The Sextet looked cool. The Bassoon player, cooler. He looked like Santa Claus, sporting a snipped beard and a blue turtleneck. But I didn't stare at these things much. I closed my eyes, listened and smelled. I smelled my grandma's hugs, breathing the wafts of elegant perfumes, finding particular nostalgia in something that smelled decidedly pink sitting in front of me. I let my body forget itself while I had beautiful thoughts all in time with Beethoven's Rondo.

The Jerusalem Center has concerts Sunday nights and tonight Sister Bentley, the senior sister missionary here, who told me when I first met her "Brother Bentley and I are here because we're nice," grabbed me at the last minute to usher. I shirked reading to go and I found out the concerts here are first class. All the musicians were members of the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra and had long bios of their accomplishments. But the best part was staring at the concert goers. High heels showing off middle aged legs, black hair with a silver streak right down the center, kipahs and lots of revealed chest hair.

And I talked to a man named Gidi, Gidi, short for Gideon.