MoveOn.ohd

He apologized. I accepted.

We move on.

* * *

Keith has taken flight off a few roofs. He used to install and repair solar systems; falling is a job hazard. The trick, he said, is to control the landing.

Long after he stopped doing solar, he had his worst fall. He broke his left side. Ribs, hip. His wrist was destroyed.

For an artist to lose a hand is

There are no words for that.

Keith was lucky; a renowned hand surgeon was in the emergency room that day. He (Lewis Oster, Superdoc!) saved Keith’s wrist. It took most of a day of surgery and many casts and visits to the doctor. After months the wrist would not heal; the bones and joint had been ground to sand and gravel, and the pieces would not grow back together. The surgeon was shaking his head. Sooner or later, the cast would have to come off and that would be that.

As a last-ditch effort, Keith let me try visualization. I had never really done it before. I pictured the bits and pieces as ice floes, drifting together, melding. It worked! It was lucky for Keith that it did. For me, it was holy.

Everyone celebrated. Whoo-hoo!

When Keith felt his solid in his bones again, we went to breakfast at a truck stop diner, our favorite treat.

Next to the cash register was a box of buttons, the kind you wear on your lapel. We laughed at one, but the laughter cut at my heart.

Not Keith. He liked it! I saw only the first words. Keith saw the whole, larger truth.

Keith carried the button around. He showed it to all of his buddies. One day he stuck it to the refrigerator door with a magnet. Finally, he affixed it to the top of his toolbox, the one that sits front and center on his workbench.

In plain black letters on a white background it said:

I FALL DOWN, I GET UP

* * *


In a lesson several weeks ago, Grisha stopped between dances. This is when he explains what part of me is out of whack.

Your embrace feels different, he said …

approvingly.

!!!

Finally, finally! After two years I have finally managed to line up wings and center and axis and balance and all the rest of it. Finally, I know I will make the dancer I know I can be. It has been a mystery to me why I could not catch on. All of my littermates progressed much faster than me.

I am a renowned klutz. No one who knows me can believe I would ever make a dancer. They think it’s adorable that I want to try, like a duck that wants to pull a wagon. But I have always known with certainty that it is in me … if I could only master the body mechanics, if I could stick with it until I get over that hump …

Now I am mystified. I know I am a much better dancer. It happened suddenly, without cause. What clicked? I don’t know.

It feels like you trust me, he added.

* * *

The night before the Harvest Moon milonga, Stan was happier with our dancing than he has ever been. He was beaming. I was mystified. What was different? He tried to explain. Writing this now, I think I know: It feels like you trust me.

Yes, well …

Nothing personal, GrishaGlenlivetStanTomAndreyMr.Mathematician, I’m just stepping it back a bit. I may have advanced prematurely. The landscape looks different from what I expected. I need to regroup.

* * *

I am not running for the exit. Kari would laugh if I said I were. I have said it too often already. I am not running. I am edging toward the back row.

At the Mercury Cafe, you must climb several steps to get to the back rows of tables and chairs. It is quiet and shadowy. You are practically invisible; no one comes looking for a partner up there. You can enjoy the music and let your mind wander or chat with someone who is taking a break from the dancing. It is almost like being in the time-out chair, which is a lovely place for a daydreamer.

Like so much of the Merc, it’s a metaphor. I have a place like that inside myself. I think I might hang there for a while. I don’t want to stop dancing. I am making progress and I don’t want to lose it. Still, I think I’ll let technique front for me for a while. I think I can get away with that for a while.

It is not forever. I have learned to trust the tango cycle: It knocks me down, in a little while I get up.

* * *

It takes a big person to apologize simply. Add that to the mix, to keep all this honest.

I make up the nicknames for people in this blog. I could call this guy something vulgar, but I won’t, not based on this one incident.

No person is all one thing or another. He had a moment. If he has another, I will hear about it and I will gather a posse and we will push him through the brick wall, and you can read all about it here, including his name. Meanwhile, I am turning my attention to fences.

Mending fences is hard. Someone has to be willing to hold the nail while the other wields the hammer. You have to trust and you have to be wary. You have to be present, like a Zen monk washing the dishes.

It takes two to mend a fence.

He and I? No.

The fence metaphor refers to a shared border. In geography you can’t choose who shares your border; in tango you can. The fence I am mending is the border I share with The Five and my teacher. It is trust. They are not responsible for damaging the fence, but they will help me repair it.

To be honest, I’m not all that enamored of trust. If I had known that’s what tango is all about, I would not have come near it. Too late now. I am enchanted.

There is a commercial for a phone service. A geek holds a cell phone. He walks two steps and says, “Can you hear me now?” Every two steps he asks, “Can you hear me now?"

I danced like that geek. Every two steps I was asking, Are you going to hurt me? Are you going to hurt me now?

By “hurt,” I don’t mean slap me. I mean "do me harm." I really was asking: Can I trust you? Can I trust you now?

I danced with a doomed man’s bravado. I never anticipated the answer would be yes, but over time I got used to it: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. With every step it is Yes.

Well … not every step. There are missteps, criticism, innuendoes, advances …

Oh!

As it turns out, there is a corollary to the question, Can I trust you?

The corollary is this: Are you going to throw something at me that I can’t handle?

And the corollary to that question is: Can I trust me to handle what comes my way?

Most of the time … in my own time … the answer is Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Now when I dance with someone I trust, I own my space. When I come into the embrace, I am there. I am grounded in a conditional faith in certainty—trust.

I am not stupid. I know this is, like, you know, all about life. But life is big. I like to take it in small doses. One tanda, one dance at a time.

And that’s how The Five and my teacher and I will mend the fence. They won’t have to do much; this is my work to do. I trust me to do it; I have done it before.

But this is not only about me, Glenlivet points out.

As a social dance, tango can only exist within the safe space created by shared assumptions about—and insistence upon--right behavior. A major role of Tango Colorado is to propagate the culture that preserves the safe space.

When someone violates behavioral norms, Glenlivet says, it damages the fabric of the community. Like it or not, One Heart owes it to the community to do something about it.

Eeek! Really?

He’s not going to give ground on this. I can tell.

Trust is not merely a one-on-one thing. It is, itself, the fabric of community. Thus, trust can’t trickle down; it can only ripple out. Private actions have public effects. I am extrapolating to the moon, and maybe I am getting it all wrong, but I am trusting you on this, Glenlivet.

So

I will turn my attention to the mending of fences until trust grows like wisteria, until you cannot tell where any fence is, exactly, and the twining vine cannot be contained but spills over, wending through the community, reweaving the fabric by its own verdant will.

Good people fall down. They get up.

We move on.