Gift.

I’ve received an unexpected gift from a stranger. It totally floored me.

It began innocently, with a blog comment. Joe, you see, wrote this post about the Moscow Cats Theatre performances going on right now in New York.

Omigod, Kuklachev and his cats!!1! I grew up watching them on television. The clown’s art has a special place in Russian hearts: the circus still comes to town, indeed lives permanently in most major cities, and clowns are a huge part of that. The skits are generally mimed, or nearly; it’s all physical comedy, but not all of it is slapstick. They make you think, they tug on your heart strings.

I’m getting all nostalgic here. If you want to know more about Russian clowns, this article in The Moscow Times is a pretty good start.

Anyway, so I react to this effect in a comment to Joe’s post. Go see them if you can!, I wrote, I’d sure be there in a heartbeat if I had the money.

A couple of days later, a letter arrives from Charlottesville. I’m all confused; I was just recently in Charlottesville for the digital tools summit, and don’t remember meeting someone by the name on the return-address stamp. I open it, and out comes a color printout of the poster for the show and another one with the Ticketmaster blurb. And money to cover a ticket.

Well, holy shit.

Ethan and I were so excited about the prospect of going (we can swing another ticket, and no way I was gonna see this without showing him a part of my childhood) that we talked some of my family into going with us. So at the end of December, when my mom flies into New York for New Year’s with my brother-and-family and us, we’ll all be going. The two of us, and my brother, and my sister-in-law, and my nephew (who is going to LOVE this), and my mom, for whom this is possibly more nostalgic than it is for me.

Thank you, Joe. You’ve brought me back some beautiful memories from the old country.

current mood: pretty damn thankful