For geeks, writers, and knitters:
The funniest writing I've seen in a while, and the most inventive use of art.
Go to this link: http://www.yarnharlot.ca/blog/ Scroll down to Practically a Cedar Closet.
You will have to scroll down quite a long way. Stop to enjoy the word-play along the way.
(If you are a writer, remember: It is better to aspire than to envy.)
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Norman Jr. Reading in Bed
Norman Jr. looks like a cool kid. He is lying on a bare, striped mattress, reading a book. The walls loom large over him; there are holes the size of fists and larger. The plaster crumbles as Norman reads.
There is light in the room, but it doesn’t warm Norman. He is under a blanket, wearing his jacket. No heat.
This is a 1967 Gordon Parks photo, part of a photostudy of poverty in Harlem. It hangs in the Cantor building, the art museum on the Stanford University campus. Walking down the line of Parks photos, you come upon Norman’s mother lying in bed, shielding her face, holding her youngest. This photo was taken the day after she scalded her husband. That’s all the caption tells you.
Further down the line, you see Norman’s mother surrounded by her children as she applies for aid. She holds the baby on her lap. Her oldest son bends close, playing with her ear or her hair. Another son lays his cheek against her shoulder. The little girl sucks her thumb.
Over the year that he took the photos, Gordon Parks came to care for the family so much, he convinced Life magazine to buy the family a house on Long Island.
Norman was young and African American and poor in 1967. Exactly how old was he? Why it matters: Vietnam.
In the 1960s and '70s, the United Negro College Fund plastered the airwaves with its slogan: “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” The tagline said “mind,” but the picture was always of children.
In those decades, college was the Underground Railroad to escape the draft, poverty, Vietnam and Harlem. The United Negro College Fund was sending kids like Norman a message: We will help you board that train.
Someone at UNCF loved children.
In the Stanford gallery, down one floor and over a room or two, is a portrait of Leland Jr., who died 100 years before Norman was born.
Leland Jr. looks like a cool kid. He studied accounting with a private tutor. He collected antiquities. He died of typhoid at age 15 while touring Italy. His parents, broken-hearted, founded this school in loving memory.
Leland Jr.’s death mask—an unearthly white even after 100 years—hangs in the museum beside a huge, stuffed owl. The owl stands in a glass box, its wings raised over its head like a ballet dancer, tips meeting two or three feet above the head. In literature, owls symbolize death or freedom or hope.
Every one of the founding love triangle—father, mother and child—is one hundred years gone, but the school and the symbol remain.
Darlene knits while she waits for tango class to begin. She is in a club that knits gifts for homeless women. She is making a baby sweater. It is adorable in the way miniatures are. It is soft and stretchy, perfect for the fragile, squirmy thing who will inhabit it.
The baby will never know it had such a sweater. But the mother knows. She knows that her baby deserves such a garment, that by the grace of love, someone out there agrees. When she nuzzles her child, the sweater caresses her cheek. It will warm her heart forever.
Love gives Darlene’s fingers long reach.
Outside the Cantor building, in the Rodin sculpture garden, the centerpiece is The Gates of Hell. It is an enormous chaos of grotesque shapes, tortured humans.
Look close: Hell is full of babies.
One has wandered off. This little tyke is outside The Gates but is in a Hell of its own: alone. It is screaming.
In Hell, babies sit on their mothers’ laps, stand at their mothers’ knees. Mothers and babies cuddle peacefully together. Enrapt in one another, they fail to notice their surroundings.
Love blinds them to the Hell they are in.
Love seeketh not itself to please
Nor for itself hath any care
But for another gives its ease
And builds a heaven in hell's despair.
William Blake
Kudos to you, Gordon Parks. To Norman Jr., reading in bed. To the UNCF. Kudos to the Stanfords. To Leland Jr., collecting antiquities. To Rodin.
Kudos to you, Darlene.
There is light in the room, but it doesn’t warm Norman. He is under a blanket, wearing his jacket. No heat.
This is a 1967 Gordon Parks photo, part of a photostudy of poverty in Harlem. It hangs in the Cantor building, the art museum on the Stanford University campus. Walking down the line of Parks photos, you come upon Norman’s mother lying in bed, shielding her face, holding her youngest. This photo was taken the day after she scalded her husband. That’s all the caption tells you.
Further down the line, you see Norman’s mother surrounded by her children as she applies for aid. She holds the baby on her lap. Her oldest son bends close, playing with her ear or her hair. Another son lays his cheek against her shoulder. The little girl sucks her thumb.
Over the year that he took the photos, Gordon Parks came to care for the family so much, he convinced Life magazine to buy the family a house on Long Island.
Norman was young and African American and poor in 1967. Exactly how old was he? Why it matters: Vietnam.
In the 1960s and '70s, the United Negro College Fund plastered the airwaves with its slogan: “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” The tagline said “mind,” but the picture was always of children.
In those decades, college was the Underground Railroad to escape the draft, poverty, Vietnam and Harlem. The United Negro College Fund was sending kids like Norman a message: We will help you board that train.
Someone at UNCF loved children.
* * *
In the Stanford gallery, down one floor and over a room or two, is a portrait of Leland Jr., who died 100 years before Norman was born.
Leland Jr. looks like a cool kid. He studied accounting with a private tutor. He collected antiquities. He died of typhoid at age 15 while touring Italy. His parents, broken-hearted, founded this school in loving memory.
Leland Jr.’s death mask—an unearthly white even after 100 years—hangs in the museum beside a huge, stuffed owl. The owl stands in a glass box, its wings raised over its head like a ballet dancer, tips meeting two or three feet above the head. In literature, owls symbolize death or freedom or hope.
Every one of the founding love triangle—father, mother and child—is one hundred years gone, but the school and the symbol remain.
* * *
Darlene knits while she waits for tango class to begin. She is in a club that knits gifts for homeless women. She is making a baby sweater. It is adorable in the way miniatures are. It is soft and stretchy, perfect for the fragile, squirmy thing who will inhabit it.
The baby will never know it had such a sweater. But the mother knows. She knows that her baby deserves such a garment, that by the grace of love, someone out there agrees. When she nuzzles her child, the sweater caresses her cheek. It will warm her heart forever.
Love gives Darlene’s fingers long reach.
* * *
Outside the Cantor building, in the Rodin sculpture garden, the centerpiece is The Gates of Hell. It is an enormous chaos of grotesque shapes, tortured humans.
Look close: Hell is full of babies.
One has wandered off. This little tyke is outside The Gates but is in a Hell of its own: alone. It is screaming.
In Hell, babies sit on their mothers’ laps, stand at their mothers’ knees. Mothers and babies cuddle peacefully together. Enrapt in one another, they fail to notice their surroundings.
Love blinds them to the Hell they are in.
* * *
Love seeketh not itself to please
Nor for itself hath any care
But for another gives its ease
And builds a heaven in hell's despair.
William Blake
* * *
Kudos to you, Gordon Parks. To Norman Jr., reading in bed. To the UNCF. Kudos to the Stanfords. To Leland Jr., collecting antiquities. To Rodin.
Kudos to you, Darlene.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Monday, June 25, 2007
More from the Self-Help Stacks: One of These Things Is not Like the Other
Would you buy this...
1. Ecrits by Jacques Lacan
“Brilliant and innovative ... his seemingly impenetrable writing style has kept many readers from venturing beyond the first page.” (back cover)
That's the marketing copy.
You gotta wonder.
Here’s how it starts:
"My research has led me to the realization that repetition automatism has its basis in what I have called the insistence of the signifying chain. I have isolated this notion as a correlate of the ex-istence (that is, of the eccentric place) in which we must necessarily locate if we are to take Freud’s discovery seriously.”
...or would you rather buy this?
2.
1. Ecrits by Jacques Lacan
“Brilliant and innovative ... his seemingly impenetrable writing style has kept many readers from venturing beyond the first page.” (back cover)
That's the marketing copy.
You gotta wonder.
Here’s how it starts:
"My research has led me to the realization that repetition automatism has its basis in what I have called the insistence of the signifying chain. I have isolated this notion as a correlate of the ex-istence (that is, of the eccentric place) in which we must necessarily locate if we are to take Freud’s discovery seriously.”
...or would you rather buy this?
2.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
What Would Jackie Do … in Tango?
When you read a Chinese fortune cookie, and you append the words “in bed,” you get something hilarious and possibly true.
What would happen if I added "in tango" to the lessons of my new self-help book: What Would Jackie Do?
If there's one thing I've learned, it is this: Jackie was all about protecting herself.
How would that play out in tango?
We may not have much in common, after all.
What would happen if I added "in tango" to the lessons of my new self-help book: What Would Jackie Do?
If there's one thing I've learned, it is this: Jackie was all about protecting herself.
How would that play out in tango?
What Would Jackie Do ... in Tango?
- She would take private lessons.
- She would practice in private with a hand-picked partner.
- She would host private parties.
- She would attend top-tier milonga.
- She would always have an escort.
- She would refuse unsuitable partners.
- She would dance with men she had earmarked for her purposes.
- She would strike a balance with understated elegance and a touch of flash-flesh-faux.
- She would take pains never to be a commodity, an Interchangeable Woman.
We may not have much in common, after all.
Jackie and I are Like Sisters
I am a lot like Jackie Kennedy-Onassis.
She was a book editor. So was I.
She got her own coffee in the morning. Me too!
She loved New York City. I still do.
Jackie had personal style. So do I.
Hers involved impeccable taste, double-faced cashmere, and Oleg Cassini.
Mine involves Goodwill and a great Russian tailor. But like Jackie, I buy only the best.
She had that whole fabulously wealthy, Kennedy-Onassis, live-on-a-yacht thing going.
I have tango.
Ah-ha! Score one for me!
She was a book editor. So was I.
She got her own coffee in the morning. Me too!
She loved New York City. I still do.
Jackie had personal style. So do I.
Hers involved impeccable taste, double-faced cashmere, and Oleg Cassini.
Mine involves Goodwill and a great Russian tailor. But like Jackie, I buy only the best.
She had that whole fabulously wealthy, Kennedy-Onassis, live-on-a-yacht thing going.
I have tango.
Ah-ha! Score one for me!
What Would Jackie Do?
Sibling Two-of-Six and I are having a leisurely, sisterly post-dinner chat.
We’ve exhausted our travel schedules, work woes, friends’ and relatives’ forthcoming babies.
We’re tired of family gossip. (You never exhaust that one; it exhausts you.)
I do a little riff on tango and blogging.
Two-of-Six looks caring. And exasperated. I love it when she does that. She is the only person I know who can deliver a direct hit of reality so softly it feels like a caress.
"Sweetie, do you ever get tired of being in your own head?" she asks.
Well. It’s not like I live there.
I do have a job. Friends. Books. Family. I watched two movies last week. This week I am house-and-cat-sitting.
Still, blogging has to be the most self-absorbed activity in the universe. If you add the hours I spend spent in self-observation to the hours spent contemplating my perceptions and experiences to the hours shaping my stories and crafting my prose to the hours spent lost in my thoughts or daydreams …
You could say I spend most of my life inside my head.
"Is it so interesting in there?" she asks.
Well. It’s not like I'm the only one in there.
There are all the tangueros, near and far. Music. History. Poems. Gossip. Stories and more stories unfolding and interlocking in ways that can only plausibly happen in real life. MilongaCat and Shane and Melinda and Miss MerryPeri and The Pajama Gardener and the rest of that lot.
And let’s not forget The Man on the Wall.
It’s a three-ring circus inside my head!
But when you get down to it, it all revolves around me, doesn’t it? I am the ringleader and the main act.
It’s not that I find myself soooo fascinating. It’s that the rest of the world is not all that real. My imagination…
“Let’s go,” Two-of-Six says.
She needs a cigarette. And a book.
She’s a pack-a-day smoker, a book-a-day reader.
Barnes and Noble devotes yards and yards of shelf space to self-help, including
Two-of-Six has vanished without a word. This is how we do it. Later I will drift through her favorite stacks--geography, history, biology, mystery, sociology, anthropology, forthcoming babies, memoir, international economics, chick lit, philosophy, home decor, humor, romance, classic fiction, nature, travel, linguistics, pop culture, and boats, particularly sailing--until I find her.
Meanwhile, I am standing before the Wailing Wall of self-help, scanning the titles.
It’s hard to imagine there would be a book about shyness. What's to say? I hope to find something tangentially related, so I can adapt it to my plan:
Distill 10 tips, try them out one by one, report the results here.
Fun!
And useful!
I could write a book!
!!!
Uh-oh.
I am a cliché. No, worse: I am a buzz word.
There are—I am not kidding, I counted—more than two dozen books on shyness or, in the current parlance, Social Anxiety. They occupy four feet of shelf space.
Four feet. This stinks of snake oil.
Two-of-Six has a point. The book on shyness need make only one point: Get Out of Your Head!
I wander off in search of my sister.
What Happy Women Know; Eating in the Light of the Moon; More Sex Is Safer Sex; Never Knit Your Man a Sweater (Until You Have the Ring); When Panic Attacks; Don’t Shoot the Dog; The Audacity of Hope:; Deer Hunting with Jesus; Crashing Through; … Everyone Deserves a Second Chance in Golf and in Life; The End of the World As We Know It; What Would Jackie Do?
We’ve exhausted our travel schedules, work woes, friends’ and relatives’ forthcoming babies.
We’re tired of family gossip. (You never exhaust that one; it exhausts you.)
I do a little riff on tango and blogging.
Two-of-Six looks caring. And exasperated. I love it when she does that. She is the only person I know who can deliver a direct hit of reality so softly it feels like a caress.
"Sweetie, do you ever get tired of being in your own head?" she asks.
Well. It’s not like I live there.
I do have a job. Friends. Books. Family. I watched two movies last week. This week I am house-and-cat-sitting.
Still, blogging has to be the most self-absorbed activity in the universe. If you add the hours I spend spent in self-observation to the hours spent contemplating my perceptions and experiences to the hours shaping my stories and crafting my prose to the hours spent lost in my thoughts or daydreams …
You could say I spend most of my life inside my head.
"Is it so interesting in there?" she asks.
Well. It’s not like I'm the only one in there.
There are all the tangueros, near and far. Music. History. Poems. Gossip. Stories and more stories unfolding and interlocking in ways that can only plausibly happen in real life. MilongaCat and Shane and Melinda and Miss MerryPeri and The Pajama Gardener and the rest of that lot.
And let’s not forget The Man on the Wall.
It’s a three-ring circus inside my head!
But when you get down to it, it all revolves around me, doesn’t it? I am the ringleader and the main act.
It’s not that I find myself soooo fascinating. It’s that the rest of the world is not all that real. My imagination…
“Let’s go,” Two-of-Six says.
She needs a cigarette. And a book.
She’s a pack-a-day smoker, a book-a-day reader.
* * *
Barnes and Noble devotes yards and yards of shelf space to self-help, including
- gettingmore wealthy
- gettingmore beautiful
- gettingmore powerful
- gettingmore love from a man
- gettingmore self-esteem
- gettingmore out of life
- gettingmore of this
- gettingmore of that
- gettingmore
Two-of-Six has vanished without a word. This is how we do it. Later I will drift through her favorite stacks--geography, history, biology, mystery, sociology, anthropology, forthcoming babies, memoir, international economics, chick lit, philosophy, home decor, humor, romance, classic fiction, nature, travel, linguistics, pop culture, and boats, particularly sailing--until I find her.
Meanwhile, I am standing before the Wailing Wall of self-help, scanning the titles.
It’s hard to imagine there would be a book about shyness. What's to say? I hope to find something tangentially related, so I can adapt it to my plan:
Distill 10 tips, try them out one by one, report the results here.
Fun!
And useful!
I could write a book!
!!!
Uh-oh.
I am a cliché. No, worse: I am a buzz word.
There are—I am not kidding, I counted—more than two dozen books on shyness or, in the current parlance, Social Anxiety. They occupy four feet of shelf space.
Four feet. This stinks of snake oil.
Two-of-Six has a point. The book on shyness need make only one point: Get Out of Your Head!
I wander off in search of my sister.
* * *
Four days later...
If I could get out of my head that easily, I wouldn’t be here.
Here is the Tattered Cover, 10 p.m. Friday night. I have fled the Merc. Again.
For books on shyness, the clerk leads me to the Psychology section, to a shelf labeled:
Schizophrenia … Self-Esteem … Smoking
Serious scholarly works on the worst mental disease going share the shelf with
Elsewhere I find a series of titles that arrange themselves nicely into proverbs on a theme:
.
Here is the Tattered Cover, 10 p.m. Friday night. I have fled the Merc. Again.
For books on shyness, the clerk leads me to the Psychology section, to a shelf labeled:
Schizophrenia … Self-Esteem … Smoking
Serious scholarly works on the worst mental disease going share the shelf with
Elsewhere I find a series of titles that arrange themselves nicely into proverbs on a theme:
.
What Happy Women Know
.
Eating in the Light of the Moon
Everything Is Michievous
.
More Sex Is Safer Sex
Never Knit Your Man a Sweater (Until You Have the Ring)
.
When Panic Attacks
Don't Shoot the Dog
.
The Audacity of Hope:
Deer Hunting with Jesus
.
Crashing Through
... Everyone Deserves a Second Chance in Golf and in Life
.
The End of the World As We Know It
What Would Jackie Do?
.
* * *
(I buy the last one.)
* * *
What Happy Women Know; Eating in the Light of the Moon; More Sex Is Safer Sex; Never Knit Your Man a Sweater (Until You Have the Ring); When Panic Attacks; Don’t Shoot the Dog; The Audacity of Hope:; Deer Hunting with Jesus; Crashing Through; … Everyone Deserves a Second Chance in Golf and in Life; The End of the World As We Know It; What Would Jackie Do?
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Note to Self with Woody Allen Stomach
I have a long fuse, especially with myself.
But when the patience runs out ... stand aside. When I make up my mind to do something, it gets done. Nothing can stand in my way.
That includes my stomach.
I gained 10 pounds during my two-week tango hiatus. This is a good thing.
But since I decided to go back to tango, my stomach has gone Woody Allen.
I skipped Blue Ice Monday night, weenied out at the Turnverein on Tuesday. I've lost five of the pounds that I gained.
My stomach doesn't understand something.
I am going to tango. But I am not going back.
I have lost patience with that self-demeaning self.
The mutiny is over. I am turning this boat.
1.25 hours to a brand new tango class. Time to start primping.
But when the patience runs out ... stand aside. When I make up my mind to do something, it gets done. Nothing can stand in my way.
That includes my stomach.
I gained 10 pounds during my two-week tango hiatus. This is a good thing.
But since I decided to go back to tango, my stomach has gone Woody Allen.
I skipped Blue Ice Monday night, weenied out at the Turnverein on Tuesday. I've lost five of the pounds that I gained.
My stomach doesn't understand something.
I am going to tango. But I am not going back.
I have lost patience with that self-demeaning self.
The mutiny is over. I am turning this boat.
1.25 hours to a brand new tango class. Time to start primping.
Monday, June 18, 2007
Hiatus Over
To paraphrase the pianist Paderewski*:
If I don't practice for one day, I know it; if I don't practice for two days, my partner knows it; if I don't practice for three days, everyone in the room knows it.
I have not practiced since May 30.
Until last night. A corollary to Paderewski:
If I don't practice for two weeks, even the cats know it. They run for cover.
After a couple of hours, I have regained the ability to walk. That's about it.
Tonight, Blue Ice, 7 p.m.
If I leave now, I can practice for a half hour before class and might be able to avoid sending my classmates from running for cover.
(See the real quote by going to this link and searching the page for Paderewski.)
If I don't practice for one day, I know it; if I don't practice for two days, my partner knows it; if I don't practice for three days, everyone in the room knows it.
I have not practiced since May 30.
Until last night. A corollary to Paderewski:
If I don't practice for two weeks, even the cats know it. They run for cover.
After a couple of hours, I have regained the ability to walk. That's about it.
Tonight, Blue Ice, 7 p.m.
If I leave now, I can practice for a half hour before class and might be able to avoid sending my classmates from running for cover.
(See the real quote by going to this link and searching the page for Paderewski.)
Friday, June 15, 2007
I Am Taking a Tango Hiatus ... I Think
I might be quitting tango. At the very least, I am taking a hiatus.
I want my real head back. The combination of tango and blogging is making it weird.
A few weeks to get it out of my system. That’s what I need! Then:
Darlene sends video of the first sunset milonga in Cheesman Park.
I resist.
Nina announces a new follower’s class. Her classes are small, and she requires the women to show up for two hours: the first hour for followers only, the second with leads. The most useful and fun group classes I’ve taken.
I delete the email.
Patricia announces Jesse, an elegant teacher I have not worked with, will be guiding her house practica this month. Her practicas are small and informal and warm.
I steel my heart.
I am taking a hiatus!
My discipline is made easier by my work schedule: Travel. Day-and-night meetings with lots of required reading. Tight deadlines, new and exciting projects that drain my brain.
After only two weeks, it’s working: Already, tango seems a little weird. It’s just a dance, after all. And an odd one at that. Hardly worth an obsession. It’s a wide world out there. Lots of things to toy around with: Volunteer work, books, movies, family, pets, gardening, hiking, camping, swimming, sunbathing, … TV.
I settle in for a night of reading. Guy Kawasaki, Seth Grodin, Kim Dority. After six hours, my brain is toast.
There’s a big, silent TV at one end of the room. What the heck.
In an empty bar, a couple dances. No, they are not dancing. They are making art. He is understated, she is graceful.
I am transfixed. A little star-struck. Inspired.
Of course, it is tango.
Awwwright already! Uncle!
In the 20 minutes before my last marathon meeting, I register for Nina’s class, jot down the time of Darlene's milonga and Patricia's practica, write this post.
I’m in.
I want my real head back. The combination of tango and blogging is making it weird.
A few weeks to get it out of my system. That’s what I need! Then:
Darlene sends video of the first sunset milonga in Cheesman Park.
I resist.
Nina announces a new follower’s class. Her classes are small, and she requires the women to show up for two hours: the first hour for followers only, the second with leads. The most useful and fun group classes I’ve taken.
I delete the email.
Patricia announces Jesse, an elegant teacher I have not worked with, will be guiding her house practica this month. Her practicas are small and informal and warm.
I steel my heart.
I am taking a hiatus!
My discipline is made easier by my work schedule: Travel. Day-and-night meetings with lots of required reading. Tight deadlines, new and exciting projects that drain my brain.
After only two weeks, it’s working: Already, tango seems a little weird. It’s just a dance, after all. And an odd one at that. Hardly worth an obsession. It’s a wide world out there. Lots of things to toy around with: Volunteer work, books, movies, family, pets, gardening, hiking, camping, swimming, sunbathing, … TV.
I settle in for a night of reading. Guy Kawasaki, Seth Grodin, Kim Dority. After six hours, my brain is toast.
There’s a big, silent TV at one end of the room. What the heck.
In an empty bar, a couple dances. No, they are not dancing. They are making art. He is understated, she is graceful.
I am transfixed. A little star-struck. Inspired.
Of course, it is tango.
Awwwright already! Uncle!
In the 20 minutes before my last marathon meeting, I register for Nina’s class, jot down the time of Darlene's milonga and Patricia's practica, write this post.
I’m in.
Friday, June 1, 2007
I Was a Tango Anarchist
From the Comments page to My Top 10 Memorial Day Festival Highlights Shane said: You must not have seen Jessica and I dancing or I'm sure we would've made the list.
Yes. Well ...
My buddy Shane and I took lessons for six weeks last fall before Shane dropped out. We still dance together occasionally.
Months after his last lesson, he remains a fabulous lead. Strong, masculine chest and no hesitation about asserting his authority to direct my steps.
Which is pretty odd when you think about it. Shane is a skinny guy and an anarchist.
Shouldn’t his lead be milquetoast? It should say, “Please, take any steps you like. I don’t wish to impose.”
(Or, in the erudite moments following much wine: “As independent agents freely entering into the social contract of the dance, we reserve each to the other the unilateral right to rewrite the contract as we wish and on the fly, eliminating all clauses pertaining to the patriarchal imposition of will, through which, by modest extension, one may metaphorize the patriarchal dominance of Uncle Sam over the Other and BTWtheWorldBankGeorgeBushIraqSUVshaveyouhuggedatreetoday.”)
Is that any way to enter an embrace?
Better to follow the purist’s logic. Reject all authority, including your own!
As a purist, Shane can trash his anti-authoritarian stance to assert his authority as a tango lead. And I must be a purist too, because I readily surrender my feminist autonomy … for three minutes at a stretch.
And that’s just the beginning.
Last fall, Shane and I—fresh out of our second group lesson at the Merc--danced at the Labor Day festival in Cheeseman Park.
We were serious Tango Anarchists. We had no regard for steps or floorcraft. We kicked up our heels. Whenever we crashed into people, we gaily apologized.
This is how it felt to us:
Isn’t this fun? We are all in this together, packed in like sardines! Yet see how the bonhomie flows! We are kind and forbearing because really, there’s no way to avoid crashing into one another if you’re kicking up your heels in this small space.
* * *
This year, when I saw Shane at the Cheeseman Park milonga, I assumed he was going to dance.
But not with me.
I have forsaken the wild ways of my tango youth. Small steps are lovely, floorcraft essential. It is not unnecessarily restrictive to require the man to move forward along the line of dance.
I have become Tango-Civilized.
Yes. Well ...
My buddy Shane and I took lessons for six weeks last fall before Shane dropped out. We still dance together occasionally.
Months after his last lesson, he remains a fabulous lead. Strong, masculine chest and no hesitation about asserting his authority to direct my steps.
Which is pretty odd when you think about it. Shane is a skinny guy and an anarchist.
Shouldn’t his lead be milquetoast? It should say, “Please, take any steps you like. I don’t wish to impose.”
(Or, in the erudite moments following much wine: “As independent agents freely entering into the social contract of the dance, we reserve each to the other the unilateral right to rewrite the contract as we wish and on the fly, eliminating all clauses pertaining to the patriarchal imposition of will, through which, by modest extension, one may metaphorize the patriarchal dominance of Uncle Sam over the Other and BTWtheWorldBankGeorgeBushIraqSUVshaveyouhuggedatreetoday.”)
Is that any way to enter an embrace?
Better to follow the purist’s logic. Reject all authority, including your own!
As a purist, Shane can trash his anti-authoritarian stance to assert his authority as a tango lead. And I must be a purist too, because I readily surrender my feminist autonomy … for three minutes at a stretch.
And that’s just the beginning.
Last fall, Shane and I—fresh out of our second group lesson at the Merc--danced at the Labor Day festival in Cheeseman Park.
We were serious Tango Anarchists. We had no regard for steps or floorcraft. We kicked up our heels. Whenever we crashed into people, we gaily apologized.
This is how it felt to us:
Isn’t this fun? We are all in this together, packed in like sardines! Yet see how the bonhomie flows! We are kind and forbearing because really, there’s no way to avoid crashing into one another if you’re kicking up your heels in this small space.
.
Imagine all the people living for today ... living life in peace ... sharing all the world.
After a while Shane observed, “These people aren't very friendly.”
Bonhomie had waned. People were beginning to glare.
So…
Following time-honored American tradition, the Free-Thinking Innocents left the Civilized World and built their own Utopia in the Wilderness—in this case, on the cement apron between the pavilion and fountain.
Out of the way, but still within reach of Civilization’s sound system.
Because, really, what fun is anarchy without a good sound system?
After a while Shane observed, “These people aren't very friendly.”
Bonhomie had waned. People were beginning to glare.
So…
Following time-honored American tradition, the Free-Thinking Innocents left the Civilized World and built their own Utopia in the Wilderness—in this case, on the cement apron between the pavilion and fountain.
Out of the way, but still within reach of Civilization’s sound system.
Because, really, what fun is anarchy without a good sound system?
* * *
This year, when I saw Shane at the Cheeseman Park milonga, I assumed he was going to dance.
But not with me.
I have forsaken the wild ways of my tango youth. Small steps are lovely, floorcraft essential. It is not unnecessarily restrictive to require the man to move forward along the line of dance.
I have become Tango-Civilized.
.
I have not mastered the glare, but I can tighten my lips pretty well.
Watching anarchists at a crowded milonga is like watching NASCAR. You suspect there's a crash in the offing and you fervently hope that no one gets hurt ... but you can't resist.
.
There is only one way to spot the anarchists on the overcrowded magic carpet of marble that is the Cheeseman Park Pavilion.
Climb onto one of the column supports for a bird’s-eye view. Scan the crowd for mayhem. Oddly enough, I don’t see Shane and Jessica dancing.
Nevertheless, I offer this footnote:
Top Ten Highlights of the Memorial Day Festival
11. Shane, hours after the milonga and a half-mile away safely from the Pavilion, on the deck of his house: His strong, masculine chest, my surrender. No crashes into the table bearing the remains of our supper, nor the lit torches, nor Jessica and Brian, who are watching, clamoring for lessons.
Climb onto one of the column supports for a bird’s-eye view. Scan the crowd for mayhem. Oddly enough, I don’t see Shane and Jessica dancing.
Nevertheless, I offer this footnote:
Top Ten Highlights of the Memorial Day Festival
11. Shane, hours after the milonga and a half-mile away safely from the Pavilion, on the deck of his house: His strong, masculine chest, my surrender. No crashes into the table bearing the remains of our supper, nor the lit torches, nor Jessica and Brian, who are watching, clamoring for lessons.
Moving Day
Last Sunday someone gave me a bouquet of home-grown, old-vine roses, pale pink and sweetly scented.
Almost everything else is gone from the apartment. I pull off the petals, scatter them on sheets of paper to dry while I carry the last fragile things to the car.
Now the apartment echoes every move I make. Every keystroke rings.
There is nothing left but a box for a computer desk, a woman cross-legged on the floor, the scent of rose, petals scattered in a corner of the room.
And in the next room: A small boom box. CDs. A pair of shoes. A Man on the Wall.
I moved into this apartment one year ago because, with its expansive wooden floor, it felt like a dance studio. I was taking get-in-shape classes at Cleo Parker Robinson as preparation for a return to ballet. It would be months before someone would coax me to try tango, weeks more before I would accept.
At the Mercury tonight, Hsueh-tze is teaching. I have been looking forward to it for weeks.
Yet here I am.
I can fly to Boston any time. The moment to say a goodbye is fleeting.
I didn’t used to think so.
Take, for example, a funeral, the ultimate good-bye. Whom are you addressing when you say good-bye? Do you think there is someone on the other end of the line? Dead is dead. Gone is gone.
Once I had a friend, Barbara. Strangers thought we were sisters, even though we looked nothing alike. She was blonde and blue-eyed, spritely. I was the big, dreamy one. Why would strangers make such a mistake? What they saw outshone our physical differences. It was our common way of perceiving and responding to the world, a shared way of being. Not sisters, not lovers. Two selves, one heart. Simpatico.
Barbara said to me: Home is where the heart is ... when the heart is at home. She meant: Our hearts took root and refuge in one another.
My father called me at work to tell me Barbara had died. I called her house. I needed someone who was on the scene to tell me the truth.
Her father-in-law answered the phone. When I spoke, he didn’t answer. I spoke again. He answered in the oddest voice I have ever heard:
“You sound … I thought you were her,” he said.
I turned my back on her funeral. If I were to say good-bye, whom would I be addressing? Dead is dead.
Barbara never visited my dreams. She does not speak to me in the whisperings of the wind. Gone is gone.
Once I saw a woman similar in appearance. I didn’t think it was Barbara come back, but I was grateful to rest my eyes on the welcome sight. Now there is a man in tango. His playfulness, his smile, remind me of Barbara. I am happy to be in his embrace, even if it is only him, only tango.
There is a song I have liked for a very long time. Though it is called “In Loving Memory,” it has nothing to do with Barbara. I fell in love with the song years before I knew its name.
The song is Celtic, but I think it would work for tango. The music has many open spaces, and there are two distinct themes that intertwine. When I am dancing, not practicing, I dance to this song. If I were ever to do a student showcase, I would do it to this melancholy waltz.
* * *
Ten years after she died, I said good-bye to Barbara.
In DC on business, I visited a restaurant where a man in old-fashioned clothes wandered about, embarrassing the diners with good-natured jokes, bawdy songs. He stopped by my table on his break, offered to sing any song quietly, just for me, because he didn’t want to embarrass a woman eating alone.
Surprised by the offer, I drew a blank. Barbara and I had discovered one another through music. If a human body is 90 percent water, the water of our joint being was song. I called her Troubi, short for Troubadour. But now, in this city where she and I used to hang, I couldn’t name a single one of the hundreds of songs that we had sung together.
“Something about water,” was the best I could do.
“I don’t know many songs about water,” he said. He strummed, asked me to help him remember the words if I could, then began:
The water is wide, I cannot get over
And neither have I wings to fly
Give me a boat that can carry two
And both will row, my love and I.
It was the last song Barbara had taught me.
We sang it together, my breath on his hands, his hands on the strings. And then he handed me his lute. It was large and heavy and fit in my lap like a child. The sound was mellow as the honeyed light that follows a storm.
I rarely think about Barbara these days. But when the thoughts rise, I don’t turn away.
***
Tonight I skip Hsueh-tze’s class. I am tired. Yesterday I moved. Today I cleaned. Tomorrow I turn over the keys to this dance space I loved but could not turn into a home.
I drop by for a final bit of practice with The Man on the Wall. A fanciful ending to a fanciful bit of handiwork.
First up, Canaro. Then Di Sarli. Then a little French jazz we like very much. I would like to do Eleven Perfect Steps tonight. What a fine ending that would be!
At 7:30 the light slants through the large windows. I walk backward, forward, facing The Man on the Wall. I am practicing, paying attention to what works, putting the pieces together. It is working!
But as Canaro gives way to Di Sarli, the light fades and The Man on the Wall fades with it.
Now, for the first time in a long time, thoughts of Barbara rise. My wings droop. After all these years, I still yearn.
For years I grieved, for years more I intellectualized. Now in the dark, the Man on the Wall only a mark on the walls of my mind, my body says, let me have this.
Eleven Perfect Steps, a rote exercise, a vessel. As much as you pour into it, it can hold.
The stronger my yearning becomes, the stronger my steps.
Gradually, it dawns on me that I am walking backward easily and without wobbling. Going forward requires more care, but it can be done.
In terms of technique, it is obvious: Yearning, seeking, keeps my axis forward.
In terms of spirit it is this: Whoo-hoo! But a sober whoo-hoo. This is not the fanciful evening I expected.
It is pitch black now, and I can’t see The Man on the Wall, even when I’m nearly on top of him. My feet hurt, and I am so tired I stumble. It is time to finish this off.
I put in the Celtic CD.
Good-bye, Barbara. Again.
Almost everything else is gone from the apartment. I pull off the petals, scatter them on sheets of paper to dry while I carry the last fragile things to the car.
Now the apartment echoes every move I make. Every keystroke rings.
There is nothing left but a box for a computer desk, a woman cross-legged on the floor, the scent of rose, petals scattered in a corner of the room.
And in the next room: A small boom box. CDs. A pair of shoes. A Man on the Wall.
I moved into this apartment one year ago because, with its expansive wooden floor, it felt like a dance studio. I was taking get-in-shape classes at Cleo Parker Robinson as preparation for a return to ballet. It would be months before someone would coax me to try tango, weeks more before I would accept.
At the Mercury tonight, Hsueh-tze is teaching. I have been looking forward to it for weeks.
Yet here I am.
I can fly to Boston any time. The moment to say a goodbye is fleeting.
I didn’t used to think so.
Take, for example, a funeral, the ultimate good-bye. Whom are you addressing when you say good-bye? Do you think there is someone on the other end of the line? Dead is dead. Gone is gone.
Once I had a friend, Barbara. Strangers thought we were sisters, even though we looked nothing alike. She was blonde and blue-eyed, spritely. I was the big, dreamy one. Why would strangers make such a mistake? What they saw outshone our physical differences. It was our common way of perceiving and responding to the world, a shared way of being. Not sisters, not lovers. Two selves, one heart. Simpatico.
Barbara said to me: Home is where the heart is ... when the heart is at home. She meant: Our hearts took root and refuge in one another.
My father called me at work to tell me Barbara had died. I called her house. I needed someone who was on the scene to tell me the truth.
Her father-in-law answered the phone. When I spoke, he didn’t answer. I spoke again. He answered in the oddest voice I have ever heard:
“You sound … I thought you were her,” he said.
I turned my back on her funeral. If I were to say good-bye, whom would I be addressing? Dead is dead.
Barbara never visited my dreams. She does not speak to me in the whisperings of the wind. Gone is gone.
Once I saw a woman similar in appearance. I didn’t think it was Barbara come back, but I was grateful to rest my eyes on the welcome sight. Now there is a man in tango. His playfulness, his smile, remind me of Barbara. I am happy to be in his embrace, even if it is only him, only tango.
There is a song I have liked for a very long time. Though it is called “In Loving Memory,” it has nothing to do with Barbara. I fell in love with the song years before I knew its name.
The song is Celtic, but I think it would work for tango. The music has many open spaces, and there are two distinct themes that intertwine. When I am dancing, not practicing, I dance to this song. If I were ever to do a student showcase, I would do it to this melancholy waltz.
* * *
Ten years after she died, I said good-bye to Barbara.
In DC on business, I visited a restaurant where a man in old-fashioned clothes wandered about, embarrassing the diners with good-natured jokes, bawdy songs. He stopped by my table on his break, offered to sing any song quietly, just for me, because he didn’t want to embarrass a woman eating alone.
Surprised by the offer, I drew a blank. Barbara and I had discovered one another through music. If a human body is 90 percent water, the water of our joint being was song. I called her Troubi, short for Troubadour. But now, in this city where she and I used to hang, I couldn’t name a single one of the hundreds of songs that we had sung together.
“Something about water,” was the best I could do.
“I don’t know many songs about water,” he said. He strummed, asked me to help him remember the words if I could, then began:
The water is wide, I cannot get over
And neither have I wings to fly
Give me a boat that can carry two
And both will row, my love and I.
It was the last song Barbara had taught me.
We sang it together, my breath on his hands, his hands on the strings. And then he handed me his lute. It was large and heavy and fit in my lap like a child. The sound was mellow as the honeyed light that follows a storm.
I rarely think about Barbara these days. But when the thoughts rise, I don’t turn away.
***
Tonight I skip Hsueh-tze’s class. I am tired. Yesterday I moved. Today I cleaned. Tomorrow I turn over the keys to this dance space I loved but could not turn into a home.
I drop by for a final bit of practice with The Man on the Wall. A fanciful ending to a fanciful bit of handiwork.
First up, Canaro. Then Di Sarli. Then a little French jazz we like very much. I would like to do Eleven Perfect Steps tonight. What a fine ending that would be!
At 7:30 the light slants through the large windows. I walk backward, forward, facing The Man on the Wall. I am practicing, paying attention to what works, putting the pieces together. It is working!
But as Canaro gives way to Di Sarli, the light fades and The Man on the Wall fades with it.
Now, for the first time in a long time, thoughts of Barbara rise. My wings droop. After all these years, I still yearn.
For years I grieved, for years more I intellectualized. Now in the dark, the Man on the Wall only a mark on the walls of my mind, my body says, let me have this.
Eleven Perfect Steps, a rote exercise, a vessel. As much as you pour into it, it can hold.
The stronger my yearning becomes, the stronger my steps.
Gradually, it dawns on me that I am walking backward easily and without wobbling. Going forward requires more care, but it can be done.
In terms of technique, it is obvious: Yearning, seeking, keeps my axis forward.
In terms of spirit it is this: Whoo-hoo! But a sober whoo-hoo. This is not the fanciful evening I expected.
It is pitch black now, and I can’t see The Man on the Wall, even when I’m nearly on top of him. My feet hurt, and I am so tired I stumble. It is time to finish this off.
I put in the Celtic CD.
Good-bye, Barbara. Again.
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