DJ Dave's Convert Hits The Wall

FYI:
It is very nearly impossible to tango to Pink Floyd.

Miss Tango Manners on Self-Extrication

A Tango Mad Lib (mad lib: you adlib the blanks)

Dear Miss Tango Manners:

Help! Last ___ I took a tango lesson. I have taken ___ tango lessons and have ___ them all. In my most recent lesson, however, the teacher, Ms/r ___, threw me for a loop. At the end of the class, s/he insisted we all do a ___ exercise. It went something like this: XXX.

I could not believe it! I was ___!!

Though I felt ___, I kept my peace, went along with the XXX. I did not want to offend my partner or create a ___ scene. As soon as the class was over, I ___.

I will never go back to that ___ teacher again!

Now I feel ___. Are my feelings legitimate, or I am ___? What should I have done? If something like this happens again, what should I do?

___ yours,
Not an XXX Girl


Dear Ms Girl,

Miss Tango Manners, having been a world-class milanguera before settling into the superior profession of advice columnist, feels your pain. You come to tango with your own history of experiences and beliefs and cultural assumptions and yadda yadda yadda.

The question of whether any person’s feelings are legitimate is wrought with psychological implications. Miss Tango Manners finds psychology vulgar (from the Latin vulgaris, meaning “of the mob” or, in common vernacular, common) and therefore tiresome.

Hence, she will turn her attention to your more interesting question: What should you have done, and what should you do in the future?

Two words will suffice: Excuse me.

Speak these words in dulcet tones to your partner, looking him/her in the eye. You may offer a Mona Lisa smile or gracious tilt of the head. Extreme cases (i.e. a favorite, skilled or exceptionally well-groomed partner) may merit a light touch on the arm.

If you are not in sales or parenthood, you may find it difficult to school your face in a manner that befits the moment. It has been observed that feelings have a way of pushing the facial features around.

Miss Tango Manners would like to suggest that you are the boss of your face.

To that end, Miss Tango Manners recommends you buy a beef liver and cook it badly, then masticate it slowly while maintaining an impassively pleasant mien. Barring essential cooking skills, you may wish to peruse the color photos of medical journals. Miss Tango Manners recommends close-ups of dental surgery. Root canals. Extractions. Periodontal disease.

But we digress.

Your purpose here is simple: You are taking care of both you and your partner. While withdrawing from an uncomfortable situation, you are assuring your partner that he/she is blameless. This is basic human kindness, the font of all etiquette.

Having spoken, make your exit.

With queenly bearing, walk out of the room.

If the teacher catches your eye, nod pleasantly as you continue on your way.

Never apologize. Never explain.

Never stand on the sidelines; it makes you a sideshow.

At this point you may wish to retire to the ladies’ room to splash cool water on your wrists. If you are at the Mercury Café, Miss Tango Manners (being of late an environmentalist) would appreciate it if you would use water from the little sink mounted on the back of each toilet.

If you are at the Turnverein, Miss Tango Manners recommends the violet velvet fainting couch in the ladies room. It is luxuriously comfy, quite suitable for indulging in the inevitable moment of self-pity.

This moment is followed close on, Miss Tango Manners trusts, by contemplation on the frailties and flaws of the human race and the fortunate felicity of manners.

Yours in dance,
Miss Tango Manners
MissTangoManners yahoo.com

Fire and Ice

Fire and Ice
Robert Frost

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 know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

DJ Dave's Convert Strays

I am acting out.
I am sick sick sick of hothouse conventions.
Overpolite
Strictures dictating
Acceptable
Behavior

Who is the boss of me? Not you!
Not the keepers of the flame!
Whoever said good fences make good neighbors
should have stuck with apple-picking.
So what if he was right? He was
frosty at the soul, his heart encased in ice.

I am the fire this time, and you can’t keep me
Down. There is something that doesn’t love a rule.

I am the boss of me. I say, let ‘er rip!
Are you taken aback?
You measure out your life with coffee spoons.
Bite me.
Tonight I act

out!

(And how should I begin?
Quickly now, dive in!
There will be time to wonder “Do I dare?” and “Do I dare?”
There will be time to fix my hair.
And later, eat a peach.)

Tonight
On the polished wood floors of #6 Downing
A new tattoo of footsteps.
In the elegant rooms below, a woman looks up.
Her tiny dog gives a civilized yip.
She arranges a pillow, throws off her shawl,
Returns to her picture book, Michealangelo's art
She bought for her coffee table but much enjoys
By scented candlelight.

Music flies out the window, into the trees.
I am my own damn dervish. I whirl to the beat of my very own drum.

French blues. Motown. Windham Hill. Celtic crap. Bach.
DiSarli, take a seat.

Don’t tell DJ Dave.

Read earlier post: DJ Dave Makes a Convert
Read about coffeespoons, Michaelangelo, peaches etc: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Comfort Me with Michigan

There is a man. He lives near Lake Michigan. He walks the countryside for a living.

In a bag he carries a camera. He seeks out photo opportunities, he makes them happen.

You can learn this much from watching a photographer at work:

The pictures don’t present themselves; they are hunted down in places both unlikely and expected; they are gauged and framed.

They are made by the eye of the artist.

Depending on his mood, he would agree or disagree. He is lucky, he says, he happens upon the pictures that are already there.

But when you ask about a particular picture, he mentions that he returned to the scene again and again to catch the light right.

Or the composition: I want the moon there he will say. Declining Photoshop, he must wait for the moon to move into place.

He takes care, he positions himself, he waits or is active. When his artist’s eye makes a picture, he snaps it.

***

The shore of Lake Michigan is one long photo opp.

Beaches and forests, sand dunes, rip tides, old hulks and islands out in the waves.

Beneath his feet, sand gives way; rocks tip and wobble.

Often when he is working or when he is not, the stones beneath his feet distract his eye from the job at hand. He walks head down, he stoops.

After 20+ years, he stoops less often than he used to, and he picks up many fewer stones. He has become a collector.

He looks for stone hearts and for stones that have holes worn through them.

It is impossible to say how the water cuts a needle-fine hole through stone. They are a wonder.

He carries them in his camera bag, a pocket, his hat. Once he carried them in an old balloon like a sack.

***

Last November, four of us walked the shore in winter coats and hats. It was warm but cold-windy. The sun, the water, the sky: all zaftig.

For a few hours we wandered together, and then apart, and then together again.

One designer, one filmmaker, one photographer, one writer.

We saw things each in our way; we showed them to one another, compared notes.

There is a picture, four hands holding out treasures: a fossil, green sea glass, a Petoskey stone, a heart-stone.

The photo doesn’t show the hidden treasure.

Back at the house, late at night, after dinner and visitors and music and talk, he pulled out his remarkable find: Two stones—two!—with holes worn through.

These stones express affection, he said. In the kitchen, he cut off two lengths of cord, threaded the stones to make necklaces. He gave one to me.

Tangled up in dark thoughts and dread, I had fled to Michigan for the weekend, to the comfort of dim forest, overcast lake, old friend.

He held the stone in his hand, and his warmth came with the stone when he handed it to me.

***

Michigan does not love me in the way that I sometimes need to be loved. I am grateful for this. He is the keeper of our friendship, he is clearheaded and kind about it.

For more than half our lives, we have come together and apart and together again. Once he drew me a picture: two waves intersecting. If you look at the picture you see this: Wherever they are, the waves are in sync.

I wear the stone necklace when I want to feel Michigan near me. For joy, for strength, just for fun.

I wear the necklace when I need to feel the comfort of Michigan’s presence, the long perspective, the trusthworthy friend.

The warmth remains still.

Today, according to the paper, Chas will be arrainged. Tango Colorado is again in disarray.

I am wearing the necklace right now.

Being Still Here Now

"To dance tango, you must first learn how to be still. There are very few ways to be still, but from them unfold all the infinite ways to move." --Chris, posted on tango-l

Yesterday and again today one of my blogging buddies asked me why I'm not blogging about Chas.

I wrote quite a bit about it last week, but took it all down.
I am in turmoil , and so keeping still.
But writing like a fiend in private.

Never Cease Loving

In my email, a request from HR: One of our company's interns is graduating from high school. Everyone is asked to send "words of wisdom" to her.

Never cease loving a person,
and never give up hope for him,
for even the prodigal son
who had fallen most low
could still be saved;
the bitterest enemy
and also he who was your friend
could again be your friend;
love that has grown cold can kindle again.

Soren Kierkegaard

Put Yourself Here on Memorial Day

For all of you on the East Coast, here's a little temptation....

Denver averages 300 sunny days each year.

Come for the festival. You're sure to leave happy--and tan!

To put yourself here, visit Memorial Day Tango Festival

For information about visiting teachers Julio Balmaceda and Corina de la Rosa, email Nina at earthlink.net

I am not your *!?! community service project

I Hate Tango ... I LOVE Tango!

There's a t-shirt for golfers:
I hate this game I hate this game I hate this game
Nice shot!
I love this game I love this game I love this game

Friday night at The Merc, Extasis at midnight.

The room is freezing. I am not dressed for a milonga. I'm exhausted and hungry. And cranky. I have no business here.

But.

Extasis is coming. The first time I heard them, it took me two days to recover. I have to stay for something like that!

Also, I want to perform an experiment. I want to experience what Tom Stermitz calls the greatest social challenge for an American woman in tango: waiting to be asked to dance.

I want to sit with that, in a zennish way.

Early on I dance with Big Pants. Then tondas go by. No more takers.

I experience the greatest personal challenge for amateurs in Zen: I grow bored.

I duck out to visit poetry reading downstairs. A young girl is saying "Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you." The audience claps wildly.

Well, isn't that original.

Back at the milonga, I resume my sitting practice. Hours go by. Nearly three hours, to be exact. This is quite the sitting practice!

Finally the musicians begin setting up. They put their stands and chairs and sheet music in place. They adjust the lights. The bass and violin tune up.

Tuning is magic. All the sharps and flats resolve into perfect chords. It is musical foreplay. It creates anticipation.

They begin to play. I have been freezing and hungry for so long that at first I can't hear it, not with my heart.

Someone nice comes by, asks me to dance. It's about time!

But Extasis is playing, and right now I don't want some leader getting between me and the music.

"Maybe next time," he says. Then he confides, "When I was a beginner, I was nervous about dancing to live music, too."

I am beginning to hear "community service project" every time someone calls me a beginner.

Then it's here. The violin goes off like a freight train diving off a bridge over a gorge. Like Victoria Falls. Like the World Trade Center. Sliding, disastrous beauty.

The music comes at me like 100 Gs. It throws me back in the chair. My breathing is broken. My mind won't collect.

Another song starts. Dancers are moving.

I can't make the switch back into this world. I don't want to.

More Extasis would only be more.

Time to go home.

Retiring the Shoes

Taking ballet lessons was my childhood dream.

It came beautifully true, though the beauty was visible only to me.

Now there is no more ballet. There is tango.

The consolation prize...suprise!

Beauty made tangible; audible flight.

No regrets, but

Good night shoes. Goodnight moon.

Where Will You Be on Memorial Day?

This is the Cheeseman Park Pavillion.

It's hard to believe that in just eight weeks,

we'll be dancing here under the stars.

I promise, the snow will be gone.

There will be flowers.
Trees will be in full leaf.

The women will be as beautiful as flowers
and the men as proud as trees.

Dancers will come from Seattle, Portland,

Ann Arbor, New York, San Francisco, Nijmegen
...and of course, Buenos Aries.

The marble floor will be crowded

with glamorous men and women

in an Argentinian-Gatsbyesque affair.

Where will you be? Be chic. Be here.

Learn more.

Learn more about Julio Balmaceda and Corina de la Rosa,

visiting teachers from Buenos Aries.

Email Nina Pesochinsky from the Tango Colorado teachers website.

Done!

Book is done! Back to tango!

Woman dropped on head alleges 'negligent dancing'

• Lacey Hindman, 22, is suing a dancing partner
• She says she was dropped on her head at an office party
• Attorney David Baum says his client is a victim of "negligent dancing"
• Hindman suffered a fractured skull and brain injury, suit says
Read more!

Ten Fingers Typing

One Heart Dancing has been benched by Ten Fingers Typing.

I am in the throes of the last draft of the last chapter, in the last days before my latest book is due to the publisher. Silly publisher, to give me an extra week....

Hunter Thompson, in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, compares journalists on deadline to rabbits:

We see headlights in the distance. We nibble placidly on the roadside grass.

Lights loom large, yards away. We consider the grass on the far side of the road.

Car zoom-zooms, closes in fast. We do a little trigonometry in our heads.

Timing is everything. Wait ... wait ... wait.

Engine roars. Ground shakes. Lights blind.

We dash!

*****

I prefer tango.

Grisha says this: "Ladies, be late."

*********

I am late. This week I dash.