“If you tango every night for a year, and you blog about it, you will get a book deal,” Carleen said.
We were having coffee in my office. That's how the whole thing started: a couple of editors shooting the breeze.
I already have both, I told her. I started the blog the morning after my first tango lesson. I add to it every day.
No, you can’t read it, I told her. It’s not an actual blog-blog. I mean, it’s not published. I don’t need an audience to complete me.
“If you don’t publish, it’s not a blog. It’s a journal.”
Grrr. She’s right. Here’s why:
The presence of the observer influences the outcome of the experiment. Every scientist knows that. The same is true of writing: the presence of the reader influences the story—both the manner of telling and the content. And not only that: Upon receiving and interpreting the story, the reader completes it.
How would that play out if the story I am telling is my own story, as it happens? Memoir in the moment. How much would awareness of the presence of readers influence my story? Even more intriguing: How does the presence of the self-aware observer (that would be me) influence the story (that would be my life) – as it happens?
Would I do things differently, just to create experiences to report in the blog? Would I pull my punches to avoid too much honesty, too much exposure?
Last year at this very time (6:30 p.m. as I write this), Melinda was plying me with food and liquor.
Let’s do it! she said. She created the template. I cut and pasted my text into the boxes.
“Hit Publish,” she prompted.
Then urged.
Then urged again.
How could I say? I had exactly the same free-falling feel in my stomach that I had the day I moved in with Keith. This is a Threshold.
“Oh for God’s sake,” Melinda, the ABD in religion and pop culture, said, and leaned across and punched Publish.
I squealed.
First thing the next day, I took down the post. Replaced it with something less honest.
How the reader influences the story.
Monday, December 31, 2007
Highlights of My Tango Year: The Man on the Wall
A few weeks after I started tango, I took out a pencil and drew my practice partner, The Man on the Wall.
He was a smiley face. A very nice one. But I couldn’t say that in the blog. The first lesson you learn as a writer is “show, don’t tell.” In other words, paint a picture. So I wrote this:
The Man on the Wall has features in common with my practice buddy Glenlivet. A roundness of cheek, a beautiful smile. Perfect posture, a certain self-contained air.
The Man on the Wall was not a person in his own right. Glenlivet was the real deal. The Man on the Wall was Glenlivet’s moon, reflecting his light.
Glenlivet and I were litter-mates. At first, we danced lots and lots. As we got better, and as we adopted different styles and teachers, we danced less and less. I missed him.
In his absence, though, I began to see The Man on the Wall in his own right. He was dumb as drywall, sure enough, but very, very sweet. Loyal. He always looked happy to see me. I liked having him around.
My writer’s game was this: I could not anthropomorphize him. So, he never felt happy to see me, but always looked happy. If I ever said he was patient or sweet or amazed or benign, I wrote it in such a way as to make it clear that was only my perception of his unchanging countenance. For example:
The Man on the Wall waits. If patience is a virtue, he must be a saint. A happy one. Though he’s bald. And emaciated. And frankly, his grin seems more clueless than cute right this minute….
The Man on the Wall sustained me in tango. With him I could concentrate on technique, without the distraction of a stranger intruding in my space. He never rushed me. He never disappeared. He never bruised my ego. And he cheered me up when all manner of things were going badly. As it turns out, a smile is contagious, even if it is just drawn on the wall.
Maybe this happens to all beginning followers: I went through a streak when the leads wanted to coach me. Whether it was some clueless guy dragging me off-axis and then scolding me for lack of balance or a classmate gently offering advice, it seemed that every single person had something to say about all the ways I was getting it wrong. Then I began to dance with Stan and Tom and—happy day!—they told me what I did well.
In contrast:
Glenlivet says nothing, which is A-OK, because he never criticized, either. He is the closest thing going to The Man on the Wall.
a-HA! Who’s the real deal now, and who is the moon?
Of every discovery and delight this year of tango has brought me, this tops the list. This shell game of person and literary construct, the give-and-take between life as I live it and write it, the sleight-of-hand--which I myself never saw coming until I read the words after they appeared on the page--is the highlight of My Tango Year.
He was a smiley face. A very nice one. But I couldn’t say that in the blog. The first lesson you learn as a writer is “show, don’t tell.” In other words, paint a picture. So I wrote this:
The Man on the Wall has features in common with my practice buddy Glenlivet. A roundness of cheek, a beautiful smile. Perfect posture, a certain self-contained air.
The Man on the Wall was not a person in his own right. Glenlivet was the real deal. The Man on the Wall was Glenlivet’s moon, reflecting his light.
Glenlivet and I were litter-mates. At first, we danced lots and lots. As we got better, and as we adopted different styles and teachers, we danced less and less. I missed him.
In his absence, though, I began to see The Man on the Wall in his own right. He was dumb as drywall, sure enough, but very, very sweet. Loyal. He always looked happy to see me. I liked having him around.
My writer’s game was this: I could not anthropomorphize him. So, he never felt happy to see me, but always looked happy. If I ever said he was patient or sweet or amazed or benign, I wrote it in such a way as to make it clear that was only my perception of his unchanging countenance. For example:
The Man on the Wall waits. If patience is a virtue, he must be a saint. A happy one. Though he’s bald. And emaciated. And frankly, his grin seems more clueless than cute right this minute….
The Man on the Wall sustained me in tango. With him I could concentrate on technique, without the distraction of a stranger intruding in my space. He never rushed me. He never disappeared. He never bruised my ego. And he cheered me up when all manner of things were going badly. As it turns out, a smile is contagious, even if it is just drawn on the wall.
Maybe this happens to all beginning followers: I went through a streak when the leads wanted to coach me. Whether it was some clueless guy dragging me off-axis and then scolding me for lack of balance or a classmate gently offering advice, it seemed that every single person had something to say about all the ways I was getting it wrong. Then I began to dance with Stan and Tom and—happy day!—they told me what I did well.
In contrast:
Glenlivet says nothing, which is A-OK, because he never criticized, either. He is the closest thing going to The Man on the Wall.
a-HA! Who’s the real deal now, and who is the moon?
Of every discovery and delight this year of tango has brought me, this tops the list. This shell game of person and literary construct, the give-and-take between life as I live it and write it, the sleight-of-hand--which I myself never saw coming until I read the words after they appeared on the page--is the highlight of My Tango Year.
Note to Self Standing on the Toilet
Notwithstanding your aversion to the corporeal, sharing your aversion to accumulating possessions, accepting your aversion to vanity, which prevents you from studying yourself in any mirror larger than the postage stamp above the bathroom sink ...
... if you insist on practicing cool new tango moves in front of a mirror, perhaps you should buy a full-length one.
... if you insist on practicing cool new tango moves in front of a mirror, perhaps you should buy a full-length one.
The Santa Claus Blog
Extend your warm holiday feelings with this intelligent, kind-hearted and very funny blog! The Claus Chronicles
Sunday, December 30, 2007
The Case for Whining
I’ve learned something important about myself in this year of tango-blogging.
I am not a crybaby. I am a whiner.
I spent almost seven hours on Saturday writing a four-page whine. Here’s how it starts:
Howl
This is it. Four days left to go in My Tango Year. Then I’m done. I am so out of here. Good riddance.
I especially liked this little image:
My legs are not of a piece; ... My body is the Tower of Babel.
And so on. In seven hours of writing, you can work up quite a head of steam. There was a fantasia sequence featuring a marionette and a magician, some rather peevish comments regarding my littermates (beginners cohort), who have left me in the dust, and a whole lot of good, solid whining. Like this:
I am tired of being ravenous. I am tired of racing into bathrooms to collect myself or puke or cry or b-r-e-a-t-h-e. I am tired of standing on the threshold of the Turn or the Merc, looking into the ballroom for a friend’s face. (If I find even one, I have to go in. That’s the deal. Sometimes I don’t look very hard.) I am tired of being shy. I am tired of apologizing for my lack of balance and coordination and skill; I am tired of lacking balance and coordination and skill. I am tired of screwing up the lead’s dance. I am tired of wearing my game face: hug-hug, chat-chat, flirt-flirt, laying my arm across the lead’s shoulders when I enter the embrace in a way that is very smooth, very false.
Sometimes, when I’m riding a big writing wave, I hypnotize myself. Then I make comments so cosmic even I don’t understand them:
I have no corporeal axis. My center does not hold. I will accept your fiction that there are feet at the foot of my body, else why would we call it the foot?
An axis is only a concept. So is center. So is feet. So is terra firma.
None of this is real. I cannot put my finger on any of it.
All of this only preamble, winding up to the four-alarm howl, the complaint under which all others are subsumed:
David Hodgson says you must dance who you are.
Nina says, soft knees. Grisha says, move your center. Tara says, sink into your hip.
I can do these things, but not by technique, only by imagination. Every time I don a smoky, womanly, oppositional frame of mind, Nina shouts You’ve got it!” Grisha says, “Yes, that’s right.”
But I do not want to be smoky. I do not want to be a strong, grounded presence in opposition to the lead.
I do not want to be smoky, I want to be smoke. I want to float like a fragrance in the embrace, I want to be that elusive thing of beauty, which can’t be caged. That is what tango says to me in its music and lyrics. Ethereality. That is the nature of my strength, what I authentically bring to the dance. I want to be delicate and light, elegant and gorgeous.
I want be the Audrey Hepburn of tango.
???!!!
Can you imagine Audrey Hepburn dancing the tango?
Me neither.
Grrr.
What is it about a whine? Whenever I can’t do anything right, when I finally, absolutely positively hit rock bottom and give up … I whine. I rail against the things that prevent me from getting everything I want on my terms. I howl. I document my every complaint.
And then I give it up. I acknowledge defeat. Grudgingly, but cleanly. There’s no sense beating a dead horse.
I can’t do it.
I can’t do tango.
Well, that’s it then.
Good riddance.
I flop on the couch. Good. I have a lot of books to read, and a couple to write. I love my job, and I wouldn’t mind putting in a lot of overtime before spring. I have been doing nothing but tango and blog and fast for a year. This will give me a chance to catch up on things. Organize the closets. Eat. Tidy up.
For example, I could pick up my shoes from the corner where I shoved them on Thursday.
Gosh, they’re gorgeous. Maroon suede, t-strap, peek-a-boo hole at the toe. Three and a half inch heels.
Fifteen months ago, these shoes would have been ugly to me. I don’t like t-straps. I don’t wear peek-a-boo anything. And the height of the heels is laughable.
Thirteen months ago, I couldn’t even stand up in these shoes. My impossible dream was to take 11 steps down the length of the room without falling over.
Six months ago, I made it.
Now I am not concerned with staying upright, but with axis and center and counterbody motion and not screwing up the lead by turning my leg excessively out and giving each step some oomph.
Well now.
Now that I’ve given it up, I wouldn’t mind having a go at that walking business Grisha was trying to teach me.
Now that it’s just for fun. Just to see what will happen.
Bing!
I am walking, I am doing the step Grisha wants. You could see that coming, couldn’t you? But wait! There's more:
I have no center. Having complained vociferously about that in the whine, I DON’T HAVE ONE! I am no longer obligated to go seeking it.
My attention, sprung from the prison of my pelvis, roams freely. Soon I notice this: a bubble floats somewhere behind my sternum, in the neighborhood of the third rib. It is not stable; it floats hither and yon.
I can push it deep down into my pelvis, where my center is supposed to live. I can hold it there. I can let it float up to my belly button and push it back down. I can let it float up to its home perch and push it back down. Down is grounded and strong. Up is light and strong. For this step, I like down. It feels delicate-strong, not smoky.
Now, when teachers tell me to find my center deep in my pelvis, I will know what to do: Go looking for wherever it may be floating at the moment—a shoulder blade, the palm of my hand, its home behind the third rib--and push it down.
How about that?
But wait, there’s even more! (Yes, a full set of steak knives!)
To keep track of my center’s comings and goings, I put one hand on its lower home, one hand on its upper. Then I notice something: As I am using counterbody motion, when I step with my left foot, the back of both palms point to the left. When I step with my right, both palms point right. My hands are moving in concert. They are showing me two points on my axis.
Wow!
Who would have guessed it? Saturday at 5 p.m. I had nothing but a bellyful of whining. By 10 p.m., I had not only found my axis and center (wait, there's even even more...!) I found my feet!
None of this would have happened, none of it would have come to my attention, if were it not for the whine and its catalog of complaints.
Whining plucks my most bothersome complaints out of the miasma of undifferentiated frustration. Now they are prioritized and defined. Unequivocally. Now I can go to work on them.
I never knew this before. I thought whining was weak, like a crybaby. But a crybaby, at the end of its jag, has nothing to show for it but soiled hankies.
What a difference a day makes!
How can I quit tango now? Saturday’s long howl has given me another year’s worth of material to work with!
Well, OK then.
I am not a crybaby. I am a whiner.
I spent almost seven hours on Saturday writing a four-page whine. Here’s how it starts:
Howl
This is it. Four days left to go in My Tango Year. Then I’m done. I am so out of here. Good riddance.
I especially liked this little image:
My legs are not of a piece; ... My body is the Tower of Babel.
And so on. In seven hours of writing, you can work up quite a head of steam. There was a fantasia sequence featuring a marionette and a magician, some rather peevish comments regarding my littermates (beginners cohort), who have left me in the dust, and a whole lot of good, solid whining. Like this:
I am tired of being ravenous. I am tired of racing into bathrooms to collect myself or puke or cry or b-r-e-a-t-h-e. I am tired of standing on the threshold of the Turn or the Merc, looking into the ballroom for a friend’s face. (If I find even one, I have to go in. That’s the deal. Sometimes I don’t look very hard.) I am tired of being shy. I am tired of apologizing for my lack of balance and coordination and skill; I am tired of lacking balance and coordination and skill. I am tired of screwing up the lead’s dance. I am tired of wearing my game face: hug-hug, chat-chat, flirt-flirt, laying my arm across the lead’s shoulders when I enter the embrace in a way that is very smooth, very false.
Sometimes, when I’m riding a big writing wave, I hypnotize myself. Then I make comments so cosmic even I don’t understand them:
I have no corporeal axis. My center does not hold. I will accept your fiction that there are feet at the foot of my body, else why would we call it the foot?
An axis is only a concept. So is center. So is feet. So is terra firma.
None of this is real. I cannot put my finger on any of it.
All of this only preamble, winding up to the four-alarm howl, the complaint under which all others are subsumed:
David Hodgson says you must dance who you are.
Nina says, soft knees. Grisha says, move your center. Tara says, sink into your hip.
I can do these things, but not by technique, only by imagination. Every time I don a smoky, womanly, oppositional frame of mind, Nina shouts You’ve got it!” Grisha says, “Yes, that’s right.”
But I do not want to be smoky. I do not want to be a strong, grounded presence in opposition to the lead.
I do not want to be smoky, I want to be smoke. I want to float like a fragrance in the embrace, I want to be that elusive thing of beauty, which can’t be caged. That is what tango says to me in its music and lyrics. Ethereality. That is the nature of my strength, what I authentically bring to the dance. I want to be delicate and light, elegant and gorgeous.
I want be the Audrey Hepburn of tango.
???!!!
Can you imagine Audrey Hepburn dancing the tango?
Me neither.
Grrr.
* * *
What is it about a whine? Whenever I can’t do anything right, when I finally, absolutely positively hit rock bottom and give up … I whine. I rail against the things that prevent me from getting everything I want on my terms. I howl. I document my every complaint.
And then I give it up. I acknowledge defeat. Grudgingly, but cleanly. There’s no sense beating a dead horse.
I can’t do it.
I can’t do tango.
Well, that’s it then.
Good riddance.
I flop on the couch. Good. I have a lot of books to read, and a couple to write. I love my job, and I wouldn’t mind putting in a lot of overtime before spring. I have been doing nothing but tango and blog and fast for a year. This will give me a chance to catch up on things. Organize the closets. Eat. Tidy up.
For example, I could pick up my shoes from the corner where I shoved them on Thursday.
Gosh, they’re gorgeous. Maroon suede, t-strap, peek-a-boo hole at the toe. Three and a half inch heels.
Fifteen months ago, these shoes would have been ugly to me. I don’t like t-straps. I don’t wear peek-a-boo anything. And the height of the heels is laughable.
Thirteen months ago, I couldn’t even stand up in these shoes. My impossible dream was to take 11 steps down the length of the room without falling over.
Six months ago, I made it.
Now I am not concerned with staying upright, but with axis and center and counterbody motion and not screwing up the lead by turning my leg excessively out and giving each step some oomph.
Well now.
Now that I’ve given it up, I wouldn’t mind having a go at that walking business Grisha was trying to teach me.
Now that it’s just for fun. Just to see what will happen.
Bing!
I am walking, I am doing the step Grisha wants. You could see that coming, couldn’t you? But wait! There's more:
I have no center. Having complained vociferously about that in the whine, I DON’T HAVE ONE! I am no longer obligated to go seeking it.
My attention, sprung from the prison of my pelvis, roams freely. Soon I notice this: a bubble floats somewhere behind my sternum, in the neighborhood of the third rib. It is not stable; it floats hither and yon.
I can push it deep down into my pelvis, where my center is supposed to live. I can hold it there. I can let it float up to my belly button and push it back down. I can let it float up to its home perch and push it back down. Down is grounded and strong. Up is light and strong. For this step, I like down. It feels delicate-strong, not smoky.
Now, when teachers tell me to find my center deep in my pelvis, I will know what to do: Go looking for wherever it may be floating at the moment—a shoulder blade, the palm of my hand, its home behind the third rib--and push it down.
How about that?
But wait, there’s even more! (Yes, a full set of steak knives!)
To keep track of my center’s comings and goings, I put one hand on its lower home, one hand on its upper. Then I notice something: As I am using counterbody motion, when I step with my left foot, the back of both palms point to the left. When I step with my right, both palms point right. My hands are moving in concert. They are showing me two points on my axis.
Wow!
Who would have guessed it? Saturday at 5 p.m. I had nothing but a bellyful of whining. By 10 p.m., I had not only found my axis and center (wait, there's even even more...!) I found my feet!
None of this would have happened, none of it would have come to my attention, if were it not for the whine and its catalog of complaints.
Whining plucks my most bothersome complaints out of the miasma of undifferentiated frustration. Now they are prioritized and defined. Unequivocally. Now I can go to work on them.
I never knew this before. I thought whining was weak, like a crybaby. But a crybaby, at the end of its jag, has nothing to show for it but soiled hankies.
What a difference a day makes!
How can I quit tango now? Saturday’s long howl has given me another year’s worth of material to work with!
Well, OK then.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
In Memory, Benazir Bhutto
Fire and Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Robert Frost
A song:
Let peace begin with me, let this be the moment now
With every step I take, let this be my solemn vow
To take each moment and live each moment in peace eternally
Let there be peace on Earth, and let it begin with me.
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Robert Frost
A song:
Let peace begin with me, let this be the moment now
With every step I take, let this be my solemn vow
To take each moment and live each moment in peace eternally
Let there be peace on Earth, and let it begin with me.
One Heart Uses Tools
I have a toolbox. A Stanley.
It contains: Screwdrivers with tips shaped like math symbols: plus and minus. Many wrenches of various sizes with ends shaped like c's and o's. Also wrenches that pinch, with wheels you turn to make them pinch smaller. Pliers. A hammer. Nuts and bolts. And the prize:
A heavy metal tape measure that pulls out and locks in place, so you can walk through the world defending the precise dimensions of your personal space.
Or herd peacocks. Really. Works better than a stick, Keith says.
There is no Swiss Army Knife in my toolbox. This is Keith playing Dad. I won the knife in a contest and gave it away. His refusal to replace it says: “You made your bed, now lie in it.”
I muss the beds and lie as I please. I’ll buy my own Leatherman, thank you.
You might think that because I don’t know the names of things that I don’t know how to use them.
I do. For example, I can:
Air up a tire, and change one.
Tighten belts using a crowbar and screwdriver.
Replace hoses, air filter and spark plugs.
Change the oil in a 1969 Mustang. Including the oil filter. And the stripped-out drain plug, doped up with bright blue insta-gasket goop.
Shoot the zerks. (Imagine swimming the butterfly stroke on your back under a car. This is how you scoot from wheel to wheel. In your hand the grease gun. At each wheel, a couple of fittings, called zerks. Fit the gun’s nozzle into each zerk, pull the trigger. Emerge swaggering like John Wayne, t-shirt torn, hair matted with gunk and gravel. Growl to the guy under the hood, “I got the little bastards.” That’s how you talk in the garage. It’s the code. There is much more to working on cars than knowing which tool to use.)
Rebuild a carburetor. A dad-and-daughter project, unsuccessful. The mechanic said the kit we used had a broken float. Never mind that. We did our part.
Change the valve cover gasket in a 1967 Dodge Dart Swinger. Stop laughing! It was my first car; it cost $200. The job took eight hours. Michigan could have done it in 20 minutes, but I’m glad he didn’t. I like trying things until they come right. Michigan showed me what to do. He gave me all the time I needed. Then he made dinner, and taught me how to cook rice.
My toolbox is bright orange. There is nothing girly about it. All of the tools are Champion or Craftsman or Stanley. No cushy grips. No hot pink.
Which is not to say I’ve given up using my high heels for a hammer. That’s just plain fun.
And ingenious.
If we used tools only for their intended purposes, we would miss many opportunities. Such as building a better peacock-herding stick. Or dancing tango moves to alternative music. Or (discovering too late that the corkscrew did not survive the summer’s multiple moves) using a plus-sign screwdriver and a hammer to open a bottle of wine.
Caveat emptor. In some cases, the results may be disastrous.
Which results? In which cases?
I leave that to you to decide.
It contains: Screwdrivers with tips shaped like math symbols: plus and minus. Many wrenches of various sizes with ends shaped like c's and o's. Also wrenches that pinch, with wheels you turn to make them pinch smaller. Pliers. A hammer. Nuts and bolts. And the prize:
A heavy metal tape measure that pulls out and locks in place, so you can walk through the world defending the precise dimensions of your personal space.
Or herd peacocks. Really. Works better than a stick, Keith says.
There is no Swiss Army Knife in my toolbox. This is Keith playing Dad. I won the knife in a contest and gave it away. His refusal to replace it says: “You made your bed, now lie in it.”
I muss the beds and lie as I please. I’ll buy my own Leatherman, thank you.
* * *
You might think that because I don’t know the names of things that I don’t know how to use them.
I do. For example, I can:
Air up a tire, and change one.
Tighten belts using a crowbar and screwdriver.
Replace hoses, air filter and spark plugs.
Change the oil in a 1969 Mustang. Including the oil filter. And the stripped-out drain plug, doped up with bright blue insta-gasket goop.
Shoot the zerks. (Imagine swimming the butterfly stroke on your back under a car. This is how you scoot from wheel to wheel. In your hand the grease gun. At each wheel, a couple of fittings, called zerks. Fit the gun’s nozzle into each zerk, pull the trigger. Emerge swaggering like John Wayne, t-shirt torn, hair matted with gunk and gravel. Growl to the guy under the hood, “I got the little bastards.” That’s how you talk in the garage. It’s the code. There is much more to working on cars than knowing which tool to use.)
Rebuild a carburetor. A dad-and-daughter project, unsuccessful. The mechanic said the kit we used had a broken float. Never mind that. We did our part.
Change the valve cover gasket in a 1967 Dodge Dart Swinger. Stop laughing! It was my first car; it cost $200. The job took eight hours. Michigan could have done it in 20 minutes, but I’m glad he didn’t. I like trying things until they come right. Michigan showed me what to do. He gave me all the time I needed. Then he made dinner, and taught me how to cook rice.
* * *
My toolbox is bright orange. There is nothing girly about it. All of the tools are Champion or Craftsman or Stanley. No cushy grips. No hot pink.
Which is not to say I’ve given up using my high heels for a hammer. That’s just plain fun.
And ingenious.
If we used tools only for their intended purposes, we would miss many opportunities. Such as building a better peacock-herding stick. Or dancing tango moves to alternative music. Or (discovering too late that the corkscrew did not survive the summer’s multiple moves) using a plus-sign screwdriver and a hammer to open a bottle of wine.
Caveat emptor. In some cases, the results may be disastrous.
Which results? In which cases?
I leave that to you to decide.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Great Moments in Tango Teaching: Tom Stermitz
I have been saving this story all year, waiting for the right time to tell it…
Today is Boxing Day, when we redirect unappreciated gifts to someone who will truly value them.
This is a good day to tell the story of Tom’s gift. The woman who received it had no use for it, but that doesn’t mean it was wasted. In my book, it ranks as the first among a year’s worth of Great Moments in Tango Teaching.
It happened last fall or winter. It was Tom’s turn to teach the public introductory classes at the Mercury Cafe. Shane invited a new housemate, Amy, to come with us.
Amy is short and round, with a cap of dark hair and a sweet child’s features. She is outspoken and opinionated and has recently come off a stint in the Peace Corps. She is an out-and-out lesbian, and she is only going to take the class if she can lead.
I tell her she can, that there are never enough men and if by odd chance the class is gender-balanced tonight, I’ll let her led me for the whole class.
This is how the class works: The teacher demonstrates a step, then the students practice for a minute or two. At the end of the practice interval, the partners separate. The men stand still while the women walk to the next man along the line of dance. Then the whole rotation begins again.
Amy stands still in the man’s spot as the women rotate. You can imagine the routine: Some women helpfully try to move her along, some bypass her, some gamely agree to follow her lead. Some men try to claim her. Some insist. Amy insists right back. Some take it personally. Some good-naturedly back off.
The distaste on some faces, both female and male, is obvious. Perhaps I am only seeing what I expect. It is not fair to assume these dancers are bigots; perhaps they merely object to Amy’s insistence on flaunting the rules.
This is none of my business, and that’s a good thing because I would not handle it nearly as well as Amy. She negotiates this double-black-diamond course as deftly as if she skied it every day.
At the end of the class, Tom introduces cabeceo and makes us give it a try. Four of us are left on the sidelines: the most gorgeous woman in the room, Amy, I and a man who would rather sit it out than look at any of us.
From across the room, Amy catches my eye. I shrug, head for my chair. She keeps looking. Oh! I get it! We dance.
The class ends. Tom makes his move. He approaches the table where I sit with Amy.
I know what is coming. He’s done it to me already.
After teaching introductory classes like these, Tom likes to circulate among the beginners, recruiting them for his own series of classes.
He says something like this: “I saw you dance. You’re ready for my advanced beginner class.”
After only one lesson, it seems premature to invite Amy to join an advanced beginner class, but Tom didn’t get to be a full-time tango teacher by being shy.
So I watch him approach and I wait for it...
He homes in on Amy. His eyes are right into hers. His voice is offhand, as usual.
“If you want to take my class as a lead, I’ll make it safe for you to do that,” he says.
Amy makes a polite answer. It’s clear she’s had enough. Tom walks away, his demeanor unchanged.
This is just Tom being Tom. He made his pitch. Take it or leave it, he’s not going to burn the house down.
This attitude of Tom’s rubs me the wrong way. I sometimes get the sense that Tom deliberately makes people feel decidedly ordinary. As a person who builds her life around doing exactly the opposite, I am annoyed. Offended on behalf of whomever is the object of his disinterest.
But in this moment, that very disinterest endears him to me as nothing else could.
So you’re a lesbian who only wants to lead, he says. That works for me, come to my class.
And at the same time: I’ll be your champion. To get at you, they’ll have to go through me. No big deal.
And at the same time: I’d do the same for your monkey’s uncle. Take it or leave it.
Most of us live, at some time or other, on some kind of margin. And so we know this: Sometimes there is no greater gift than someone who offhandedly says, “I see you. Come as you are, come join the crowd. We’ll make room for you. No big deal.”
If Tom and I didn’t annoy each other so, I would chase him down right this minute and hug him. I would hold him up as a man of the highest order. And say: This is life as it shoud be, each person recognized in their own right, without fuss and bother.
Everything that has happened is happening still.
Kudos to you, Tom Stermitz, forever.
Today is Boxing Day, when we redirect unappreciated gifts to someone who will truly value them.
This is a good day to tell the story of Tom’s gift. The woman who received it had no use for it, but that doesn’t mean it was wasted. In my book, it ranks as the first among a year’s worth of Great Moments in Tango Teaching.
It happened last fall or winter. It was Tom’s turn to teach the public introductory classes at the Mercury Cafe. Shane invited a new housemate, Amy, to come with us.
Amy is short and round, with a cap of dark hair and a sweet child’s features. She is outspoken and opinionated and has recently come off a stint in the Peace Corps. She is an out-and-out lesbian, and she is only going to take the class if she can lead.
I tell her she can, that there are never enough men and if by odd chance the class is gender-balanced tonight, I’ll let her led me for the whole class.
This is how the class works: The teacher demonstrates a step, then the students practice for a minute or two. At the end of the practice interval, the partners separate. The men stand still while the women walk to the next man along the line of dance. Then the whole rotation begins again.
Amy stands still in the man’s spot as the women rotate. You can imagine the routine: Some women helpfully try to move her along, some bypass her, some gamely agree to follow her lead. Some men try to claim her. Some insist. Amy insists right back. Some take it personally. Some good-naturedly back off.
The distaste on some faces, both female and male, is obvious. Perhaps I am only seeing what I expect. It is not fair to assume these dancers are bigots; perhaps they merely object to Amy’s insistence on flaunting the rules.
This is none of my business, and that’s a good thing because I would not handle it nearly as well as Amy. She negotiates this double-black-diamond course as deftly as if she skied it every day.
At the end of the class, Tom introduces cabeceo and makes us give it a try. Four of us are left on the sidelines: the most gorgeous woman in the room, Amy, I and a man who would rather sit it out than look at any of us.
From across the room, Amy catches my eye. I shrug, head for my chair. She keeps looking. Oh! I get it! We dance.
The class ends. Tom makes his move. He approaches the table where I sit with Amy.
I know what is coming. He’s done it to me already.
After teaching introductory classes like these, Tom likes to circulate among the beginners, recruiting them for his own series of classes.
He says something like this: “I saw you dance. You’re ready for my advanced beginner class.”
After only one lesson, it seems premature to invite Amy to join an advanced beginner class, but Tom didn’t get to be a full-time tango teacher by being shy.
So I watch him approach and I wait for it...
He homes in on Amy. His eyes are right into hers. His voice is offhand, as usual.
“If you want to take my class as a lead, I’ll make it safe for you to do that,” he says.
Amy makes a polite answer. It’s clear she’s had enough. Tom walks away, his demeanor unchanged.
This is just Tom being Tom. He made his pitch. Take it or leave it, he’s not going to burn the house down.
This attitude of Tom’s rubs me the wrong way. I sometimes get the sense that Tom deliberately makes people feel decidedly ordinary. As a person who builds her life around doing exactly the opposite, I am annoyed. Offended on behalf of whomever is the object of his disinterest.
But in this moment, that very disinterest endears him to me as nothing else could.
So you’re a lesbian who only wants to lead, he says. That works for me, come to my class.
And at the same time: I’ll be your champion. To get at you, they’ll have to go through me. No big deal.
And at the same time: I’d do the same for your monkey’s uncle. Take it or leave it.
Most of us live, at some time or other, on some kind of margin. And so we know this: Sometimes there is no greater gift than someone who offhandedly says, “I see you. Come as you are, come join the crowd. We’ll make room for you. No big deal.”
If Tom and I didn’t annoy each other so, I would chase him down right this minute and hug him. I would hold him up as a man of the highest order. And say: This is life as it shoud be, each person recognized in their own right, without fuss and bother.
Everything that has happened is happening still.
Kudos to you, Tom Stermitz, forever.
And the Winner (of the Christmas Tacky Gift Contest) Is...
Check back to this space tomorrow. I am trying to make a movie and post it.
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Christmas Cabeceo
His name is Darrell or Daryl, though I don’t know that yet, and he’s standing at the bus stop next to the convenience store/gas station where I am cleaning off the last bits of snow from my car.
As I finish up, I hear a voice: Are you OK? Then again, Are you OK? I look to see who needs help. He is talking to me.
He’s a big boy: 6 foot, 3 inches, maybe more, maybe as tall as Keith. He’s built like a football player, the kind that knocks the other guys over.
“I’m good,” I call back.
He is not dressed for the snowstorm. His pants droop and drag in the slush. His jacket is unzipped, and under it he is not wearing a sweater. His hair is wet, his face is patchy red. His nose is running. He is holding a coffee cup in a chapped, dirty hand, the plastic thermal kind with a lid.
This is not fair! He is only 16, maybe 17.
Before he asks, before he knows for sure he is going to ask, my answer is yes.
I look him in the eye.
Are you going that way? He points.
Sure, I say. Tell me where.
It is not far. Only to the 7-11 up the street. To get coffee. He speaks slowly, as if his lips are frozen. But they are not. It is not that cold today, only windy with snow.
He moves my Christmas presents from the front seat to the back, climbs in. We introduce ourselves and shake hands.
Why don’t you get your coffee right here, at this convenience store? I ask.
I can’t go in there any more.
Why not?
He shrugs. The way I dress.
I doubt that.
And that one? I point to the convenience store on the opposite corner.
He shrugs.
We drive to 7-11. It is only one mile. Along the way, we learn these things about each other:
There are six kids in my family, seven in his. Five boys in his, five girls in mine. One boy in mine, two girls in his.
As I pull into the 7-11 parking lot, we discover we are both number 4 in the birth order.
“Wow!” he says happily. “We have something in common!”
He says thanks and we say Merry Christmas over and over while he heaves himself out of the car.
I head back the way I came. My car stinks. A mess of gray sludge has dropped from his boots onto the floor mat and carpet.
Now, hours later, prevented by the storm from going to tango, I’m grinning about this: Here’s a kid who got out of the wind-driven snow, saved enough money in bus fare to buy a nice snack, got to his coffee a half hour sooner than he would have on the bus … and here is the thing that delighted him, the thing that made him say happily “Wow!”: We are both number 4.
Cabeceo.
As I finish up, I hear a voice: Are you OK? Then again, Are you OK? I look to see who needs help. He is talking to me.
He’s a big boy: 6 foot, 3 inches, maybe more, maybe as tall as Keith. He’s built like a football player, the kind that knocks the other guys over.
“I’m good,” I call back.
He is not dressed for the snowstorm. His pants droop and drag in the slush. His jacket is unzipped, and under it he is not wearing a sweater. His hair is wet, his face is patchy red. His nose is running. He is holding a coffee cup in a chapped, dirty hand, the plastic thermal kind with a lid.
This is not fair! He is only 16, maybe 17.
Before he asks, before he knows for sure he is going to ask, my answer is yes.
I look him in the eye.
Are you going that way? He points.
Sure, I say. Tell me where.
It is not far. Only to the 7-11 up the street. To get coffee. He speaks slowly, as if his lips are frozen. But they are not. It is not that cold today, only windy with snow.
He moves my Christmas presents from the front seat to the back, climbs in. We introduce ourselves and shake hands.
Why don’t you get your coffee right here, at this convenience store? I ask.
I can’t go in there any more.
Why not?
He shrugs. The way I dress.
I doubt that.
And that one? I point to the convenience store on the opposite corner.
He shrugs.
We drive to 7-11. It is only one mile. Along the way, we learn these things about each other:
There are six kids in my family, seven in his. Five boys in his, five girls in mine. One boy in mine, two girls in his.
As I pull into the 7-11 parking lot, we discover we are both number 4 in the birth order.
“Wow!” he says happily. “We have something in common!”
He says thanks and we say Merry Christmas over and over while he heaves himself out of the car.
I head back the way I came. My car stinks. A mess of gray sludge has dropped from his boots onto the floor mat and carpet.
Now, hours later, prevented by the storm from going to tango, I’m grinning about this: Here’s a kid who got out of the wind-driven snow, saved enough money in bus fare to buy a nice snack, got to his coffee a half hour sooner than he would have on the bus … and here is the thing that delighted him, the thing that made him say happily “Wow!”: We are both number 4.
Cabeceo.
Christmas
Christmas roars in like a lion. It is snowing. A lot.
It’s a long drive to Castle Rock south of Denver, where the family is already gathering. I am dithering. Can I get out of it?
If I were sociable or weather-savvy, I would have gone down on Christmas Eve night, joined the family pajama party. It’s one of our family traditions.
My family is rich with traditions. When we get tired of the old ones, we make up new ones. Some new traditions spring up: I instigated the Tacky Gift Contest when traditional gift-giving became boring. Other traditions morph. For example:
Sibling Five-of-Six and her little boy always spend the night at my parents’ house on Christmas Eve. He is 2, 3, 4, 5… 24. Now my parents have moved into an apartment. Now Six-of-Six and his partner have bought a house made for entertaining. Now Sibling Five-of-Six and Son--and my parents--all spend the night at Six-of-Six’s house. Last month the Son got married. Last night, his New Bride joined the pajama party.
Here’s another:
Sibling Two-of-Six also spends Christmas Eve with her two daughters. Like mother, like daughter: they would rather clean toilets than cook. I imagine they have pizza or fun snacks. They watch movies, they laugh as much as they talk. At midnight they open their presents.
A few years ago, Daughter One brought a man along. He liked to cook. Two-of-Six knew at once he was The One. He spent the night. She bought him a stockpot. Not being a cook, she was nervous about this. Being The One, he knew just what to do.
“Ah,” he said, turning the pot in his hands. “This is not just a stockpot. This is the Quintessential Stockpot.”
We love big words. We all say it now. It is part of our family lexicon, our ritual language.
Since joining the family, The One has taken Thanksgiving dinner in hand. Every year he uses the Quintessential Stockpot to make his Italian grandmother’s chicken soup. His mother died young, his grandmother raised him. Every year we tell him it is the Quintessential chicken soup. Welcome to the family, The One. Welcome to the family, His Granny.
We like to fold people in. On her first Christmas in Denver, 1982, my mother told my father that she was going to cook as if she were back home in Michigan with the whole clan. She cooked for 30, as usual. A blizzard hit--the snow was up to the eaves of the house. None of the neighbors could get out of their driveways. They all walked to my mom's for dinner. She still glows.
This year at Thanksgiving, the New Bride brought five family friends with her—surprise! Family emergency, stranded in town, etc. Nephew, never one to plan ahead, called from the car: We’re on our way! We worried over the food, the number of chairs. They arrived with a feast of their own, put their food alongside ours on the table. We stuffed ourselves and afterward took bags of food home: turkey and tamales, potatoes and gravy and rice and green chile.
My family gets together frequently. Every holiday is a command appearance. That goes for all the official holidays and all the birthdays too. The more people that come into the family, the more often we gather.
I am not a sociable person. I crave solitude the way others crave love. Family gatherings are a joy in theory and memory, a trial in the moment. They are huge pandemonium. Everyone talks at once, and they play rowdy party games, like Pictionary.
I do not want to go today. It is snowing, and I would rather be writing.
But I am the one bringing the vegetables. “You are the only one bringing the vegetables,” Six-of-Six’s partner told me yesterday on the phone. I heard what she meant: Make it good. She is a veggie lover, and she counts on me.
Duty calls.
Soon I will get dressed. I will get in my car. I will take the veggies I promised to make. I will grab a dozen tamales out of the freezer, to fold New Bride’s traditions into ours.
It will be pandemonium. Also great fun! We will laugh more than talk. We will catch up. I will sit on the sidelines, and join in, and then sit on the sidelines again. I will refuse to play Pictionary, but I will guess the answers in my head as they play. My family is used to me now; antisocial One Heart is part of the family tradition.
It will be exhausting. We will grow tired of one another, particularly those who have been pajama partying. Some of us will snipe at each other; some will get bossy; some will turn studiously to the TV. Someone's feelings will be hurt. Sooner or later, there might be someone crying in the bathroom and someone soothing the teary-eyed one. There will be a period of uncomfortable quiet. There will be a gradual loosening, then an offer of coffee. This is how we do it.
I will resolve to eat nothing so I can tango tonight. I will eat too much anyway.
(I will go to tango after the family party. This is a new tradition, starting this year.)
Passing the Baby will be the Quintessential party game.
When we name the winner of Tacky Gift Contest, someone will say: That is the Quintessential tacky gift!
People will fight over the tamales. We will have to cut them in half.
I will refuse the after-dinner coffee in solidarity with my dad, who has had to give it up. Instead I will have port, a tradition Six-of-Six introduced.
When my parents open their gift from me, they will find only a note. In response to their annual request for gifts to charity, I have written my annual big, fat check to the Salvation Army, because they took Barbara in when her parents would not. This isn’t grief, this is gratitude--and maintaining a tendril of attachment.
My mother insists on these gatherings. She had a lousy childhood. She decided early on that when she had a chance, she would do family right. This is what she learned along the way: Family doesn't happen, we make it so. So she issues these marching orders: Show up. Yes, it's a pain in the ass, yes we get sick of each other. Do it anyway.
So… off I go into the snow, to join the pandemonium, serve up the veggies, stuff myself, beg to hold the baby, greet the New Bride, and get my hands on that Tacky Gift trophy!
It’s a long drive to Castle Rock south of Denver, where the family is already gathering. I am dithering. Can I get out of it?
If I were sociable or weather-savvy, I would have gone down on Christmas Eve night, joined the family pajama party. It’s one of our family traditions.
My family is rich with traditions. When we get tired of the old ones, we make up new ones. Some new traditions spring up: I instigated the Tacky Gift Contest when traditional gift-giving became boring. Other traditions morph. For example:
Sibling Five-of-Six and her little boy always spend the night at my parents’ house on Christmas Eve. He is 2, 3, 4, 5… 24. Now my parents have moved into an apartment. Now Six-of-Six and his partner have bought a house made for entertaining. Now Sibling Five-of-Six and Son--and my parents--all spend the night at Six-of-Six’s house. Last month the Son got married. Last night, his New Bride joined the pajama party.
Here’s another:
Sibling Two-of-Six also spends Christmas Eve with her two daughters. Like mother, like daughter: they would rather clean toilets than cook. I imagine they have pizza or fun snacks. They watch movies, they laugh as much as they talk. At midnight they open their presents.
A few years ago, Daughter One brought a man along. He liked to cook. Two-of-Six knew at once he was The One. He spent the night. She bought him a stockpot. Not being a cook, she was nervous about this. Being The One, he knew just what to do.
“Ah,” he said, turning the pot in his hands. “This is not just a stockpot. This is the Quintessential Stockpot.”
We love big words. We all say it now. It is part of our family lexicon, our ritual language.
Since joining the family, The One has taken Thanksgiving dinner in hand. Every year he uses the Quintessential Stockpot to make his Italian grandmother’s chicken soup. His mother died young, his grandmother raised him. Every year we tell him it is the Quintessential chicken soup. Welcome to the family, The One. Welcome to the family, His Granny.
We like to fold people in. On her first Christmas in Denver, 1982, my mother told my father that she was going to cook as if she were back home in Michigan with the whole clan. She cooked for 30, as usual. A blizzard hit--the snow was up to the eaves of the house. None of the neighbors could get out of their driveways. They all walked to my mom's for dinner. She still glows.
This year at Thanksgiving, the New Bride brought five family friends with her—surprise! Family emergency, stranded in town, etc. Nephew, never one to plan ahead, called from the car: We’re on our way! We worried over the food, the number of chairs. They arrived with a feast of their own, put their food alongside ours on the table. We stuffed ourselves and afterward took bags of food home: turkey and tamales, potatoes and gravy and rice and green chile.
My family gets together frequently. Every holiday is a command appearance. That goes for all the official holidays and all the birthdays too. The more people that come into the family, the more often we gather.
I am not a sociable person. I crave solitude the way others crave love. Family gatherings are a joy in theory and memory, a trial in the moment. They are huge pandemonium. Everyone talks at once, and they play rowdy party games, like Pictionary.
I do not want to go today. It is snowing, and I would rather be writing.
But I am the one bringing the vegetables. “You are the only one bringing the vegetables,” Six-of-Six’s partner told me yesterday on the phone. I heard what she meant: Make it good. She is a veggie lover, and she counts on me.
Duty calls.
Soon I will get dressed. I will get in my car. I will take the veggies I promised to make. I will grab a dozen tamales out of the freezer, to fold New Bride’s traditions into ours.
It will be pandemonium. Also great fun! We will laugh more than talk. We will catch up. I will sit on the sidelines, and join in, and then sit on the sidelines again. I will refuse to play Pictionary, but I will guess the answers in my head as they play. My family is used to me now; antisocial One Heart is part of the family tradition.
It will be exhausting. We will grow tired of one another, particularly those who have been pajama partying. Some of us will snipe at each other; some will get bossy; some will turn studiously to the TV. Someone's feelings will be hurt. Sooner or later, there might be someone crying in the bathroom and someone soothing the teary-eyed one. There will be a period of uncomfortable quiet. There will be a gradual loosening, then an offer of coffee. This is how we do it.
I will resolve to eat nothing so I can tango tonight. I will eat too much anyway.
(I will go to tango after the family party. This is a new tradition, starting this year.)
Passing the Baby will be the Quintessential party game.
When we name the winner of Tacky Gift Contest, someone will say: That is the Quintessential tacky gift!
People will fight over the tamales. We will have to cut them in half.
I will refuse the after-dinner coffee in solidarity with my dad, who has had to give it up. Instead I will have port, a tradition Six-of-Six introduced.
When my parents open their gift from me, they will find only a note. In response to their annual request for gifts to charity, I have written my annual big, fat check to the Salvation Army, because they took Barbara in when her parents would not. This isn’t grief, this is gratitude--and maintaining a tendril of attachment.
My mother insists on these gatherings. She had a lousy childhood. She decided early on that when she had a chance, she would do family right. This is what she learned along the way: Family doesn't happen, we make it so. So she issues these marching orders: Show up. Yes, it's a pain in the ass, yes we get sick of each other. Do it anyway.
So… off I go into the snow, to join the pandemonium, serve up the veggies, stuff myself, beg to hold the baby, greet the New Bride, and get my hands on that Tacky Gift trophy!
Saturday, December 22, 2007
After the Solstice
The saga of Winnie the Pooh ends with the story of Christopher Robin outgrowing his bear.
It begins like this:
Christopher Robin was going away. Nobody knew why he was going; nobody knew where he was going; indeed, nobody even knew why he knew Christopher Robin was going away. But somehow or other everybody in the Forest felt it was happening at last.
It ends:
In that enchanted place at the top of the Forest, a boy and his Bear will always be playing.
Enough.
I don’t want to live in that story any more. Barbara is history, and in a certain sense even the grief is old news.
Persephone is setting down her pomegranate. I can feel it.
This afternoon I am going to make my hair pretty. I am going to buy presents for people I love. I am going to call my mother and cajole her into letting me come over and bake cookies with her. In the living room, my father will be watching football. I’ll yell from the kitchen: Did we score? Which team are we for? Tell me again, what’s a tailback?
Tonight I have plans to see Granny Dances to the Beat of a Different Drum, the annual Christmas show of the Cleo Parker Robinson modern ballet troupe. This year, Cleo worked a tango into the show. I would like to see that!
But I won’t. I can feel it. I will be here. Fingers on keys, feet in shoes. Absorbed. Fumbling. Cobbling together bits of beauty first one way, then another...
...
PS As it turned out:
Because I took too much time finessing the final paragraph, I was late to my hair appointment and had to rebook. My mother has gone to bed with a headache. The parking lots are so crowded I am not shopping. And I missed the turn to get on the highway to go home. Melinda called to say Hi and I invited myself over for the early part of the evening. I'm dithering over whether afterward I should make an appearance at the Tango House to demonstrate that I'm not taking sides in the latest TC battle, or if showing up there would be interpreted as taking sides. And there's still the appendix of my book to finish, which I promised the publisher a month ago. And dinking around with the proposal for the next one, which I don't really want to write, but it just keeps rearing its head. Good grief.
Tonight, wherever I end up, I dance!
It begins like this:
Christopher Robin was going away. Nobody knew why he was going; nobody knew where he was going; indeed, nobody even knew why he knew Christopher Robin was going away. But somehow or other everybody in the Forest felt it was happening at last.
It ends:
In that enchanted place at the top of the Forest, a boy and his Bear will always be playing.
Enough.
I don’t want to live in that story any more. Barbara is history, and in a certain sense even the grief is old news.
Persephone is setting down her pomegranate. I can feel it.
This afternoon I am going to make my hair pretty. I am going to buy presents for people I love. I am going to call my mother and cajole her into letting me come over and bake cookies with her. In the living room, my father will be watching football. I’ll yell from the kitchen: Did we score? Which team are we for? Tell me again, what’s a tailback?
Tonight I have plans to see Granny Dances to the Beat of a Different Drum, the annual Christmas show of the Cleo Parker Robinson modern ballet troupe. This year, Cleo worked a tango into the show. I would like to see that!
But I won’t. I can feel it. I will be here. Fingers on keys, feet in shoes. Absorbed. Fumbling. Cobbling together bits of beauty first one way, then another...
...
PS As it turned out:
Because I took too much time finessing the final paragraph, I was late to my hair appointment and had to rebook. My mother has gone to bed with a headache. The parking lots are so crowded I am not shopping. And I missed the turn to get on the highway to go home. Melinda called to say Hi and I invited myself over for the early part of the evening. I'm dithering over whether afterward I should make an appearance at the Tango House to demonstrate that I'm not taking sides in the latest TC battle, or if showing up there would be interpreted as taking sides. And there's still the appendix of my book to finish, which I promised the publisher a month ago. And dinking around with the proposal for the next one, which I don't really want to write, but it just keeps rearing its head. Good grief.
Tonight, wherever I end up, I dance!
Friday, December 21, 2007
The Bean Counter
There is a man. His hands are full of beans. He is in a room, and the room is full of beans. As a matter of fact, the room is made of beans. The table he sits at is made of beans. The chair he sits on is made of beans. The art that hangs on the wall is mosaics made of beans.
The beans are two colors: golden yellow and lively green. They drip from his hair, spill out of his ears, tumble from his pockets. He is knee deep in beans. When he walks, they click-and-shhh, click-and-shhh. When he bends over, digs his hands in deep, they press against his palms firmly. When he moves, they slide into the places where his feet were, leaving footprints like gentle hills and valleys.
The man is counting the beans. This is his job. He chooses one, examines it and counts it--just so. Then he tucks it behind his ear, in his pocket, under his tongue. Some of the beans are his and some he has dreamed into being. He has plans, and he has planned for an abundance of beans.
Now and then the man’s work is interrupted by an odd bean. It is fat and red. It is round as a drop. The man walks to a corner cupboard, opens the door. He takes out a scale, the old fashioned kind, the kind that Lady Justice holds on the steps of the courthouse. He places the round, red bean on one tray of the scale. With the gold and yellow beans he brings it to balance. One by one, he chooses, examines, counts them just so, and places the beans on the scale.
When the balance is made, he pours the bright beans into an envelope. They tumble over themselves with a click-and-shhh. The man writes a note, seals the envelope, pushes it into the mail chute.
He takes the round, red bean in his fist, bends over and thrusts his arm deep, buries that bean under mountains and fields of beans. Then he walks back to his table, click-and-shhh, click-and-shhh, and resumes counting.
This is why my friend Barbara died: In the 1970s, the Chrysler company was under the gun to reduce both vehicle weight (for better gas mileage and less pollution) and the costs of production. Aluminum and plastic were lightweight and cheap. The engineers went to work, replacing what metal parts they could. The wiper arms and fan blades became aluminum, and the radio knobs and bumpers and trunk liners became plastic.
But plastic and aluminum are fragile. They break. Engineers and risk managers took this into account, but there were other factors to weigh in the balance. Chrysler was deeply in debt, gas was sky-high, environmentalists were up in arms, Japanese economy cars were flooding the market.
And over all, Chrysler had payroll to meet. Things were grim in Detroit. You cannot imagine. Thousands of workers had been laid off. In the blue-collar suburb of Pontiac, Michigan, unemployment was as high as it had been during the Great Depression: 30 percent. There was no hope in sight. There were no jobs, no government or personal surplus for charity.
And the ripples were spreading. Imagine what happens to a city, to a people. Bumper stickers said, “Will the last one to leave Michigan please turn out the lights.” Had Chrysler failed, families would have been homeless, children and adults frozen or starved. Chrysler owed it to its workers to succeed.
This is how my friend Barbara died: She was living in South Carolina with her husband. They were driving their wedding present: his parents’ old Chrysler. It was election day. They stopped to vote.
The car had been making a noise. As long as they were out, they thought, they may as well take care of it. They pulled into a service station.
Outside it was raining. Barbara went into the service bay to stay out of the rain. She wandered, looking at posters and tools hung on the walls.
This is how my friend Barbara died: She lay on the floor, her throat cut. Above her, wedged in the concrete wall, a shiny bit of metal.
Her husband and the mechanic were bent over the engine. At first they didn’t notice that a tiny, bright bit had broken off the fan blade, shot past them both and homed in on Barbara across the room as if she were a magnet and it were steel.
The human body is a pressure vessel, and arteries are high-pressure hoses. Barbara’s heart pumped her blood out the nick in her neck. It leaped and showered until the pressure subsided. Then it burbled gently, like a spring in a well house. At the end it quietly welled, slow and steady, like a seep. But long before that she was dead.
One of Barbara’s friends notified the Chrysler company. Chrysler sent a check with a note, “Enclosed is the standard payment for this type of injury.”
The man in the room made of beans takes out the scale. He brings it to balance as best he can. He pours the beans into an envelope, click-and-shhh. He writes the note, mails it off. He buries the odd bean under hillocks of green and gold. In the aftermath he weeps, but he is weeping tears of beans.
The beans are two colors: golden yellow and lively green. They drip from his hair, spill out of his ears, tumble from his pockets. He is knee deep in beans. When he walks, they click-and-shhh, click-and-shhh. When he bends over, digs his hands in deep, they press against his palms firmly. When he moves, they slide into the places where his feet were, leaving footprints like gentle hills and valleys.
The man is counting the beans. This is his job. He chooses one, examines it and counts it--just so. Then he tucks it behind his ear, in his pocket, under his tongue. Some of the beans are his and some he has dreamed into being. He has plans, and he has planned for an abundance of beans.
Now and then the man’s work is interrupted by an odd bean. It is fat and red. It is round as a drop. The man walks to a corner cupboard, opens the door. He takes out a scale, the old fashioned kind, the kind that Lady Justice holds on the steps of the courthouse. He places the round, red bean on one tray of the scale. With the gold and yellow beans he brings it to balance. One by one, he chooses, examines, counts them just so, and places the beans on the scale.
When the balance is made, he pours the bright beans into an envelope. They tumble over themselves with a click-and-shhh. The man writes a note, seals the envelope, pushes it into the mail chute.
He takes the round, red bean in his fist, bends over and thrusts his arm deep, buries that bean under mountains and fields of beans. Then he walks back to his table, click-and-shhh, click-and-shhh, and resumes counting.
This is why my friend Barbara died: In the 1970s, the Chrysler company was under the gun to reduce both vehicle weight (for better gas mileage and less pollution) and the costs of production. Aluminum and plastic were lightweight and cheap. The engineers went to work, replacing what metal parts they could. The wiper arms and fan blades became aluminum, and the radio knobs and bumpers and trunk liners became plastic.
But plastic and aluminum are fragile. They break. Engineers and risk managers took this into account, but there were other factors to weigh in the balance. Chrysler was deeply in debt, gas was sky-high, environmentalists were up in arms, Japanese economy cars were flooding the market.
And over all, Chrysler had payroll to meet. Things were grim in Detroit. You cannot imagine. Thousands of workers had been laid off. In the blue-collar suburb of Pontiac, Michigan, unemployment was as high as it had been during the Great Depression: 30 percent. There was no hope in sight. There were no jobs, no government or personal surplus for charity.
And the ripples were spreading. Imagine what happens to a city, to a people. Bumper stickers said, “Will the last one to leave Michigan please turn out the lights.” Had Chrysler failed, families would have been homeless, children and adults frozen or starved. Chrysler owed it to its workers to succeed.
This is how my friend Barbara died: She was living in South Carolina with her husband. They were driving their wedding present: his parents’ old Chrysler. It was election day. They stopped to vote.
The car had been making a noise. As long as they were out, they thought, they may as well take care of it. They pulled into a service station.
Outside it was raining. Barbara went into the service bay to stay out of the rain. She wandered, looking at posters and tools hung on the walls.
This is how my friend Barbara died: She lay on the floor, her throat cut. Above her, wedged in the concrete wall, a shiny bit of metal.
Her husband and the mechanic were bent over the engine. At first they didn’t notice that a tiny, bright bit had broken off the fan blade, shot past them both and homed in on Barbara across the room as if she were a magnet and it were steel.
The human body is a pressure vessel, and arteries are high-pressure hoses. Barbara’s heart pumped her blood out the nick in her neck. It leaped and showered until the pressure subsided. Then it burbled gently, like a spring in a well house. At the end it quietly welled, slow and steady, like a seep. But long before that she was dead.
One of Barbara’s friends notified the Chrysler company. Chrysler sent a check with a note, “Enclosed is the standard payment for this type of injury.”
The man in the room made of beans takes out the scale. He brings it to balance as best he can. He pours the beans into an envelope, click-and-shhh. He writes the note, mails it off. He buries the odd bean under hillocks of green and gold. In the aftermath he weeps, but he is weeping tears of beans.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Meditation on a Christmas Tree Ornament
The bird has a blue eye. It has a red breast and crest. It has red tailfeathers. It has four feathers just above the tail. One is purple, the other three red. Its wings are red. Its beak is orange and so are its legs and feet. But its eye is blue.
The bird is silent. It does not sing. It does not squawk. It does not call to its mate. It does not speak to you. Its silence is neither cold nor hot nor indifferent. It is silent.
The bird’s orange feet grip a branch. It does not need to see the branch. The branch is there, else he would fall. It is a he-bird. He does not need to see the branch.
The bird is red. It rests on its perch. Leaves grip the branch all around. The leaves are green and they are waxy. Nestled in the leaves are berries. They are waxy and red.
The bird’s blue eye unwavering. Its stillness ever-still. The berries ever-fresh, the holly evergreen.
Jesus is blind. He is fully exposed. He hangs on the cross, dripping blood and vinegar.
Blood must be shed. The goddess bled, and the fields flowered. Jesus bled. His mother stood below him and caught his blood in her hands. While God hid from his own son’s eye.
The prophets hid from God’s eyes. At Calvary God hid from his own son’s eye.
Pines are evergreen. Their needles turn brown. They die, and the tree sheds them. A thick pad of them circles each tree. Resin drips onto this pad.
Jesus’ blood once belonged to his mother. At the hour of his death it returned to her hands. While God hid from his own son’s eye, Mary caught the blood that Jesus shed.
Holly is evergreen. That means nothing. Eventually its leaves shrivel and die. To prolong its color, plant it in shade, away from the unwavering eye of the sun. This will prolong the leaves’ green, but the red berries will suffer.
Once, a boy caught a bird in his hands. The bird bit him. It tore a hunk of flesh from his hand. The wound was a perfect triangle. It was deep, like a well. But it was triangular.
I looked into the well, down, down, down. It was dry and red. And then the blood began to gather. It took its time. It was bright red. It gathered and welled up. It was quiet, it was still. It took its time. Bright red, it filled the well and spilled over. It spattered on the dirt. The bird flew away.
An angel comes to a woman. It is filthy. It stinks. It has no wings. It has no heaven. It is starving. The woman feeds it. The angel bites her hand. She feeds it again. The angel bites her. She feeds it again. It flees. The woman’s pantry is empty now. But there is a little flour in the bin. Tomorrow there is a little flour still. Every day there is a little flour still. The angel cannot be tamed, but it cannot forget. The woman understands. She begins to bleed.
Jesus went to a wedding. He said, Let there be wine. He went to a hillside. He said, Let them eat fish. Five loaves, five fish, five thousand starving. When the fishing was poor, he filled the nets. Everyone ate. In his heart, Jesus was a woman.
Here is a myth: In the land of Odin, there stands a mountain. Once every million years a little bird comes winging, sharpens its beak and then quickly disappears. When that mountain is worn away, into eternity shall be one single day.
The bird is red. It has a red breast and a crest. It has red tailfeathers. But its eye is blue. When the bird bites, blood gathers and spills. Where blood spatters on holly, berries form.
The bird is silent. It does not sing. It does not squawk. It does not call to its mate. It does not speak to you. Its silence is neither cold nor hot nor indifferent. It is silent. Whatever you hear, you bring.
The bird’s blue eye unwavering. Its stillness ever-still. The berries ever-fresh, the holly evergreen.
The bird is silent. It does not sing. It does not squawk. It does not call to its mate. It does not speak to you. Its silence is neither cold nor hot nor indifferent. It is silent.
The bird’s orange feet grip a branch. It does not need to see the branch. The branch is there, else he would fall. It is a he-bird. He does not need to see the branch.
The bird is red. It rests on its perch. Leaves grip the branch all around. The leaves are green and they are waxy. Nestled in the leaves are berries. They are waxy and red.
The bird’s blue eye unwavering. Its stillness ever-still. The berries ever-fresh, the holly evergreen.
* * *
Jesus is blind. He is fully exposed. He hangs on the cross, dripping blood and vinegar.
Blood must be shed. The goddess bled, and the fields flowered. Jesus bled. His mother stood below him and caught his blood in her hands. While God hid from his own son’s eye.
The prophets hid from God’s eyes. At Calvary God hid from his own son’s eye.
* * *
Pines are evergreen. Their needles turn brown. They die, and the tree sheds them. A thick pad of them circles each tree. Resin drips onto this pad.
* * *
Jesus’ blood once belonged to his mother. At the hour of his death it returned to her hands. While God hid from his own son’s eye, Mary caught the blood that Jesus shed.
* * *
Holly is evergreen. That means nothing. Eventually its leaves shrivel and die. To prolong its color, plant it in shade, away from the unwavering eye of the sun. This will prolong the leaves’ green, but the red berries will suffer.
* * *
Once, a boy caught a bird in his hands. The bird bit him. It tore a hunk of flesh from his hand. The wound was a perfect triangle. It was deep, like a well. But it was triangular.
I looked into the well, down, down, down. It was dry and red. And then the blood began to gather. It took its time. It was bright red. It gathered and welled up. It was quiet, it was still. It took its time. Bright red, it filled the well and spilled over. It spattered on the dirt. The bird flew away.
* * *
An angel comes to a woman. It is filthy. It stinks. It has no wings. It has no heaven. It is starving. The woman feeds it. The angel bites her hand. She feeds it again. The angel bites her. She feeds it again. It flees. The woman’s pantry is empty now. But there is a little flour in the bin. Tomorrow there is a little flour still. Every day there is a little flour still. The angel cannot be tamed, but it cannot forget. The woman understands. She begins to bleed.
Jesus went to a wedding. He said, Let there be wine. He went to a hillside. He said, Let them eat fish. Five loaves, five fish, five thousand starving. When the fishing was poor, he filled the nets. Everyone ate. In his heart, Jesus was a woman.
* * *
Here is a myth: In the land of Odin, there stands a mountain. Once every million years a little bird comes winging, sharpens its beak and then quickly disappears. When that mountain is worn away, into eternity shall be one single day.
The bird is red. It has a red breast and a crest. It has red tailfeathers. But its eye is blue. When the bird bites, blood gathers and spills. Where blood spatters on holly, berries form.
The bird is silent. It does not sing. It does not squawk. It does not call to its mate. It does not speak to you. Its silence is neither cold nor hot nor indifferent. It is silent. Whatever you hear, you bring.
The bird’s blue eye unwavering. Its stillness ever-still. The berries ever-fresh, the holly evergreen.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
6. My Favorite Things, Revisited
I was hasty. More in love with being a smart-aleck than being nice to one of my favorite childhood singers.
So, I apologize:
Maria is allowed to love little kitty whiskers and warm woolen mittens. She was a young nun fresh out of the convent in The Sound of Music.
Julie can like them, too. Anyone who can sing like she can, and be so elegant besides, can do anything she likes.
And I was wrong about:
Grown women who prefer mittens and schnitzel to love and chocolate.
They are not exactly Stephen King creepy. When I said that, I was being a lazy writer: I gave up on the idea I was chasing down before I caught it. I was thinking Stephen King + Stepford wives. Here's what I really meant:
That Yul Brenner guy in Westworld.
So, I apologize:
Maria is allowed to love little kitty whiskers and warm woolen mittens. She was a young nun fresh out of the convent in The Sound of Music.
Julie can like them, too. Anyone who can sing like she can, and be so elegant besides, can do anything she likes.
And I was wrong about:
Grown women who prefer mittens and schnitzel to love and chocolate.
They are not exactly Stephen King creepy. When I said that, I was being a lazy writer: I gave up on the idea I was chasing down before I caught it. I was thinking Stephen King + Stepford wives. Here's what I really meant:
That Yul Brenner guy in Westworld.
And Another Thing...
5
After six months, the day is here! I get in to see a foot surgeon at Kaiser. He's not the one I wanted to see, but the first available.
What's the problem? he says.
"Tango..." I say.
He grabs my foot, starts tweaking.
"I don't want to make you jealous, but I just came back from a month in Buenos Aires," he says.
He recommends Club Armenia.
After six months, the day is here! I get in to see a foot surgeon at Kaiser. He's not the one I wanted to see, but the first available.
What's the problem? he says.
"Tango..." I say.
He grabs my foot, starts tweaking.
"I don't want to make you jealous, but I just came back from a month in Buenos Aires," he says.
He recommends Club Armenia.
Four Weird Things
1.
Last night on the milonga side of the Turn a guy thrust his leg hard in between mine. He said it was part of a move. I told him I don’t do that one. He said, “Most women like it.”
2.
Last night on the practica side of the Turn, a lead I like led a gancho. I dislike the move and I don’t do it well, so I skipped it.
Do you know gancho? he asked.
I don’t do it.
Are you conservative?
Yes.
Are you … Catholic?
3.
I have web tracking software that lets me see how people have come into my site. Today I see that someone came in through the Google search:
spun duckie woo woo
I don’t want to know. (Yes, I do!) (Maybe.) (If it’s not nasty.) (BTW, woo-woo is David Hodgson talk for the esoteric aspects of tango. I bet that whoever came to this site looking for ducks left enlightened.)
4.
Ohmigod, did I tell someone I am a conservative? Is this how it starts? The lie of panic, then of convenience? Am I going to become compulsive about this? Am I already sliding the slippery slope? I am a heathen socialist! I do not watch Fox News, I love Al Gore and that Chavez guy in Venezuela except for his dictatorial tendencies, I believe global warming is real, I rarely laugh at Rush Limbaugh’s jokes--only the one about the Clintons’ health care plan but it was really, really funny and did nothing to shake my support for their plan--I haven’t worked for the Republican party since I was a fat kid in the tenth grade and they promised me cake if I’d stuff their stupid envelopes and then there wasn’t even any cake and that was my Watergate, the first crack in the veneer of my trust … but I don’t do gancho and if in this world of tango that makes me a conserv … ohmigod I can’t say it, so bring it on boys and I’ll kick your butts!
Last night on the milonga side of the Turn a guy thrust his leg hard in between mine. He said it was part of a move. I told him I don’t do that one. He said, “Most women like it.”
2.
Last night on the practica side of the Turn, a lead I like led a gancho. I dislike the move and I don’t do it well, so I skipped it.
Do you know gancho? he asked.
I don’t do it.
Are you conservative?
Yes.
Are you … Catholic?
3.
I have web tracking software that lets me see how people have come into my site. Today I see that someone came in through the Google search:
spun duckie woo woo
I don’t want to know. (Yes, I do!) (Maybe.) (If it’s not nasty.) (BTW, woo-woo is David Hodgson talk for the esoteric aspects of tango. I bet that whoever came to this site looking for ducks left enlightened.)
4.
Ohmigod, did I tell someone I am a conservative? Is this how it starts? The lie of panic, then of convenience? Am I going to become compulsive about this? Am I already sliding the slippery slope? I am a heathen socialist! I do not watch Fox News, I love Al Gore and that Chavez guy in Venezuela except for his dictatorial tendencies, I believe global warming is real, I rarely laugh at Rush Limbaugh’s jokes--only the one about the Clintons’ health care plan but it was really, really funny and did nothing to shake my support for their plan--I haven’t worked for the Republican party since I was a fat kid in the tenth grade and they promised me cake if I’d stuff their stupid envelopes and then there wasn’t even any cake and that was my Watergate, the first crack in the veneer of my trust … but I don’t do gancho and if in this world of tango that makes me a conserv … ohmigod I can’t say it, so bring it on boys and I’ll kick your butts!
Fear and Loathing in Cabaceoland
From a post on Tango Colorado:
In Buenos Aires, every dance, except for this one, was invited by cabaceo. The verb is "cabacear"...it's an action verb....
We women are awaiting action...the "look" from afar, the nod of acceptance, the approach, the embrace, the breathing together, moving (internally) to the music,the music, the music....and finally, the taking of the first step.
Blech! Hackhackhack. Spit. Yech!
What is this? Why do I hate cabaceo?
I hate the way a teenage girl hates her mother, the way the Incredible Hulk hates the bad guys. My loathing is a fat, lazy slob; it finds almost nothing is worth lifting its head over, so what is this?
What the heck is it about cabaceo?
Spare me your psychobabbbbble. It's not sex.
Is it the inauthenticity? Fraudulence raises my hackles. And this seems like a fraud: I mean, really, except for girls on street corners looking for johns, who acts this way?
But we are not frauds. We are not pretending cabaceo is our game; we are very self-consciously putting it on. This is vamping, not lying. Why a whole dance culture would want to model its invitation on this ... well, look where tango comes from. Why we would want to propagate that relation for our daughters and sons is another question, but one that prompts intellectual curiosity, not instinctive revulsion.
Is it the cheap romanticism? The Kodak-moment sentimentality? Getting warmer, I think.
Is it all the whining lately on TC Discuss, that has me in the mood to rant?
The stricture. Cabaceo is a rule. I don't like rules.
Hmmm.. That was all way too easy.
There's something else going on here, and I am going to figure it out...
In Buenos Aires, every dance, except for this one, was invited by cabaceo. The verb is "cabacear"...it's an action verb....
We women are awaiting action...the "look" from afar, the nod of acceptance, the approach, the embrace, the breathing together, moving (internally) to the music,the music, the music....and finally, the taking of the first step.
Blech! Hackhackhack. Spit. Yech!
What is this? Why do I hate cabaceo?
I hate the way a teenage girl hates her mother, the way the Incredible Hulk hates the bad guys. My loathing is a fat, lazy slob; it finds almost nothing is worth lifting its head over, so what is this?
What the heck is it about cabaceo?
Spare me your psychobabbbbble. It's not sex.
Is it the inauthenticity? Fraudulence raises my hackles. And this seems like a fraud: I mean, really, except for girls on street corners looking for johns, who acts this way?
But we are not frauds. We are not pretending cabaceo is our game; we are very self-consciously putting it on. This is vamping, not lying. Why a whole dance culture would want to model its invitation on this ... well, look where tango comes from. Why we would want to propagate that relation for our daughters and sons is another question, but one that prompts intellectual curiosity, not instinctive revulsion.
Is it the cheap romanticism? The Kodak-moment sentimentality? Getting warmer, I think.
Is it all the whining lately on TC Discuss, that has me in the mood to rant?
The stricture. Cabaceo is a rule. I don't like rules.
Hmmm.. That was all way too easy.
There's something else going on here, and I am going to figure it out...
Monday, December 17, 2007
A Few of My Favorite Christmas Books
I go on a hunt every year for the new Christmas books. My criteria: Not schmaltzy. I usually find one a year. Here are the last few years' worth:
A Christmas Journey, by Anne Perry.
In Victorian England, a snide comment ends in suicide. The lesson is expiation, restorative justice and tough-love forgiveness. What makes this book interesting is the undercurrent of the author's own story: she spent time in prison for her involvement in a murder prompted by youthful passion.
In the Land of Winter, by Richard Grant. A fable of magic and motherhood, complete with evil witch. Sweet and clueless wins the day. The writing is magic, too--not just the wordplay but the way the author sees and relates to things. Welcome to my world.
Whale Season, by NM Kelby. South Florida: kooks, trailer parks, cheap women, heartbreak, and no whales. By a former student of Carl Hiassen. Hilarity + heart.
My favorite scene:
On Christmas Eve, the down-and-out owner of a trailer park and a nut job who thinks he is Jesus play poker. The trailer park owner has lost everything. Riffling through his desk drawer he comes up with paper clips, pens, and...
"Raise," he says, inspired, and holds up a snack cake, its cellophane wrapper still intact. Two twin rolls of dark chocolate filled with white icing--and dusty.
Jesus looks at him with what Leon imagines to be a "moneylenders at the temple" kind of frown. "You're betting cake?" he says, incredulous.
Leon feels a bead of sweat roll down his spine.
Sell it, baby. Sell it, he thinks. "It's not just cake," he says and holds it in the palm of his hand oike one of those models he's seen on the home shopping channels, "it's devil's food."
The words hiss like a snake looking for a girl named Eve. I'm going directly to hell, Leon thinks...
Should you read these books?
I gave Michigan In the Land of Winter. I wouldn't say he hated it, but something like that. Sibling Two-of-Six read the poker scene, shrugged, handed the book back to me. She tells her kids: Half of what One Heart gives me I love, the other half makes no sense at all.
This year I am giving Two-of-Six The Uncommon Reader. From the jacket:
Queen Elizabeth II chases her runaway corgis into a mobile library and into the reflective, observant life of an avid reader. Guided by Norman, a former kitchen boy and enthusiast of gay authors, the queen gradually loses interest in her endless succession of official duties and learns the pleasure of such a common activity. ... Ultimately, it is her own growing self-awareness that leads her away from reading and toward writing, with astonishing results.
A Christmas Journey, by Anne Perry.
In Victorian England, a snide comment ends in suicide. The lesson is expiation, restorative justice and tough-love forgiveness. What makes this book interesting is the undercurrent of the author's own story: she spent time in prison for her involvement in a murder prompted by youthful passion.
In the Land of Winter, by Richard Grant. A fable of magic and motherhood, complete with evil witch. Sweet and clueless wins the day. The writing is magic, too--not just the wordplay but the way the author sees and relates to things. Welcome to my world.
Whale Season, by NM Kelby. South Florida: kooks, trailer parks, cheap women, heartbreak, and no whales. By a former student of Carl Hiassen. Hilarity + heart.
My favorite scene:
On Christmas Eve, the down-and-out owner of a trailer park and a nut job who thinks he is Jesus play poker. The trailer park owner has lost everything. Riffling through his desk drawer he comes up with paper clips, pens, and...
"Raise," he says, inspired, and holds up a snack cake, its cellophane wrapper still intact. Two twin rolls of dark chocolate filled with white icing--and dusty.
Jesus looks at him with what Leon imagines to be a "moneylenders at the temple" kind of frown. "You're betting cake?" he says, incredulous.
Leon feels a bead of sweat roll down his spine.
Sell it, baby. Sell it, he thinks. "It's not just cake," he says and holds it in the palm of his hand oike one of those models he's seen on the home shopping channels, "it's devil's food."
The words hiss like a snake looking for a girl named Eve. I'm going directly to hell, Leon thinks...
Should you read these books?
I gave Michigan In the Land of Winter. I wouldn't say he hated it, but something like that. Sibling Two-of-Six read the poker scene, shrugged, handed the book back to me. She tells her kids: Half of what One Heart gives me I love, the other half makes no sense at all.
This year I am giving Two-of-Six The Uncommon Reader. From the jacket:
Queen Elizabeth II chases her runaway corgis into a mobile library and into the reflective, observant life of an avid reader. Guided by Norman, a former kitchen boy and enthusiast of gay authors, the queen gradually loses interest in her endless succession of official duties and learns the pleasure of such a common activity. ... Ultimately, it is her own growing self-awareness that leads her away from reading and toward writing, with astonishing results.
A Few of My Favorite Things
Before the books, the song.
"A Few of My Favorite Things" is not a Christmas song! It wasn't a Christmas song in The Sound of Music, and playing it ad nauseum during the season doesn't make it so!
Besides that, it's creepy. Any grown woman whose favorite things include crisp apple strudle and schnitzel with noodles but not chocolate, wine or a goodnight kiss is ... well ... creepy.
If this were a theme song for a novel, the author would have to be Stephen King.
"A Few of My Favorite Things" is not a Christmas song! It wasn't a Christmas song in The Sound of Music, and playing it ad nauseum during the season doesn't make it so!
Besides that, it's creepy. Any grown woman whose favorite things include crisp apple strudle and schnitzel with noodles but not chocolate, wine or a goodnight kiss is ... well ... creepy.
If this were a theme song for a novel, the author would have to be Stephen King.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Father, Time and the Ice Queen
I am standing in front of my father, twirling in my gown. It is sparkly silver and shining white taffeta.
When I volunteered to work the Tango Colorado’s Christmas Party, the Snowball, they told me to wear silver and white.
Janice asked if I wanted to be a sexy, personable elf. Then I could wear a silly hat, too.
I am not sexy and I don’t like people, I told her.
Elizabeth offered me the role of elegant ice princess.
Hence the dress.
My father and I do not acknowledge the linearity of time. Everything that ever happened is happening now. All that was, is still. George Washington and his men at Valley Forge, Mother Teresa, Zeus. All present, all now.
How else that I can come home from tango, collapse on the couch, and still be dancing with a favorite lead? How else that I can feel the movement in my lungs and throat, feel my heart giddy, as I’m singing with Barbara? How else that I can be at rest in Lost Park with Keith, or at the beach on the brink of midnight with Michigan?
Keith likes to camp. He likes it because it is fun while it lasts and because he can relive the moments when his job gets boring. That’s what he calls it—reliving—because he is caught in the corporeal-temporal continuum.
My father and I are not saying corporeal time doesn’t exist. Night wears on. We are only saying that the linearity of time is a construct.
This is hard to explain. Back up and try again. Like rocking a car on ice.
Time and spirit exist in the ether. When they come to Earth, they must be “made flesh.” That is, they must be organized into corporeal units. Spirit is organized into people, time into moments. But while on Earth they take these forms, on the ethereal plane they continue to exist in their original state.
We experience time and people in the corporeal way. But the limits of our experience do not negate the ethereal existence of time and spirit.
What are creation stories but accounts of how the ethereal is reorganized into the material? One popular story describes how time was made sequential: He called the day day and the night night, and there was morning and evening on the first day.
Yes, this is becoming much more clear!
I would back up and try again, but at some point you have to admit the car is stuck.
Now my dad is old. Now my dad is sitting with me and my sisters as we read the parts of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I am so young I have to sound out the words; sibling Five-of-Six is so young she’s left out. (Six-of-Six has not been organized into a human unit yet.) We are all doing all that right this minute. Barbara right this minute is banging on her car with a stick because it won’t start. She is laughing maniacally. She is telling me I have fallen in love with Michigan before I actually have. Now I am in love with Michigan, now I love him dearly, now we are dear old friends. Right this minute is the night I discovered Walt Whitman. I am reading aloud, reading to the ethereal Walt, until the corporeal restakes its claim and dawn breaks:
There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
I am twirling before my father, showing off my gown before I hem it up.
It would not be wise for me to dance in a floor-length gown. I would catch my heel in the hem. Best case, I would tear it. Worst case, I would take us down, the lead and I and possibly a passer-by, too. I am that much a clutz.
It’s a beautiful gown, but it will also be beautiful at cocktail length. I must hem it up, or I won’t be able to dance at the Snowball.
He is looking at me as a father might look at a daughter going to the prom. A little wonder, a little surprise, at this glimpse of a part of me he has suspected but never seen. Also, he loves the gown.
“That’s one of the few floor-length dresses I’ve seen that I like,” he says.
“Thanks a lot,” my mother says. “What about my gowns?”
My father is getting on in years. I spend lots of time with him now.
Why? If it’s all the ethereal Big Now, why bother?
My father and I do not acknowledge the linearity of time. Everything that has happened is happening still.
The key word is happened. My father and I don’t argue with the idea that, for experience to exist, it has to have happened. We only deny that it stops. Everything that has happened is happening still.
Whatever happens now, will keep on happening. I want lots of experiences to happen with my dad and me, so when our paths part we will always have that.
I know this for a fact: Earth is a corporeal game. The spirit, when it’s on Earth, has to play by corporeal rules. When spirits leave Earth, they exit the corporeal. The opportunity to create new experiences with them comes to a dead end.
My father is sitting under a blanket, shivering. He had chemo today.
He is admiring my gown. He is admiring my gown forever.
There is no way I am hemming this dress.
.
When I volunteered to work the Tango Colorado’s Christmas Party, the Snowball, they told me to wear silver and white.
Janice asked if I wanted to be a sexy, personable elf. Then I could wear a silly hat, too.
I am not sexy and I don’t like people, I told her.
Elizabeth offered me the role of elegant ice princess.
Hence the dress.
* * *
My father and I do not acknowledge the linearity of time. Everything that ever happened is happening now. All that was, is still. George Washington and his men at Valley Forge, Mother Teresa, Zeus. All present, all now.
How else that I can come home from tango, collapse on the couch, and still be dancing with a favorite lead? How else that I can feel the movement in my lungs and throat, feel my heart giddy, as I’m singing with Barbara? How else that I can be at rest in Lost Park with Keith, or at the beach on the brink of midnight with Michigan?
Keith likes to camp. He likes it because it is fun while it lasts and because he can relive the moments when his job gets boring. That’s what he calls it—reliving—because he is caught in the corporeal-temporal continuum.
My father and I are not saying corporeal time doesn’t exist. Night wears on. We are only saying that the linearity of time is a construct.
This is hard to explain. Back up and try again. Like rocking a car on ice.
Time and spirit exist in the ether. When they come to Earth, they must be “made flesh.” That is, they must be organized into corporeal units. Spirit is organized into people, time into moments. But while on Earth they take these forms, on the ethereal plane they continue to exist in their original state.
We experience time and people in the corporeal way. But the limits of our experience do not negate the ethereal existence of time and spirit.
What are creation stories but accounts of how the ethereal is reorganized into the material? One popular story describes how time was made sequential: He called the day day and the night night, and there was morning and evening on the first day.
Yes, this is becoming much more clear!
I would back up and try again, but at some point you have to admit the car is stuck.
* * *
Now my dad is old. Now my dad is sitting with me and my sisters as we read the parts of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I am so young I have to sound out the words; sibling Five-of-Six is so young she’s left out. (Six-of-Six has not been organized into a human unit yet.) We are all doing all that right this minute. Barbara right this minute is banging on her car with a stick because it won’t start. She is laughing maniacally. She is telling me I have fallen in love with Michigan before I actually have. Now I am in love with Michigan, now I love him dearly, now we are dear old friends. Right this minute is the night I discovered Walt Whitman. I am reading aloud, reading to the ethereal Walt, until the corporeal restakes its claim and dawn breaks:
There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
* * *
I am twirling before my father, showing off my gown before I hem it up.
It would not be wise for me to dance in a floor-length gown. I would catch my heel in the hem. Best case, I would tear it. Worst case, I would take us down, the lead and I and possibly a passer-by, too. I am that much a clutz.
It’s a beautiful gown, but it will also be beautiful at cocktail length. I must hem it up, or I won’t be able to dance at the Snowball.
He is looking at me as a father might look at a daughter going to the prom. A little wonder, a little surprise, at this glimpse of a part of me he has suspected but never seen. Also, he loves the gown.
“That’s one of the few floor-length dresses I’ve seen that I like,” he says.
“Thanks a lot,” my mother says. “What about my gowns?”
* * *
My father is getting on in years. I spend lots of time with him now.
Why? If it’s all the ethereal Big Now, why bother?
My father and I do not acknowledge the linearity of time. Everything that has happened is happening still.
The key word is happened. My father and I don’t argue with the idea that, for experience to exist, it has to have happened. We only deny that it stops. Everything that has happened is happening still.
Whatever happens now, will keep on happening. I want lots of experiences to happen with my dad and me, so when our paths part we will always have that.
I know this for a fact: Earth is a corporeal game. The spirit, when it’s on Earth, has to play by corporeal rules. When spirits leave Earth, they exit the corporeal. The opportunity to create new experiences with them comes to a dead end.
* * *
My father is sitting under a blanket, shivering. He had chemo today.
He is admiring my gown. He is admiring my gown forever.
There is no way I am hemming this dress.
.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Cabaceo Practice: Chicago
Nina encourages us to cabaceo outside of tango, just for the practice…
In the Chicago airport, leaning against a wall, waiting for my flight. A woman walks by. She is old and short, with mussed hair. Four hundred flights were canceled yesterday, it’s possible she slept here last night.
She crosses through my line of vision, catches my eye, looks straight at me and keeps looking. She smiles big, says Hi! in the wide-open Midwestern way. Then she veers toward me.
This is what happens. My family calls me the Nut Magnet. Often these encounters prove interesting; often they don’t end well.
When you meet a nutjob, you have to open up all of your borders, but keep an eye out. They can’t meet you halfway. You have to go deep into their territory to meet them, because they can’t leave their own turf. Often they don’t know how to navigate even within their own territory, so you have to wander with them at will, bending sticks and leaving signs to mark the way out.
(Or: They can navigate perfectly well, but their lead is so idiosyncratic you can’t read it.)
I like marginal nutjobs. I am comfy on their turf, I find it easy to follow their lead. Their inner landscape is certainly interesting. But today I don’t have the energy for it. I have been very social for five days. I need isolation. I want to get on the plane and into my seat and close my eyes on the world.
She is veering toward me. I am trapped against the wall. There is nowhere to turn, and even if there were, I wouldn’t do it. You don’t turn away from a person who looks into your eyes, says Hi! in the wide-open Midwestern way. You don’t hurt the feelings of a person like that.
I let her veer toward me. I let her continue to look into my eyes. I smile back.
Happy and friendly, she approaches. Then her trajectory tilts a few degrees. She turns her head, not looking where she is going, to keep her eyes locked on mine, even as she steps past me, through the door of the ladies’ room, which I have failed to notice on my immediate right.
"Our flight is on time," offers a man who has come to stand beside me.
He is wearing a striped shirt wrinkled and untucked. His brown hair is mussed, hanging over his forehead. He lounges against the newstand, one arm propped on the NYT box.
Again with the Midwestern way: breezy and mussed, unself-conscious. Brimming with the confidence to strike up a friendly conversation.
When people say Americans flaunt rules, they are wrong. This guy is not flaunting the rules of etiquette. His rules are different, his etiquette is based on the assumption that people like people.
"Look at the boards," he says, gesturing with the straw sticking out of a cold drink cup. "We’re one of the only flights that’s on time."
He likes people. He thinks I like people, too.
Shit.
This woman’s hair is a mane, rich brown and dark gold, sliding down her back like rain.
She wears dark clothes, fitted pants, tall boots with high heels. Her bag is huge, but she carries no luggage. I can’t see them, but I bet her earrings are hoops. I bet her makeup is detailed and subtle.
It’s a dated look, but it speaks.
The flight attendant calls our group to board. Chicago must be the only airport where people actually wait their turn.
I move toward the line, behind a man in an exceptional coat. We wait.
The woman rises from her chair, peruses the line, chooses her place. She steps into the space between the coat and I. At first this is really annoying: am I invisible? And then I see something cool:
This woman has just demonstrated the first step of cabaceo, as David Hodgson explains it: She is putting herself in position to be noticed. Standing in line, she is using her body language. Restrained, very classy—but wasted. The coat wants nothing but to get onto the plane.
We walk down the jetway. There is a cargoman near the end of it, packing up strollers. He says hello to her. The captain greets her. She did not get a nod from the man in the coat, but she gets plenty of others.
But wait. When the coat steps into his row in first class, she passes by. Looks. He says hello.
Yes!
I like this woman. She is clear and subtle. Her appearance makes an obvious statement, but only her eyes deliver the message. She is not asking for anything, she is only making herself visible, inviting.
This woman is the killer app of cabaceo.
Gracias, I say to the busboy.
I say it softly because I am not confident of my pronunciation. Also I don’t want to appear precious in front of my friends. The Hispanic culture is less integrated in Chicago than in Denver.
The busboy glances my way. Nods.
Cabaceo.
There are two little girls in a stroller on the tram at DIA. One is one year old, the other is three.
It is a back-to-back stroller. The one-year-old is facing forward, into the door of the tram. The older girl faces me. She is only a few feet away. The mother is there, but it is the end of a long flight and on this tram ride she is taking a little time for herself.
The older child is looking around, mostly at people’s shoes and their bags. Sometimes she tilts her head to look at her mother, or at various hands where they rest on suitcases or purses, or hold onto the tram’s bars and poles.
I wiggle my fingers. Hello. She glances at me and away. She looks at her mother’s knees, then back at me and away. She does not look again. It is impossible to tell whether the trip has made her restless and dissatisfied, or people don’t interest her, or she is shy.
The baby cranes her neck to look at all the people around her. When her eye catches mine, she looks a long time, as if she doesn’t quite know what to make of it. I smile, but she doesn’t. She turns back to the door.
Mulling over the trip and what comes next, I stare at the floor, at the shoes, at people’s bags and their hands where they rest or hold on.
In the Chicago airport, leaning against a wall, waiting for my flight. A woman walks by. She is old and short, with mussed hair. Four hundred flights were canceled yesterday, it’s possible she slept here last night.
She crosses through my line of vision, catches my eye, looks straight at me and keeps looking. She smiles big, says Hi! in the wide-open Midwestern way. Then she veers toward me.
This is what happens. My family calls me the Nut Magnet. Often these encounters prove interesting; often they don’t end well.
When you meet a nutjob, you have to open up all of your borders, but keep an eye out. They can’t meet you halfway. You have to go deep into their territory to meet them, because they can’t leave their own turf. Often they don’t know how to navigate even within their own territory, so you have to wander with them at will, bending sticks and leaving signs to mark the way out.
(Or: They can navigate perfectly well, but their lead is so idiosyncratic you can’t read it.)
I like marginal nutjobs. I am comfy on their turf, I find it easy to follow their lead. Their inner landscape is certainly interesting. But today I don’t have the energy for it. I have been very social for five days. I need isolation. I want to get on the plane and into my seat and close my eyes on the world.
She is veering toward me. I am trapped against the wall. There is nowhere to turn, and even if there were, I wouldn’t do it. You don’t turn away from a person who looks into your eyes, says Hi! in the wide-open Midwestern way. You don’t hurt the feelings of a person like that.
I let her veer toward me. I let her continue to look into my eyes. I smile back.
Happy and friendly, she approaches. Then her trajectory tilts a few degrees. She turns her head, not looking where she is going, to keep her eyes locked on mine, even as she steps past me, through the door of the ladies’ room, which I have failed to notice on my immediate right.
* * *
"Our flight is on time," offers a man who has come to stand beside me.
He is wearing a striped shirt wrinkled and untucked. His brown hair is mussed, hanging over his forehead. He lounges against the newstand, one arm propped on the NYT box.
Again with the Midwestern way: breezy and mussed, unself-conscious. Brimming with the confidence to strike up a friendly conversation.
When people say Americans flaunt rules, they are wrong. This guy is not flaunting the rules of etiquette. His rules are different, his etiquette is based on the assumption that people like people.
"Look at the boards," he says, gesturing with the straw sticking out of a cold drink cup. "We’re one of the only flights that’s on time."
He likes people. He thinks I like people, too.
Shit.
* * *
This woman’s hair is a mane, rich brown and dark gold, sliding down her back like rain.
She wears dark clothes, fitted pants, tall boots with high heels. Her bag is huge, but she carries no luggage. I can’t see them, but I bet her earrings are hoops. I bet her makeup is detailed and subtle.
It’s a dated look, but it speaks.
The flight attendant calls our group to board. Chicago must be the only airport where people actually wait their turn.
I move toward the line, behind a man in an exceptional coat. We wait.
The woman rises from her chair, peruses the line, chooses her place. She steps into the space between the coat and I. At first this is really annoying: am I invisible? And then I see something cool:
This woman has just demonstrated the first step of cabaceo, as David Hodgson explains it: She is putting herself in position to be noticed. Standing in line, she is using her body language. Restrained, very classy—but wasted. The coat wants nothing but to get onto the plane.
We walk down the jetway. There is a cargoman near the end of it, packing up strollers. He says hello to her. The captain greets her. She did not get a nod from the man in the coat, but she gets plenty of others.
But wait. When the coat steps into his row in first class, she passes by. Looks. He says hello.
Yes!
I like this woman. She is clear and subtle. Her appearance makes an obvious statement, but only her eyes deliver the message. She is not asking for anything, she is only making herself visible, inviting.
This woman is the killer app of cabaceo.
* * *
Gracias, I say to the busboy.
I say it softly because I am not confident of my pronunciation. Also I don’t want to appear precious in front of my friends. The Hispanic culture is less integrated in Chicago than in Denver.
The busboy glances my way. Nods.
Cabaceo.
* * *
There are two little girls in a stroller on the tram at DIA. One is one year old, the other is three.
It is a back-to-back stroller. The one-year-old is facing forward, into the door of the tram. The older girl faces me. She is only a few feet away. The mother is there, but it is the end of a long flight and on this tram ride she is taking a little time for herself.
The older child is looking around, mostly at people’s shoes and their bags. Sometimes she tilts her head to look at her mother, or at various hands where they rest on suitcases or purses, or hold onto the tram’s bars and poles.
I wiggle my fingers. Hello. She glances at me and away. She looks at her mother’s knees, then back at me and away. She does not look again. It is impossible to tell whether the trip has made her restless and dissatisfied, or people don’t interest her, or she is shy.
The baby cranes her neck to look at all the people around her. When her eye catches mine, she looks a long time, as if she doesn’t quite know what to make of it. I smile, but she doesn’t. She turns back to the door.
Mulling over the trip and what comes next, I stare at the floor, at the shoes, at people’s bags and their hands where they rest or hold on.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Great Moments in Tango Teaching: Corina, Part II
In my church, we call the disabled “differently abled.”
This is--let’s say it--stupid.
Sibling Five-of-Six’s legs have been disabled. She has not been gifted with a different ability to make up the loss. When she fell in an icy parking lot last fall, she did not find herself differently abled. She found herself stuck.
I, on the other hand, am differently abled.
I can write like a fiend. Can you? We are differently abled.
Five-of-Six can reach girls whose minds are so messed up they wish they were dead. In this way she is differently abled.
You can <<>> like nobody’s business. You are differently abled.
Some teachers are differently abled. Corina is one. I have resisted singing her praises too loud, lest I offend.
I have written circles around this. Rond de jambs. Turnabouts. Crop circles. Orbits. At the center of it all, the nut: Some teachers have a gift. What is its nature? I don’t know.
How is it that Corina, stopping me after a half-step, could say, You are having these troubles in tango, and here are the reasons why … and trace it not to a mistaken application of technique but to the way my body skews standard technique … and advise me on what to be aware of in my body so when I listen to teachers, I can alter their instructions to sit well on me. And how is it that she tapped into the whole discorporeal bit?
I think Corina has intuition and a gift to see the world in the certain way. When a person has a gift, that’s not something added onto their being. It is their being. They are not differently abled, they are differently existentialed.
Corina is a dancer and so she receives the world as movement and space and rhythm and relations and who knows what else. But she also has intuition, radar of the heart.
I think what makes Corina an exceptional teacher, what allows her to put her finger on everything all at once, with so little visible evidence, is that she senses and receives in the artists’ way—before or beside seeing and analyzing as teachers do.
In the fable The Little Prince, the title character says, “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
Like I said, I don’t know. I’m making all of this up. Based on my own experience, which is not necessarily relevant to her. Maybe they teach this in BA tango-teacher courses. Maybe she was just guessing.
I am not writing any more circles around this.
My private lesson with Corina was a Great Moment in Tango Teaching because it was art. If I am not enough of a writer to express it, so be it.
This is--let’s say it--stupid.
Sibling Five-of-Six’s legs have been disabled. She has not been gifted with a different ability to make up the loss. When she fell in an icy parking lot last fall, she did not find herself differently abled. She found herself stuck.
I, on the other hand, am differently abled.
I can write like a fiend. Can you? We are differently abled.
Five-of-Six can reach girls whose minds are so messed up they wish they were dead. In this way she is differently abled.
You can <<
Some teachers are differently abled. Corina is one. I have resisted singing her praises too loud, lest I offend.
I have written circles around this. Rond de jambs. Turnabouts. Crop circles. Orbits. At the center of it all, the nut: Some teachers have a gift. What is its nature? I don’t know.
How is it that Corina, stopping me after a half-step, could say, You are having these troubles in tango, and here are the reasons why … and trace it not to a mistaken application of technique but to the way my body skews standard technique … and advise me on what to be aware of in my body so when I listen to teachers, I can alter their instructions to sit well on me. And how is it that she tapped into the whole discorporeal bit?
I think Corina has intuition and a gift to see the world in the certain way. When a person has a gift, that’s not something added onto their being. It is their being. They are not differently abled, they are differently existentialed.
Corina is a dancer and so she receives the world as movement and space and rhythm and relations and who knows what else. But she also has intuition, radar of the heart.
I think what makes Corina an exceptional teacher, what allows her to put her finger on everything all at once, with so little visible evidence, is that she senses and receives in the artists’ way—before or beside seeing and analyzing as teachers do.
In the fable The Little Prince, the title character says, “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
Like I said, I don’t know. I’m making all of this up. Based on my own experience, which is not necessarily relevant to her. Maybe they teach this in BA tango-teacher courses. Maybe she was just guessing.
I am not writing any more circles around this.
My private lesson with Corina was a Great Moment in Tango Teaching because it was art. If I am not enough of a writer to express it, so be it.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Great Moments in Tango Teaching: Corina de la Rosa
We must do different things to achieve the same tango posture, because we are starting from different natural stances, Corina says.
This is a truth so obvious I want to slap my palm to my forehead.
At a glance Corina sizes up my stance: my shape and how I hold myself, where on the span of my arch my weight sits, how high my center floats, how my joints stack and lean like a house of cards.
Each bit and piece is part of the whole; every adjustment evokes ripple effects, she explains, though she doesn’t use that language. She uses the language of tango: relations.
The toe-bone is connected to the breast-bone to the thigh-bone to the finger-bone to the brain-bone to the heart. You are the sum of your relations.
But, Corina says,
One Heart, you are not connected to your body at all.
That's true. Body would be part of that whole corporeal gig, which I have sort of given up.
Listen, Corina says…
She reads the story of my body to me. Then she alters the story, one word at a time.
This is not tango, not yet. Nor is it body mechanics. This is introductions. Rapprochement.
Curious. Like easing back into the lake after a winter away. Saying hello to a stranger you sense you have known before.
Um...
Enchante, I say to my body.
Enchante, my body replies.
OK. Good! Good enough. You don't throw yourself at a stranger, even one you have known before.
Now Corina brings forward the tango. She tosses it into the air. It floats and settles like her blue silk dress.* With her words, she fits it to me.
I have understood tango as hard-molded plastic, I have contorted myself to conform to its contours.
Is this right? Is this right? I ask Corina.
When you are connected to your body, you will feel when it is right and you won’t have to ask, she says.
*Comitango video, 2000.
This is a truth so obvious I want to slap my palm to my forehead.
At a glance Corina sizes up my stance: my shape and how I hold myself, where on the span of my arch my weight sits, how high my center floats, how my joints stack and lean like a house of cards.
Each bit and piece is part of the whole; every adjustment evokes ripple effects, she explains, though she doesn’t use that language. She uses the language of tango: relations.
The toe-bone is connected to the breast-bone to the thigh-bone to the finger-bone to the brain-bone to the heart. You are the sum of your relations.
But, Corina says,
One Heart, you are not connected to your body at all.
That's true. Body would be part of that whole corporeal gig, which I have sort of given up.
Listen, Corina says…
She reads the story of my body to me. Then she alters the story, one word at a time.
This is not tango, not yet. Nor is it body mechanics. This is introductions. Rapprochement.
Curious. Like easing back into the lake after a winter away. Saying hello to a stranger you sense you have known before.
Um...
Enchante, I say to my body.
Enchante, my body replies.
OK. Good! Good enough. You don't throw yourself at a stranger, even one you have known before.
Now Corina brings forward the tango. She tosses it into the air. It floats and settles like her blue silk dress.* With her words, she fits it to me.
I have understood tango as hard-molded plastic, I have contorted myself to conform to its contours.
Is this right? Is this right? I ask Corina.
When you are connected to your body, you will feel when it is right and you won’t have to ask, she says.
*Comitango video, 2000.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
How We Learn How to Learn, Part II
“You can’t swim,” the camp director says.
Apparently, she hasn’t heard. I’m a little legend, a regular mermaid. (Read that story: go to October 11.)
“You’re out of breath,” she says.
I am. I have just completed a quarter mile of front crawl.
“You’re afraid of the water,” she says.
Excuse me?
I have earned every Red Cross swimming card this summer camp has to offer, including junior lifesaving and advanced survival. Thanks to the latter, I can jump off an aircraft carrier without breaking my nose. Surface through a burning oil slick and swim through the flames. Remove my jeans underwater and turn them into a life preserver as deftly as a clown can turn a balloon into a dachshund. Cross a deep, fast river without getting my gun or ammo (i.e., broom and backpack) wet.
Now I am taking the entrance exam for the capstone course: senior lifesaving. I am 16. Becoming a lifeguard would upgrade me from Kitchen Girl. I like working in the kitchen, but there is something more important to consider.
There are two kinds of Cool Counselors in camp: those who play guitar and those who work the waterfront. Only one person does both: Finnegan. She is the Coolest.
I already play guitar.
The only thing standing between me and double-whammy coolness is the camp director. She lets me finish the exam before delivering the news:
You can’t swim. You’re afraid of the water.
You have good form, the camp director says, but you’re uncomfortable with it.
How can she say that? It’s true, but how can she tell?
When I do the front crawl, I can’t get a full breath. There’s not enough time. I can swim that way for quite a long distance, but I always feel like I’m drowning. Still, I have good form. So how can she tell what I’m feeling?
My body insists on moving to its own rhythm, at its own pace, she says. The intrinsic rhythm of the front crawl is quick and steady. Most swimmers conform to the rhythm of the stroke. Because my body resists, the front crawl is always a battle.
I have not been taught badly, she adds. Red Cross instructors teach the stroke as they learned it. That’s what they know, and it works for most people.
The problem is that teachers teach from their own experience--but their experience may not be your best teacher.
The standard form will work for me, the camp director says, if I do it in a way that respects my natural rhythm. Instead of fitting myself to the stroke, fit the stroke to me.
Now when I swim, I always do the front crawl. It enhances the meditative mood that swimming creates in me. I inhale on a long, slow eight-count while my left arm saunters through its orbit, exhale on ten or twelve or sixteen counts while my right arm powers through. My legs lackadaisically flutter to no particular beat. I am the slowest swimmer I know, but I can do this meditative front crawl forever.
Apparently, she hasn’t heard. I’m a little legend, a regular mermaid. (Read that story: go to October 11.)
“You’re out of breath,” she says.
I am. I have just completed a quarter mile of front crawl.
“You’re afraid of the water,” she says.
Excuse me?
I have earned every Red Cross swimming card this summer camp has to offer, including junior lifesaving and advanced survival. Thanks to the latter, I can jump off an aircraft carrier without breaking my nose. Surface through a burning oil slick and swim through the flames. Remove my jeans underwater and turn them into a life preserver as deftly as a clown can turn a balloon into a dachshund. Cross a deep, fast river without getting my gun or ammo (i.e., broom and backpack) wet.
Now I am taking the entrance exam for the capstone course: senior lifesaving. I am 16. Becoming a lifeguard would upgrade me from Kitchen Girl. I like working in the kitchen, but there is something more important to consider.
There are two kinds of Cool Counselors in camp: those who play guitar and those who work the waterfront. Only one person does both: Finnegan. She is the Coolest.
I already play guitar.
The only thing standing between me and double-whammy coolness is the camp director. She lets me finish the exam before delivering the news:
You can’t swim. You’re afraid of the water.
You have good form, the camp director says, but you’re uncomfortable with it.
How can she say that? It’s true, but how can she tell?
When I do the front crawl, I can’t get a full breath. There’s not enough time. I can swim that way for quite a long distance, but I always feel like I’m drowning. Still, I have good form. So how can she tell what I’m feeling?
My body insists on moving to its own rhythm, at its own pace, she says. The intrinsic rhythm of the front crawl is quick and steady. Most swimmers conform to the rhythm of the stroke. Because my body resists, the front crawl is always a battle.
I have not been taught badly, she adds. Red Cross instructors teach the stroke as they learned it. That’s what they know, and it works for most people.
The problem is that teachers teach from their own experience--but their experience may not be your best teacher.
The standard form will work for me, the camp director says, if I do it in a way that respects my natural rhythm. Instead of fitting myself to the stroke, fit the stroke to me.
Now when I swim, I always do the front crawl. It enhances the meditative mood that swimming creates in me. I inhale on a long, slow eight-count while my left arm saunters through its orbit, exhale on ten or twelve or sixteen counts while my right arm powers through. My legs lackadaisically flutter to no particular beat. I am the slowest swimmer I know, but I can do this meditative front crawl forever.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Walk, Corina says
Walk, Corina says.
OK, I say.
Corina smiles. She is encouraging me.
I smile back. I am encouraging myself.
I slide one foot forward.
She shakes her head.
Mind you, I have not actually shifted my weight. Officially, I have not taken a single step.
Corina comes to stand beside me.
Stand, she says.
I have recently learned that I have terrible posture. Carefully, I arrange myself. I feel like a duck.
Stand natural, Corina says.
I stand upright.
She lifts her smock. Look how I stand, she says. Look how you stand.
I thought that we were standing just the same, that we only look different because she is curvy and I am a stick.
No, she says.
This is how I naturally stand, she says. She has a lovely s-shape, solid and dainty.
See how you naturally stand? she says. I am upright, but still my hips rest more forward than hers, my shoulders more back. My S-shape is there, but it is flatter than hers.
When I walk forward, I shift like this, Corina says. Sinuously, her S-shape changes. When I walk back, I don’t shift so much, because my relation (she means chest to hips to feet) is already there, she says.
Corina continues: When you walk forward, One Heart, you must shift differently than me, because you are in different relation. When you walk back, you need to shift even more. She demonstrates, and I copy her. Now her S-shape is exaggerated, but my S-shape is just right.
I look right. But I still feel like a duck. We move on.
What about lifting my energy, drawing it up from my center? I ask. Teachers often tell women to do that.
Not for you, Corina says. You are already too up. Draw down.
We must do different things to achieve the same posture, because we are starting from different natural stances, she says.
My heart perks up its ears.
Last May when I left my lesson with Corina, I felt quintessentially inadequate. Are there some people who are just so wrong they can never make it right? I wondered.
You have to be careful with a question like that lest it spread like a puddle in rain. Your reason must build a dike around your heart, or soon you will be doubting your Self. But reason is not always stronger than the heart’s attraction to the dangerous stranger. Then what?
Reason can be buttressed by evidence.
Corina stands next to me, her S-shape and mine.
I see.
My soul smiles. This I can work with.
OK, I say.
Corina smiles. She is encouraging me.
I smile back. I am encouraging myself.
I slide one foot forward.
She shakes her head.
Mind you, I have not actually shifted my weight. Officially, I have not taken a single step.
Corina comes to stand beside me.
Stand, she says.
I have recently learned that I have terrible posture. Carefully, I arrange myself. I feel like a duck.
Stand natural, Corina says.
I stand upright.
She lifts her smock. Look how I stand, she says. Look how you stand.
I thought that we were standing just the same, that we only look different because she is curvy and I am a stick.
No, she says.
This is how I naturally stand, she says. She has a lovely s-shape, solid and dainty.
See how you naturally stand? she says. I am upright, but still my hips rest more forward than hers, my shoulders more back. My S-shape is there, but it is flatter than hers.
When I walk forward, I shift like this, Corina says. Sinuously, her S-shape changes. When I walk back, I don’t shift so much, because my relation (she means chest to hips to feet) is already there, she says.
Corina continues: When you walk forward, One Heart, you must shift differently than me, because you are in different relation. When you walk back, you need to shift even more. She demonstrates, and I copy her. Now her S-shape is exaggerated, but my S-shape is just right.
I look right. But I still feel like a duck. We move on.
What about lifting my energy, drawing it up from my center? I ask. Teachers often tell women to do that.
Not for you, Corina says. You are already too up. Draw down.
We must do different things to achieve the same posture, because we are starting from different natural stances, she says.
My heart perks up its ears.
Last May when I left my lesson with Corina, I felt quintessentially inadequate. Are there some people who are just so wrong they can never make it right? I wondered.
You have to be careful with a question like that lest it spread like a puddle in rain. Your reason must build a dike around your heart, or soon you will be doubting your Self. But reason is not always stronger than the heart’s attraction to the dangerous stranger. Then what?
Reason can be buttressed by evidence.
Corina stands next to me, her S-shape and mine.
I see.
My soul smiles. This I can work with.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Julio and the Secret Handshake
.
“I’m nervous,” Andrey says.
This is how he greets me moments before our first class with Julio and Corina.
“No,” I remind him. “We are ready. Remember? You said it last Sunday. You said ‘We are ready!’”
He shrugs.
He leaves me no choice. I’ll have to be the confident one tonight.
Each of The Five has a reassuring move they make whenever I misstep badly. One moves his hand to my tense shoulder blades, which is cozy and much better than being ordered to “relax!” One says the F-word, to make me laugh. One holds me more securely because he knows my balance is the first thing to go. Glenlivet sails on, steady and calm; I think leads a step that gets me back on track, but he is so smooth I can’t be sure.
Andrey murmurs “Don’t worry” in a lighthearted voice. This disarms me.
Wednesday night, driving to the first lesson with Julio and Corina, I make a plan. Before the class begins, Andrey and I will tell each other, “Don’t worry.”
We will say it in just that lighthearted tone. It will be our secret handshake.
We don’t really need it. We are not worried. Andrey said it last Sunday: We are ready.
But now as class begins, Andrey says, "I'm nervous."
“Don’t worry,” I murmur.
"Dance!” Julio says.
Andrey squares his shoulders, looks right past me, over my shoulder. No grin. No secret handshake.
We walk around the floor. Julio stands in a corner, sizing up couples as they go by.
Andrey is a lead of great fortitude. His palm is damp, but he is walking right through me.
It’s quite lovely, actually. I forget we are being watched, close my eyes and enjoy the movement, until a murmur touches the edge of my reverie.
“Yes. Sir. Yes.”
Andrey does not respond. When the dance is over, I say, “Did you hear Julio when we danced by him? He said you’re doing well.”
“He was talking to us?” Andrey asks.
I am not sure. Grisha and Nina are dancing beside us. Perhaps that yes-ing was for Grisha, but I doubt it. He hardly needs to be told he can walk. And, anyway, does it matter? At this moment, Andrey needs the compliment more than Grisha does.
“He was talking to you,” I say.
By the end of the first class, Andrey has racked up four or five nods from Julio and Corina.
But now we are in the second class of the night. It’s a milonga class, and Julio and Corina have just demonstrated a tricky step that builds on a previous step that Andrey and I have not mastered.
Andrey is looking preoccupied and worried. He often looks like this when he is learning. One of the best things about learning with Andrey is watching the uncertainty morph into a grin when he gets the step right.
But he hasn’t got it right yet.
“Do it!” Julio shouts. As he brushes past us to turn on the music, he sees Andrey’s worried expression, says in a low, lighthearted voice:
“Don’t worry!”
“I’m nervous,” Andrey says.
This is how he greets me moments before our first class with Julio and Corina.
“No,” I remind him. “We are ready. Remember? You said it last Sunday. You said ‘We are ready!’”
He shrugs.
He leaves me no choice. I’ll have to be the confident one tonight.
* * *
Each of The Five has a reassuring move they make whenever I misstep badly. One moves his hand to my tense shoulder blades, which is cozy and much better than being ordered to “relax!” One says the F-word, to make me laugh. One holds me more securely because he knows my balance is the first thing to go. Glenlivet sails on, steady and calm; I think leads a step that gets me back on track, but he is so smooth I can’t be sure.
Andrey murmurs “Don’t worry” in a lighthearted voice. This disarms me.
Wednesday night, driving to the first lesson with Julio and Corina, I make a plan. Before the class begins, Andrey and I will tell each other, “Don’t worry.”
We will say it in just that lighthearted tone. It will be our secret handshake.
We don’t really need it. We are not worried. Andrey said it last Sunday: We are ready.
But now as class begins, Andrey says, "I'm nervous."
“Don’t worry,” I murmur.
* * *
"Dance!” Julio says.
Andrey squares his shoulders, looks right past me, over my shoulder. No grin. No secret handshake.
We walk around the floor. Julio stands in a corner, sizing up couples as they go by.
Andrey is a lead of great fortitude. His palm is damp, but he is walking right through me.
It’s quite lovely, actually. I forget we are being watched, close my eyes and enjoy the movement, until a murmur touches the edge of my reverie.
“Yes. Sir. Yes.”
Andrey does not respond. When the dance is over, I say, “Did you hear Julio when we danced by him? He said you’re doing well.”
“He was talking to us?” Andrey asks.
I am not sure. Grisha and Nina are dancing beside us. Perhaps that yes-ing was for Grisha, but I doubt it. He hardly needs to be told he can walk. And, anyway, does it matter? At this moment, Andrey needs the compliment more than Grisha does.
“He was talking to you,” I say.
* * *
By the end of the first class, Andrey has racked up four or five nods from Julio and Corina.
But now we are in the second class of the night. It’s a milonga class, and Julio and Corina have just demonstrated a tricky step that builds on a previous step that Andrey and I have not mastered.
Andrey is looking preoccupied and worried. He often looks like this when he is learning. One of the best things about learning with Andrey is watching the uncertainty morph into a grin when he gets the step right.
But he hasn’t got it right yet.
“Do it!” Julio shouts. As he brushes past us to turn on the music, he sees Andrey’s worried expression, says in a low, lighthearted voice:
“Don’t worry!”
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
We’re Ready, Andrey Says
Last Sunday afternoon at Patricia’s, Andrey and I have just had the best dance we’ve had in months.
This is the week of Julio and Corina. Andrey is going to be my partner for all of the classes.
I have spent summer and fall working like a dervish, trying to get the basic technique worked out. I think Andrey has had a hard-working summer, too. It seems that most of the times we dance, he is practicing something.
I am feeling good, satisfied that I have worked this dance into my bones as much as it will go.
Now I am letting it all go, dancing for pleasure.
I think Andrey is, too.
Sunday afternoon at Patricia’s, we’ve just had the best dance we’ve had in months. We are looking at one another with a little amazement.
Andrey smile comes on slowly, rises up to his eyes.
“We’re ready,” he says.
We are.
This is the week of Julio and Corina. Andrey is going to be my partner for all of the classes.
I have spent summer and fall working like a dervish, trying to get the basic technique worked out. I think Andrey has had a hard-working summer, too. It seems that most of the times we dance, he is practicing something.
I am feeling good, satisfied that I have worked this dance into my bones as much as it will go.
Now I am letting it all go, dancing for pleasure.
I think Andrey is, too.
Sunday afternoon at Patricia’s, we’ve just had the best dance we’ve had in months. We are looking at one another with a little amazement.
Andrey smile comes on slowly, rises up to his eyes.
“We’re ready,” he says.
We are.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Corina and Julio Here. One Heart on Air.
That's what Mary Alice wrote on the calendar a month ago. She likes to keep track of the house's comings and goings.
There are too many classes for her to note all of my comings and goings. Instead she drew a fine purple line running straight through to Sunday.
That line has been running through my life since last spring.
There are too many classes for her to note all of my comings and goings. Instead she drew a fine purple line running straight through to Sunday.
That line has been running through my life since last spring.
* * *
Last spring, when Julio and Corina came, I was a wreck. Lousy balance. No technique. Shyness out of control. Insane hunger on a stomach that refused all offers of food …
This is an old story. Let’s just say there were many tears and many hot, soothing baths.
For a month after, I was a shipwreck. Think Titanic. Then I got tired of myself.
* * *
Six months in, six months out: The end of My Tango Year was well in sight.
A deadline! My life’s organizing principle.
I put the shy girl away. Gave the left brain the lead.
I am really good at strategic planning. Here’s my secret:
Focus.
If you had only six months to live, what would you do?
I would be kind every chance I get, and I would dance as beautifully as Corina de la Rosa.
I signed up for all of Nina’s follower’s classes. Joined the Grisha Groupies, traipsing from Blue Ice to Patricia’s house to the Mercury, wherever he was teaching.
You don’t have good posture, he said. Dancers should always have good posture in class, even when they are listening to the teacher talk. I started watching Glenlivet, started standing up straight.
By (foolish) choice, I found myself suddenly homeless. But there’s good news in that: Living like a vagabond frees up plenty of cash for tango!
I signed on for weekly private lessons with Grisha. When the follower’s classes ended, I signed on for privates with Nina, too.
I raided the Tango Colorado video library, watched Julio and Corina in performances and lessons.
Practiced like mad with all my inanimate partners: the piesafe, the Swiffer, the kitchen counter, one of Mary Alice’s shoes placed just so on the floor.
I worked like a dervish. Very determined. Loving it very much.
Finally it happened: One night in a private, Nina began to laugh wickedly, laughed and laughed as we swept around the floor.
“One Heart, you’ve got it, you’ve got it!” she whooped.
A few days later I went to my lesson with Grisha. (Heh-heh-heh. I am going to knock his socks off!)
Not so much.
He looked puzzled. He said I feel odd.
Inside my head I swore like a sailor. Inside my car on the drive home I cried.
Went into hiding. Avoided Blue Ice. Patricia’s. The Turn. The Merc.
Despaired.
How does a thing like this happen?
I can’t quit. There’s a challenge with a bright, pretty promise. I could never resist a challenge, nor a bright, pretty promise.
I am only despairing. This is no reason to quit. Weak-kneed and hopeless, I carry on.
.
.
.
Click!
.
.
.
Weak-kneed! Who knew?
Since the day it clicked, I have gone on a dancing binge. I am afraid if I don’t dance every single night, I will lose it.
The Rule of Five (the list of men I would dance with) went out the window. I have to keep trying out my dance on every body type, every size and shape and gender.
I rarely practice alone any more. My inanimate partners miss me. I miss The Man on the Wall.
* * *
Finally, it comes down to last Friday.
“Don’t try to impress them,” Grisha is saying. He is coaching me on the coming week. I am taking privates with both Julio and Corina, and seven classes.
As if.
More likely I will fall off a chair while putting on my shoes, as I did in my first private lesson.
Grisha talks a little bit more about what to expect, washing away the last bit of anxiety. I like to know what to expect.
During the last dance of the day, I give it one final grill. Am I doing this right?
Yes, he says.
Hips? Knees? Wings? Right? Right? Right?
It's OK, he says.
Well, then. That’s it. I'm prepared.
Now I turn it all off. Relax. Eat. Dance. Read a book.
Julio and Corina are coming.
I can feel myself growing lighter.
One Heart on air.
Monday, November 12, 2007
Why I Don't Lead
Last night I decided to go to the Avalon, the cool new tango venue in Boulder, just 40 miles north of Denver.
I left at 6:30. Drove on the highway called I-25 to Boulder, missed the exit, drove north quite a way, noticed something wasn't working, turned around, missed the exit to Boulder on the way back down, drove south several miles, turned around, headed back toward Boulder.
Saw the exit for Foothills Parkway/Table Mesa Drive.
I knew one of them had to be the right one. Somone told me they take Foothills Parkway to Table Mesa Drive.
I remember this is quite an easy drive. After you turn right on Foothills Parkway (or possibly Table Mesa Drive), you just keep going until you find the Avalon.
I took Foothills Parkway. There was no right turn, but I kept going.
I found Longmont, 20 miles east of Boulder. Turned around, found Boulder again.
Apparently missed an exit because Foothills Parkway suddenly transformed into the highway I-25, going back to Denver.
After 2.5 hours in the car ... I arrived at a different milonga, this one at the restaurant Little Europe, which is 15 minutes from my house.
The music was lovely, the company was fine, but it was not what I intended.
Best I don't lead, really.
Sorry.
I left at 6:30. Drove on the highway called I-25 to Boulder, missed the exit, drove north quite a way, noticed something wasn't working, turned around, missed the exit to Boulder on the way back down, drove south several miles, turned around, headed back toward Boulder.
Saw the exit for Foothills Parkway/Table Mesa Drive.
I knew one of them had to be the right one. Somone told me they take Foothills Parkway to Table Mesa Drive.
I remember this is quite an easy drive. After you turn right on Foothills Parkway (or possibly Table Mesa Drive), you just keep going until you find the Avalon.
I took Foothills Parkway. There was no right turn, but I kept going.
I found Longmont, 20 miles east of Boulder. Turned around, found Boulder again.
Apparently missed an exit because Foothills Parkway suddenly transformed into the highway I-25, going back to Denver.
After 2.5 hours in the car ... I arrived at a different milonga, this one at the restaurant Little Europe, which is 15 minutes from my house.
The music was lovely, the company was fine, but it was not what I intended.
Best I don't lead, really.
Sorry.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Norman Mailer Does Tango
“Even processed paper still contains an ineluctable hint of the tenderness God put into his trees.” (Mailer, The Castle in the Forest)
A man who could write a sentence like that, who could place those words in the Devil's mouth, is a man who would tango naked.
Not undressed. Tango is not sex. It is revelation.
There is no such thing as safe revelation.
Mailer’s tango would be untamed. Entering his embrace, you would know you are crossing the line. You’re never safe with Mailer.
His tango would not be pretty; his ego has no respect for the bounds of musicality. No respect for your boundaries, either.
Mailer’s tango would be all visceral, all aggression and tenderness. He would charge, he would walk right through you. Gathering you to his breast, he would carry you as part of his heart.
He would not ask permission. He would not let you wriggle away.
Mailer had his own way of saying “namaste.” In his mouth, it didn’t mean “the sweetness in me recognizes the sweetness in you.” It delivered a blow, the greeting of one raging ego cherishing the same in another.
Aggression and tenderness. Ego and oneness. Tango.
P.S.
To NM: Sorry about the earlier entry, especially the bacon. Forgot you were Jewish. Had no idea the health you were in. Got carried away by the rhythm of my rant.
(I want to delete the old post now. It seems small-minded, not the lovely One Heart I’d like to present to the world. What would Mr. Mailer do?
“He never committed the ugliness of insinuating that he screwed up for art’s sake. He let the ugliness and the imprudence of his actions speak for themselves.” [NYT])
OK, it stays. Namaste, baby.
A man who could write a sentence like that, who could place those words in the Devil's mouth, is a man who would tango naked.
Not undressed. Tango is not sex. It is revelation.
There is no such thing as safe revelation.
Mailer’s tango would be untamed. Entering his embrace, you would know you are crossing the line. You’re never safe with Mailer.
His tango would not be pretty; his ego has no respect for the bounds of musicality. No respect for your boundaries, either.
Mailer’s tango would be all visceral, all aggression and tenderness. He would charge, he would walk right through you. Gathering you to his breast, he would carry you as part of his heart.
He would not ask permission. He would not let you wriggle away.
Mailer had his own way of saying “namaste.” In his mouth, it didn’t mean “the sweetness in me recognizes the sweetness in you.” It delivered a blow, the greeting of one raging ego cherishing the same in another.
Aggression and tenderness. Ego and oneness. Tango.
P.S.
To NM: Sorry about the earlier entry, especially the bacon. Forgot you were Jewish. Had no idea the health you were in. Got carried away by the rhythm of my rant.
(I want to delete the old post now. It seems small-minded, not the lovely One Heart I’d like to present to the world. What would Mr. Mailer do?
“He never committed the ugliness of insinuating that he screwed up for art’s sake. He let the ugliness and the imprudence of his actions speak for themselves.” [NYT])
OK, it stays. Namaste, baby.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
In Memory, Norman Mailer
In January of this year, The New York Times Book Review ran an article “Maestro of the Human Ego,” reviewing Norman Mailer’s last novel, The Castle in the Forest.
The reviewer took nearly four pages of tiny type to get to the book at hand; all that came before was big-picture analysis of the author’s beliefs and being, and how they evolved over 60 years to arrive at this grand work.
Readers wrote to complain. Who did the reviewer think he was, wasting their time on context?
But the reviewer knew this: The Castle in the Forest would be Mailer’s last major work. (His final book was already posthumous, prepared with the help of his literary executor.)
The review eulogized Mailer’s whole body of work, the only eulogy a writer needs. After a summer of near-homelessness, the article is still here in my briefcase, wrinkled and marked up and torn:
“Insofar as the forest represents natural goodness … ‘forest’ and ‘castle’ are, you might say, the two poles of Mailer’s work and life. The popular conception of Mailer sees only the former: unrestrained expression of impulses and instincts; sex as freedom; absolute candor as the ineluctable hint of God’s presence.
“But Mailer is also … a castle-builder, expert in the different paths along which people can wander and become lost in a forest without a castle, and yet trick themselves into thinking that they inhabit a resplendent fortress or chateau.”
Mailer is the next great American writer after Hemingway. You almost have to compare them.
Hemingway was a romantic. He fought in WWI, when the world still believed in regeneration through violence. He chronicled disillusioned romantics who were oriented always to what they had lost. In the end, he could not bear the disorientation, could not reorient himself to postmodernism. It’s no wonder he couldn’t survive the 1960s, a blessing he never survived to the ’70s.
Mailer fought in the war of Catch-22. The death of romanticism left a void. Mailer filled it with himself.
End of story? No. Only the beginning. Mailer’s tendency is to communion.
You shouldn’t reveal so much, Carleen tells me.
Why not? I ask.
She shrugs.
Mailer argues for me: You are never safer than in plain sight. Naked truth is power. Don’t let others usurp it. They are pretenders to your throne.
Own your ego. Reveal your Self. Say it all. Get naked in public, or don't go out in public at all.
The NYT reviewer says this:
“One way to take the measure of a writer is by considering the weight, quality and consistency of his obsessions. Mailer, from the beginning, has had a rage for what he calls ‘nakedness.’
“It is a passion for emptying his psyche onto the table in front of the reader, much as a person who has just been arrested will be ordered by the police to empty his pockets.”
And this:
“The overflowing force of Mailer’s egotism endows him with respect for the power and capacity of other people’s egos.”
The reviewer took nearly four pages of tiny type to get to the book at hand; all that came before was big-picture analysis of the author’s beliefs and being, and how they evolved over 60 years to arrive at this grand work.
Readers wrote to complain. Who did the reviewer think he was, wasting their time on context?
But the reviewer knew this: The Castle in the Forest would be Mailer’s last major work. (His final book was already posthumous, prepared with the help of his literary executor.)
The review eulogized Mailer’s whole body of work, the only eulogy a writer needs. After a summer of near-homelessness, the article is still here in my briefcase, wrinkled and marked up and torn:
“Insofar as the forest represents natural goodness … ‘forest’ and ‘castle’ are, you might say, the two poles of Mailer’s work and life. The popular conception of Mailer sees only the former: unrestrained expression of impulses and instincts; sex as freedom; absolute candor as the ineluctable hint of God’s presence.
“But Mailer is also … a castle-builder, expert in the different paths along which people can wander and become lost in a forest without a castle, and yet trick themselves into thinking that they inhabit a resplendent fortress or chateau.”
* * *
Mailer is the next great American writer after Hemingway. You almost have to compare them.
Hemingway was a romantic. He fought in WWI, when the world still believed in regeneration through violence. He chronicled disillusioned romantics who were oriented always to what they had lost. In the end, he could not bear the disorientation, could not reorient himself to postmodernism. It’s no wonder he couldn’t survive the 1960s, a blessing he never survived to the ’70s.
Mailer fought in the war of Catch-22. The death of romanticism left a void. Mailer filled it with himself.
End of story? No. Only the beginning. Mailer’s tendency is to communion.
* * *
You shouldn’t reveal so much, Carleen tells me.
Why not? I ask.
She shrugs.
Mailer argues for me: You are never safer than in plain sight. Naked truth is power. Don’t let others usurp it. They are pretenders to your throne.
Own your ego. Reveal your Self. Say it all. Get naked in public, or don't go out in public at all.
* * *
The NYT reviewer says this:
“One way to take the measure of a writer is by considering the weight, quality and consistency of his obsessions. Mailer, from the beginning, has had a rage for what he calls ‘nakedness.’
“It is a passion for emptying his psyche onto the table in front of the reader, much as a person who has just been arrested will be ordered by the police to empty his pockets.”
And this:
“The overflowing force of Mailer’s egotism endows him with respect for the power and capacity of other people’s egos.”
Friday, November 9, 2007
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Dropping Back to Move Ahead
Did you know that in Germany, memoir is sold in the fiction section of bookstores?
No wonder.
People writing 30 years after the fact aren't likely to give you the fact. For example:
1.
Thirty years after the fact, who remembers exactly what was said?
(Frank McCourt answers testily: Of course I remember exactly. If a conversation weren’t that important, I wouldn’t include it at all!)
2.
How can you be sure you are telling what really happened, and not your own interpretation clouded by sentimentality, face-saving, sibling rivalry, general cussedness, lousy coffee or the need to make sense of things from a 30-years-later perspective?
(Norman Mailer’s answer: *&!?^!
Oh wait. That’s Norman Mailer’s answer to everything. [Imagine him in his bathrobe and slippers, rat’s nest hair, bleary eyes—hung over if your imagination serves him up young, hacking his lungs out if you get the current picture. The maid comes in as she does every morning: “What do you want for breakfast?” Mailer replies: *&!?^! The maid brings him bacon and toast and coffee, as she does every day. Mailer falls upon it with gusto. “You’re welcome,” she drawls on her way back to the kitchen, where fresh fruit and croissants await her. “*&!?^!” Mailer barks. Bacon bits tumble into the scrubby brush he calls whiskers.]
That’s the short answer. Mailer gave his long answer in Armies of the Night.)
Life is a school of dolphins. If you want to write memoir, you have to be able to see the school for the fish.
All those arcs, rising and falling ...
… on one shared trajectory.
(Not to mention the tuna, which apparently lacks the cuddliness of dolphins. Save the dolphins! Can the tuna!
[Shane, is that you? Get out of my blog!])
Many story arcs, each independent, rising and falling not in concert, on a shared trajectory, with the occasional tuna. That’s life.
Memoir is not about life. It’s about trajectory.
How can you plot the trajectory while you are in it?
Here’s a proverb:
God helps those who help themselves.
This means:
Never trust life. Trust your ability to follow its lead.
The same goes for writing.
(And your tango partner.)
Tom Stermitz says tango is a Rorschach blot: everyone reads into it what they will.
From the second Shane asked me to join tango, I knew what my blot would be. Blots change their shape but never their nature.
Once you know your blot, you can pretty much see your dolphins. All those arcs. That trajectory. The nets.
Here’s what I’ve learned about writing memoir in the moment:
No matter how good your memory or ubiquitous your notes, you’re going to have to fill in some gaps.
Memoir is sleight of hand. I am a magician of literary technique, a master of strategic omission.
It's impossible to avoid the temptation to infuse experience with meaning. Or to mess with readers' heads.
A researcher should never become involved in her subject.
A writer can devise more distractions and avoidance mechanisms than you can imagine. News items. Photos. Poems. Riffs on Normal Mailer.
Eventually you empty your bag of tricks.
I am becoming visible. So are you. This is a slippery slope.
No wonder people don’t write memoir as it happens.
No wonder.
People writing 30 years after the fact aren't likely to give you the fact. For example:
1.
Thirty years after the fact, who remembers exactly what was said?
(Frank McCourt answers testily: Of course I remember exactly. If a conversation weren’t that important, I wouldn’t include it at all!)
2.
How can you be sure you are telling what really happened, and not your own interpretation clouded by sentimentality, face-saving, sibling rivalry, general cussedness, lousy coffee or the need to make sense of things from a 30-years-later perspective?
(Norman Mailer’s answer: *&!?^!
Oh wait. That’s Norman Mailer’s answer to everything. [Imagine him in his bathrobe and slippers, rat’s nest hair, bleary eyes—hung over if your imagination serves him up young, hacking his lungs out if you get the current picture. The maid comes in as she does every morning: “What do you want for breakfast?” Mailer replies: *&!?^! The maid brings him bacon and toast and coffee, as she does every day. Mailer falls upon it with gusto. “You’re welcome,” she drawls on her way back to the kitchen, where fresh fruit and croissants await her. “*&!?^!” Mailer barks. Bacon bits tumble into the scrubby brush he calls whiskers.]
That’s the short answer. Mailer gave his long answer in Armies of the Night.)
* * *
What if there was another way to write memoir?
What if you could write your memoir with the immediacy of a war correspondent?
What if you eliminated the possibility of retrospection and the imperative to make sense of things, to impose an order on experience so that the whole long arc of your life's story makes sense?
What if instead of starting inside your head (with the story you have told yourself about your experience for the past 30 years), you started outside your head (with your experience as it happens), and worked your way in?
What if you approached the writing in such a way that authenticity displaced literary construct?
What would all of that do to fact, memory, subjectivity? Would the memoir remain literature or become merely a diary?
This blog is my literary experiment: Memoir in the moment.
* * *
Life is a school of dolphins. If you want to write memoir, you have to be able to see the school for the fish.
All those arcs, rising and falling ...
… on one shared trajectory.
(Not to mention the tuna, which apparently lacks the cuddliness of dolphins. Save the dolphins! Can the tuna!
[Shane, is that you? Get out of my blog!])
Many story arcs, each independent, rising and falling not in concert, on a shared trajectory, with the occasional tuna. That’s life.
Memoir is not about life. It’s about trajectory.
* * *
How can you plot the trajectory while you are in it?
Here’s a proverb:
God helps those who help themselves.
This means:
Never trust life. Trust your ability to follow its lead.
The same goes for writing.
(And your tango partner.)
* * *
Tom Stermitz says tango is a Rorschach blot: everyone reads into it what they will.
From the second Shane asked me to join tango, I knew what my blot would be. Blots change their shape but never their nature.
Once you know your blot, you can pretty much see your dolphins. All those arcs. That trajectory. The nets.
* * *
Here’s what I’ve learned about writing memoir in the moment:
No matter how good your memory or ubiquitous your notes, you’re going to have to fill in some gaps.
Memoir is sleight of hand. I am a magician of literary technique, a master of strategic omission.
It's impossible to avoid the temptation to infuse experience with meaning. Or to mess with readers' heads.
A researcher should never become involved in her subject.
A writer can devise more distractions and avoidance mechanisms than you can imagine. News items. Photos. Poems. Riffs on Normal Mailer.
Eventually you empty your bag of tricks.
I am becoming visible. So are you. This is a slippery slope.
No wonder people don’t write memoir as it happens.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
My neural pathways are becoming accustomed to the sensory input patterns of tango*
Something has happened.
People call me by name. I recognize their faces and ways.
I have become a fixture at the door of the Turn, taking money and greeting people. Every week, a certain lead walks out the door at the beginning of the community dance. He averts his face as if that renders him invisible. I couldn’t pick him out of a crowd, but in that moment I know him.
I eat even on days I have tango.
A tanguera whom I admire told me my dance is coming along.
Leads have begun to invite me to dance. I accept dances with those who attend the same classes I do ...
… and with one who doesn’t.
I can make my presence felt in the embrace.
The girlie-quotient is rising. Still, I never do faux, flash, skin. Except when I wear the biker-bitch cropped-and-zippered vest that Andrea insisted I buy, along with an earring made from a real saw blade. It’s a pretty cool outfit. What with the cigarette-leg pants and stilettos and all.
I wear it once a year, at the Denver festival alternative milonga, Well, yes, there are two festivals each year. So that’s twice.
And on Halloween.
But that’s all.
I make eye contact. Every few weeks I try the cabaceo.
I changed the time I work at the door of the Turn so I am free during the community dance. Normally I go home. Twice I followed The Man with the Averted Face outside. (I pretend I don’t see him; he pretends he doesn’t see me.) Once I joined in the dance.
I let some people do the tango greeting thing on me—hugs, cheek-kisses, whatever. Not everyone. Some.
I once kissed a lead on the cheek. Voluntarily.
I have gained five pounds.
I engage in social contact outside of tango venues: I send email. I returned a call from a classmate.
When I walk into a milonga, I look to see who is there.
I recognize shoes.
I am no longer around tango but of it.
I am becoming visible. So are you.
This is the prelude and the conclusion.
___________
(*The title is a quote from Data, Star Trek Generations. With a few changes. He didn't dance tango. Too bad.)
People call me by name. I recognize their faces and ways.
I have become a fixture at the door of the Turn, taking money and greeting people. Every week, a certain lead walks out the door at the beginning of the community dance. He averts his face as if that renders him invisible. I couldn’t pick him out of a crowd, but in that moment I know him.
I eat even on days I have tango.
A tanguera whom I admire told me my dance is coming along.
Leads have begun to invite me to dance. I accept dances with those who attend the same classes I do ...
… and with one who doesn’t.
I can make my presence felt in the embrace.
The girlie-quotient is rising. Still, I never do faux, flash, skin. Except when I wear the biker-bitch cropped-and-zippered vest that Andrea insisted I buy, along with an earring made from a real saw blade. It’s a pretty cool outfit. What with the cigarette-leg pants and stilettos and all.
I wear it once a year, at the Denver festival alternative milonga, Well, yes, there are two festivals each year. So that’s twice.
And on Halloween.
But that’s all.
I make eye contact. Every few weeks I try the cabaceo.
I changed the time I work at the door of the Turn so I am free during the community dance. Normally I go home. Twice I followed The Man with the Averted Face outside. (I pretend I don’t see him; he pretends he doesn’t see me.) Once I joined in the dance.
I let some people do the tango greeting thing on me—hugs, cheek-kisses, whatever. Not everyone. Some.
I once kissed a lead on the cheek. Voluntarily.
I have gained five pounds.
I engage in social contact outside of tango venues: I send email. I returned a call from a classmate.
When I walk into a milonga, I look to see who is there.
I recognize shoes.
I am no longer around tango but of it.
I am becoming visible. So are you.
This is the prelude and the conclusion.
___________
(*The title is a quote from Data, Star Trek Generations. With a few changes. He didn't dance tango. Too bad.)
Monday, November 5, 2007
Less Ego, More Work
Have you given up the blog? Stan asks.
We are between dances, a time for chit-chat. But this is no idle question, not for me.
As a matter of fact, Stan and I don’t do chit-chat so much any more, not since he learned I write this blog. He wrote a note to the Tango Colorado listserv, I responded as One Heart, and he answered back: Who are you?
Uh-oh.
I don’t tell. When asked I keep quiet. I change the subject. If pressed I evade the truth. A few weeks ago someone pressed hard, and I lied.
Anonymity is at the core of this kind of writing. All researchers struggle with the same constraint: The presence of the observer influences the outcome.
I learned this on the job. As an investigative reporter I infiltrated an Ozark hillbilly religious revival. My colleague infiltrated the local KKK. (He got the plum assignment, but mine was the more dangerous one: If he screwed up, he got tossed on the bonfire; if I screwed up, I burned in Hell.)
Anonymity allowed us to get our scoops. If people know you’re observing them, they act like the people they’d like to be rather than the people they are. In a word, they become self-conscious.
Clearly, it would be unwise to tell.
Nice story, if you can get someone to buy it.
In truth, I know better. It is not they who are self-conscious, it is I. I can’t do anything right when people are paying attention.
This works well for writing
... but presents a challenge for tango.
To solve it, I dance very light. This says to my partner: Carry on! Don’t mind me, I’m not really here.
When I was a beginner, my primary concern was to stay out of the way of my partner. My teachers reinforced this. They instructed the leads: “She is your puppet” and “Walk right through her.” They instructed the women, “Don’t think!” They said, “It’s always the fault of the lead,” allowing the follower no agency, not even in her own missteps. When you’re a beginning tanguera, it’s easy to feel like an accessory.
I don’t mind. I like being around things but not of them.
The beginning leads make it easy: They are the Henry Fords of tango, all about interchangeable parts. They have been told that I am their puppet. Absorbed in the assembly of their own dance, they notice me only when I snafu the line. They stop and tinker with me. Then we restart, but it is hard to get rolling again. Now they are aware of me, and I can’t do anything right.
Ah … see how that works? How, as truth circles close, we shift the focus to someone else? Surely my obsession with invisibility is the fault of … of course, how convenient! Like everything else, it’s the fault of the lead!
This shift of focus is a neat trick, especially useful to mystery writers. The more convincing the writer, the more fun for the reader-detective.
I am a lousy mystery writer; I cannot even fool myself.
I like dancing with beginners because they are so intent on their own dance they pay no attention to me. I like being a beginner for the same reason.
That said, there’s no time when it’s more important to be a perfect, interchangeable puppet-part than in a group class. The leads are struggling to learn the pattern of a new step and to communicate that pattern to the follower. They struggle to master the bare bones and then to give it panache. That’s a lot to assemble in a one-hour class. Especially when you are trading out puppets every two minutes. In this setting, the least I can do is be perfect. Do not snag his attention on missteps. Stay out of his way, be his puppet.
I like group classes for this reason. It is impossible to be so perfect as to be invisible, but it is a good challenge.
Private lessons are different.
Here I am solid and real. This is my time, for my dance. In the puppet-master’s workroom, the puppet gets worked over.
You think the teacher is the puppet-master, but don’t be so quick. I am of the family of Pinocchio—a puppet with ambition.
Whatever the teacher offers, I ask for more: more clarification, more retakes, more time to figure things out on my body, more technique, more cool moves, more retakes. When I am satisfied, we move on.
In private lessons, the teacher and I are a team; my body is the puppet we work on together.
I am both student and teacher. All eyes are on me, including my own.
When I am a student, I am a beginner again, so intent on my dance I pay no attention to me.
And thus become visible.
.
After the Labor Day Festival, I was twitchy and jittery and sure to slap any lead who got near me. As a service to the men of Tango Colorado, I avoided every class and gathering. Until the appointment for my private lesson with Grisha.
He’s an exceptional teacher. A dreamy lead. From all indications, a nice person. Surely he doesn’t deserve to be slapped.
I tell myself this as I drive across town, walk up the sidewalk, ring the bell.
Seconds away from a tango lesson, I’m poised to jump out of my skin.
What to do?
When the teens I work with are having a bad day, I set out a box and tell them to toss their junk in it. They can pick it up when they walk out the door. But while they’re with me, it stays in the box.
Grisha has a different solution.
He brings out new, tricky moves. He hammers away on technique. The person of me is put away. Grisha and I work over the puppet. We work its ass off. I am a beginner again, so intent on my own dance I pay no attention to me.
.
“In the end … your initial fear becomes a fake fear—just a manifestation of your ego. I didn’t want to waste my time asking myself, Will I be good or not good? I realized I just had to have less ego and do more work.”
When Stan wrote, “Who are you?” I did not write back. I don’t tell.
But.
Stan first invited me to dance when I was a rank beginner, dressed in bulky layers and ratty shoes. Striving to be light. Incorporeal.
In his dance there were no surprises; no steps I couldn’t do well. Or if (more likely) there were, he never let on. Trusting his lead I could forget myself, forget him, lose myself in the dance.
I have a soft spot for the leads who danced well with me when I was awful. So the next time we danced, I told him, “I am One Heart Dancing.”
We finished the tanda. We chatted briefly. Nothing changed. Only the silence was broken.
(The flit of a butterfly’s wings in Buenos Aires affects the weather in Moscow.)
Since then, Stan occasionally mentions the blog, tells me what he thinks. He likes my writing. I like his thinking.
Now he is looking at me with a kindly, I’ve-been-around-the-block-a few-times-myself openness that elicits honesty—not the skirt-the-truth kind, but the come-clean kind. He is waiting for me to answer his question,
which, in case you have forgotten, is,
“Have you given up the blog?”
I have been asking myself the same question--and dodging the answer. I would like to dodge some more, but at this moment, face-to-face, I can’t serve up a flippant flapjack answer.
So I tell the truth: I’ve been overwhelmed. Not the “I’m busy” kind of overwhelmed but the “I want to go to bed and stay under the covers until the year 2010” kind.
And what is it that has been so overwhelming? Here it is, in the form of a series of thought experiments:
I think, therefore I am. (Descartes)
How do I know what I think until I see what I say? (e. e. cummings)
If I can’t do anything when people are watching
...how can I write when I know you are reading?
If I can’t write, how can I see what I say?
… and therefore know what I think?
… and therefore know who I am?
... or (yikes!)
... that I am?
And lest you think it’s all about me:
Who would you be without your story?
Oh hell, let’s dance.
We are between dances, a time for chit-chat. But this is no idle question, not for me.
As a matter of fact, Stan and I don’t do chit-chat so much any more, not since he learned I write this blog. He wrote a note to the Tango Colorado listserv, I responded as One Heart, and he answered back: Who are you?
Uh-oh.
I don’t tell. When asked I keep quiet. I change the subject. If pressed I evade the truth. A few weeks ago someone pressed hard, and I lied.
Anonymity is at the core of this kind of writing. All researchers struggle with the same constraint: The presence of the observer influences the outcome.
I learned this on the job. As an investigative reporter I infiltrated an Ozark hillbilly religious revival. My colleague infiltrated the local KKK. (He got the plum assignment, but mine was the more dangerous one: If he screwed up, he got tossed on the bonfire; if I screwed up, I burned in Hell.)
Anonymity allowed us to get our scoops. If people know you’re observing them, they act like the people they’d like to be rather than the people they are. In a word, they become self-conscious.
Clearly, it would be unwise to tell.
* * *
Nice story, if you can get someone to buy it.
In truth, I know better. It is not they who are self-conscious, it is I. I can’t do anything right when people are paying attention.
This works well for writing
... but presents a challenge for tango.
To solve it, I dance very light. This says to my partner: Carry on! Don’t mind me, I’m not really here.
When I was a beginner, my primary concern was to stay out of the way of my partner. My teachers reinforced this. They instructed the leads: “She is your puppet” and “Walk right through her.” They instructed the women, “Don’t think!” They said, “It’s always the fault of the lead,” allowing the follower no agency, not even in her own missteps. When you’re a beginning tanguera, it’s easy to feel like an accessory.
I don’t mind. I like being around things but not of them.
The beginning leads make it easy: They are the Henry Fords of tango, all about interchangeable parts. They have been told that I am their puppet. Absorbed in the assembly of their own dance, they notice me only when I snafu the line. They stop and tinker with me. Then we restart, but it is hard to get rolling again. Now they are aware of me, and I can’t do anything right.
Ah … see how that works? How, as truth circles close, we shift the focus to someone else? Surely my obsession with invisibility is the fault of … of course, how convenient! Like everything else, it’s the fault of the lead!
This shift of focus is a neat trick, especially useful to mystery writers. The more convincing the writer, the more fun for the reader-detective.
I am a lousy mystery writer; I cannot even fool myself.
* * *
I like dancing with beginners because they are so intent on their own dance they pay no attention to me. I like being a beginner for the same reason.
That said, there’s no time when it’s more important to be a perfect, interchangeable puppet-part than in a group class. The leads are struggling to learn the pattern of a new step and to communicate that pattern to the follower. They struggle to master the bare bones and then to give it panache. That’s a lot to assemble in a one-hour class. Especially when you are trading out puppets every two minutes. In this setting, the least I can do is be perfect. Do not snag his attention on missteps. Stay out of his way, be his puppet.
I like group classes for this reason. It is impossible to be so perfect as to be invisible, but it is a good challenge.
Private lessons are different.
Here I am solid and real. This is my time, for my dance. In the puppet-master’s workroom, the puppet gets worked over.
You think the teacher is the puppet-master, but don’t be so quick. I am of the family of Pinocchio—a puppet with ambition.
Whatever the teacher offers, I ask for more: more clarification, more retakes, more time to figure things out on my body, more technique, more cool moves, more retakes. When I am satisfied, we move on.
In private lessons, the teacher and I are a team; my body is the puppet we work on together.
I am both student and teacher. All eyes are on me, including my own.
When I am a student, I am a beginner again, so intent on my dance I pay no attention to me.
And thus become visible.
.
After the Labor Day Festival, I was twitchy and jittery and sure to slap any lead who got near me. As a service to the men of Tango Colorado, I avoided every class and gathering. Until the appointment for my private lesson with Grisha.
He’s an exceptional teacher. A dreamy lead. From all indications, a nice person. Surely he doesn’t deserve to be slapped.
I tell myself this as I drive across town, walk up the sidewalk, ring the bell.
Seconds away from a tango lesson, I’m poised to jump out of my skin.
What to do?
When the teens I work with are having a bad day, I set out a box and tell them to toss their junk in it. They can pick it up when they walk out the door. But while they’re with me, it stays in the box.
Grisha has a different solution.
He brings out new, tricky moves. He hammers away on technique. The person of me is put away. Grisha and I work over the puppet. We work its ass off. I am a beginner again, so intent on my own dance I pay no attention to me.
.
“In the end … your initial fear becomes a fake fear—just a manifestation of your ego. I didn’t want to waste my time asking myself, Will I be good or not good? I realized I just had to have less ego and do more work.”
--Marion Cotillard, on her role as Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose
* * *
When Stan wrote, “Who are you?” I did not write back. I don’t tell.
But.
Stan first invited me to dance when I was a rank beginner, dressed in bulky layers and ratty shoes. Striving to be light. Incorporeal.
In his dance there were no surprises; no steps I couldn’t do well. Or if (more likely) there were, he never let on. Trusting his lead I could forget myself, forget him, lose myself in the dance.
I have a soft spot for the leads who danced well with me when I was awful. So the next time we danced, I told him, “I am One Heart Dancing.”
We finished the tanda. We chatted briefly. Nothing changed. Only the silence was broken.
(The flit of a butterfly’s wings in Buenos Aires affects the weather in Moscow.)
Since then, Stan occasionally mentions the blog, tells me what he thinks. He likes my writing. I like his thinking.
Now he is looking at me with a kindly, I’ve-been-around-the-block-a few-times-myself openness that elicits honesty—not the skirt-the-truth kind, but the come-clean kind. He is waiting for me to answer his question,
which, in case you have forgotten, is,
“Have you given up the blog?”
I have been asking myself the same question--and dodging the answer. I would like to dodge some more, but at this moment, face-to-face, I can’t serve up a flippant flapjack answer.
So I tell the truth: I’ve been overwhelmed. Not the “I’m busy” kind of overwhelmed but the “I want to go to bed and stay under the covers until the year 2010” kind.
* * *
And what is it that has been so overwhelming? Here it is, in the form of a series of thought experiments:
I think, therefore I am. (Descartes)
How do I know what I think until I see what I say? (e. e. cummings)
If I can’t do anything when people are watching
...how can I write when I know you are reading?
If I can’t write, how can I see what I say?
… and therefore know what I think?
… and therefore know who I am?
... or (yikes!)
... that I am?
And lest you think it’s all about me:
Who would you be without your story?
Oh hell, let’s dance.
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