tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-77795477400604152412024-02-18T21:30:16.649-08:00My Tango YearThe Inner Life of Argentine Tango:
Argentine tango offers much to love and much to learn. There is the dance itself, all rigor and improvisation. Also the music, the history, the costumes, and the people who keep tango alive.
And then there are the true tango lessons, the ones you learn when two people step into one another's personal space, connect at the heart, and together create a spontaneous beauty.
This blog is about all of it, but mostly about this: Tango is life.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger390125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7779547740060415241.post-28716602439806500502008-12-31T21:46:00.000-08:002009-01-02T13:34:06.855-08:00The Line of Dance Is a Circle[New Year’s Eve: Two years to the day after starting this blog.]<br /><br />Only connect.<br /><em>Howard’s End</em>, E.M. Forester<br /><br /><br />I had great plans for this year. Great plans!<br /><br />This year would be the Year of Connection. What can be more tango than that?<br /><br />All year long I touched on what it means to connect.<br /><br />my hips<br />my muscles<br />the many myths of my one body<br /><br />many teachers, disciplines, styles underlain by a continuous thread,<br />one teacher, Grisha<br /><br />the Denver tango community, unbeknownst even to itself, one<br />larger than the sum of its contentious parts,<br />in context global and historic, immediate and ethereal<br /><br />composers and singers, rhythm and tune, the bandaneon<br />Fresedo and Canaro and the Communist Pugliese<br />resolved in the beat of one lead’s heart<br /><br />lovely Comme il Faut shoes duct-taped,<br />one prayer to hold them together until a new pair can be found<br /><br />old wood and moguls, the floor of the Merc,<br />gossip and small talk, Kari's laugh<br /><br />The Five: Glenlivet, Stan, Tom, Andrey, Mark<br />plus one: The Mathematician<br /><br />The Man on the Wall<br />My Deep-Thinking Friend<br />each one of them one of a kind<br /><br />Argentina, its soul<br /><br />my family, sisters, brother, father, mother<br />their stories, the story we are making together<br /><br />my solitude<br /><br />my story<br /><br />my one heart<br /><br />Look to the right, read the section headed “Only Connect.” It’s a catalog.<br /><br />I meant to run through the catalog. I meant to connect the dots. I had a plan, a sketchy outline. I meant to write like crazy through the last twelve weeks of the year.<br /><br />I was right on track. I had created a story arc, I had set up the ending. All that remained was to gather it all together with BrillianceMeaningTruthBeautyLight.<br /><br />In the face of such a task, there are only two things a writer can do: drink or lie.<br /><br />This is memoir. Lying is out.<br /><br />Here’s a true story:<br /><br />Shortly after Barbara died, I asked her husband, as he was cleaning out her things, to send something of hers to me. It’s a little creepy, this drive we have, to hold onto the dead. In Victorian times, the survivors cut the hair of their loved ones and wove funeral wreaths. They were not rough mementoes, they were décor: sophisticated and intricate showpieces.<br /><br />I didn’t want Barbara’s hair. I wanted a talisman (n., from the Greek <em>consecration</em>).<br /><br />He sent a red sweater. I had one just like it. I had bought the sweaters a year before. Barbara would wear hers on the East Coast and I would wear mine in the Rocky Mountains. It didn’t turn out to be as woo-woo meaningful as I had hoped.<br /><br />I stuck the sweater in a drawer. Next summer, when Keith and I went camping, I wore it. We were cozy around the campfire when a coal burst. A cinder landed on my shoulder and burned a hole the size of a silver dollar.<br /><br />I tried to cauterize the hole. I tried to rejoin the threads. But you cannot keep a damaged knit from unraveling. With every move I made, the weave came more undone.<br /><br />It hurt to watch the hole grow large, ragged. Soon I threw the sweater away. It was not a big moment; I had no emotional attachment.<br /><br />Barbara once asked: Do you ever want it all to connect?<br /><br />I do.<br /><br />I live in solitude, not in isolation. I want it all to connect in ways that are unseen and mysterious and cosmic and in ways that are immediate and earthy. I don’t need a god’s master plan, I only wish to believe that when a thread is plucked, the whole web goes <em>ping!</em><br /><br />But.<br /><br />It does not matter what I want. As the song goes: Life comes together and it comes apart.<br /><br />Tonight as I practice with Glenlivet, I tell him all of this.<br /><br />“So that’s it,” I say. “I’m going to end the blog by saying it’s all just a big, unraveled mess.”<br /><br />We laugh, and then he stops laughing. An idea is forming, he is going to think it aloud. It takes but a second. He pronounces it with certainty:<br /><br />“It does all connect,” he says. “In you.”<br /><br />in my one heart<br />dancingUnknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7779547740060415241.post-10747896291959230232008-12-30T13:01:00.001-08:002008-12-30T13:06:01.368-08:00How Visiting Your Family Warps Your BrainNews from the <strong>Frontiers in Evolutionary Neuroscience </strong>via the Discovery channel (and yes, that's the real headline):<br /><br />"We like to be around people that look more like us, but we do not find them as sexually attractive," added Platek, editor-in-chief of the journal Frontiers in Evolutionary Neuroscience. "I think it is linked to our subconscious ability to detect facial resemblances so we avoid lusting after those that may be related to us."<br /><br /><a href="http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/12/29/family-brain.html">Read more</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7779547740060415241.post-45579005564457901062008-12-28T18:56:00.001-08:002008-12-28T19:13:04.988-08:00Archaeologists Discover Demolished Remains of Cafe De Hansen, Famed Cradle of Argentine TangoA group of archaeologists found the remains of the Cafe de Hansen, one of the birthplaces of the tango, which thrived in Buenos Aires from the end of the 19th century until the beginning of the 20th and has been named both in chronicles of the times and in lyrics of Argentina's most typical music.<br /><br />The culture minister of the Buenos Aires municipal government, Hernan Lombardi, told the daily Clarin on Saturday that experts had found part of the brick flooring of the mythical cafe 50 centimeters (20 inches) underground in Palermo Park on the city's north side.<br /><br />The cafe was demolished in 1912 to make way for roadworks.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=324238&CategoryId=14093">Read the full story</a>.<br /><br /><strong>* * *</strong><br /><br /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285043041731450386" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 306px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicJWdCjrBAa5Khyphenhypheni-O3Ke3uJy3y2GBdv1JZksOUZdyWOBaOjhonmwDYg7Os0cuZBwZAZlSlhBHuf_kmdeoeJ_hvOXScD-nzD2yPF3mXa7uPVH7KSXfg5F9lP9hTrnVJyp_xsQe9aGeuB8r/s320/bilde.jpg" border="0" /> <strong>La Troileana</strong><br /><br />(From Lahontan [Nevada] Valley News)<br /><br /><p>Another recent and recommended release is “Troileana” (World Village/Harmonia Mundi) by Liliana Barrios.</p>Barrios was awarded the Gardel Prize — the equivalent of the “Tango Grammy” — in 2005 and this release is a celebration of the music of Anibal Troilo, one of the foremost composers of Argentine tango’s golden age, and the first album to be dedicated exclusively to his music.<br /><br />Troilo was a student of Gardel’s as well as the mentor of Astor Piazzola, and his pieces are very much the essence of the Argentine tango tradition.<br /><br />Her vocals are accompanied by two bandeons, (some excellent playing by Walter Rios) two pianos and a string trio; the music is magnetic and demanding.<br /><br />Barrios has maintained that tango-song is unique in that it is felt through the music, imagined in the lyrics and danced by our feet. The lyrics (all in Spanish) are dynamic evocations of lived experiences, which can be typified by her inclusion of two versions of “La Ultima Curda” (The Last Binge),” that National Tango Hymn.<br /><br />Her expressive voice is well-suited for this material. True to the emotive nature of tango, its heights and depths of feeling, her expressive voice takes us on a roller coaster ride of joy and sadness, lust and despair.<br /><p>* * *</p><p>Buenos Aires Gets Tango Monument<br /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5285044179128990450" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 203px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 250px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLnbsnfkOf-LiY8Ekre1Ldm1ZLODUBB1dmszZ-F4hpNSjoiUeLNJjhoDx-pWH80eiDr-v0KuGm_POaFV3-LGLhoMBkiMi6rT3msTbD_kMlZ5_e2N3e7CdXUoiZcDbgRrsdJI5qzTCviixZ/s320/_44220196_tango_afp203b.jpg" border="0" />They say it is the first time any city or country has honoured a style of music in this way. <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7080197.stm">Read more</a>.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7779547740060415241.post-18601030188635337932008-12-19T20:04:00.000-08:002008-12-20T14:06:09.927-08:00What Is Lonely?When it is Friday night and all of your tango friends are at the Merc dancing and you are for the fifth day in a row bedridden with flu.<br /><br />[When you are little kid who has made up the funniest pun in the world and nobody laughs, no matter how many times you repeat it, jumping up and down in frenzied excitement at what you have seen, peeking through a tear in the thick canvas tent, the word circus!, where words fly the trapeze and juggle and tumble out of tiny cars and make elephants balance on brightly colored balls, and ride bareback on ponies, shouting “Get it? Get it?”<br /><br />When you are lying in your bedroll on a broad prairie beneath the indifferent firmament with a cold, dew-soaked dawn coming on, growing old.<br /><br />When the week before Christmas your best friend, so frail she is nearly transparent in a stranger’s tattered, hand-me-down nightgown, climbs through a maze of filthy junk, the leavings of too many transient predecessors, in the unlit basement of a wreck of a house, calling in a starving, angelic voice that could still sing beautifully if only she could, calling for her lost kitten, when she says, to protect you from falling in the dark, “Stay back, you can't come with me.”]<br /><br />When, making the best of the flu, snuggled in the dark, the cozy burden of double-knit afghan pinning your every curve and angle to down cushions, steaming cup close at hand, narrow light trained on your lap, you open a book<br /><br />that breaches all your readerly/writerly walls, walks right up to the palace of your heart, with one confident finger reaches out and rings the bell. Every jaunty word sings vibrato, all of the palace doors fling themselves open, the jugglers and elephants and trapeze artists and bareback riders flood the square ... and it is all so peculiar you cannot think of one other person to share it with.<br /><br />If the word circus came to town and nobody bought a ticket ...<br /><br />Writers need readers.<br /><br />Suddenly you are lonely, so lonely you must behave rashly, must set the book aside and shout into the void studded with nodes as the indifferent firmament is studded with stars:<br /><br />Hey! Read this!<br /><br /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Whale-Season-N-M-Kelby/dp/0307336786/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229746165&sr=1-1">Whale Season</a>, by N.M. Kelby.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7779547740060415241.post-14796693695315021162008-12-07T20:08:00.001-08:002008-12-08T09:46:05.174-08:00Tango SerendipityTango Lovers Dance in the Streets of Buenos Aires last Saturday...<br /><br /><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7770374.stm">http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7770374.stm</a><br /><br />... same day as the Tango Colorado Holiday Ball!<br /><br />How much fun is that?<br /><br />How did they know...?!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7779547740060415241.post-33080156974937851642008-12-06T15:02:00.000-08:002008-12-07T11:14:09.250-08:00Tango Colorado Holiday BallTonight is the Tango Colorado holiday dance. I am breaking feminine rules and wearing the same dress as last year. It has a glittery, silver bodice with a floor-length silver-gray taffeta skirt. It is as beautiful as the day it was made, some 40 years ago.<br /><br />What a difference one year makes! Last year I couldn’t dance very well. This year, coming off Fandango de Tango, I feel like All That.<br /><br />I am a good, solid intermediate. After spending one year at the bottom of the beginner class and one year clawing my way out, this feels like a million bucks!<br /><br />What about my dad? This time last year he was suffering from cancer, huddled under blankets and shivering in the aftermath of his chemotherapy.<br /><br />This year he is well. He has a clean bill of health. The cancer may come back, but it is quite treatable.<br /><br />Too bad he recently lost his medical insurance. Now his pension ison the chopping block. In the absence of union contracts, what The Company giveth it may freely taketh away. Do not say one word to me about the logic that requires corporate investors to starve the geese that lay their golden eggs for them.<br /><br />Clouds are massing on the horizon. I expect a Perfect Storm. I am battening down my hatches. Next year I may need to cut back on tango. Next year we all may.<br /><br />Still.<br /><br />Glenlivet has just taken a loft with a huge dance space. He intends to give only one tango party, he tells me: It started last weekend and ends on the day he dies. I love Glenlivet.<br /><br />Kari called a few hours ago to tell me to save her a prime seat at the holiday party tonight. She wants a seat right on the dance floor. We will chat between dances all night. I love that!<br /><br />Right this minute I must leave for the holiday ball. I am to help with the cooking. I love to cook for a crowd!<br /><br />Next week I dance with Grisha in a student showcase for my family at Patricia’s house party. I love Patricia’s house parties; I love dancing with Grisha; I love showing off for my family!<br /><br />All of this fun, all of this love! How lucky is that?<br /><br />How much more is this: I am a writer with readers.<br /><br />I kneel and kiss the ground.<br /><br />Let’s dance!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7779547740060415241.post-58089042329684140632008-12-04T23:56:00.002-08:002008-12-04T23:59:05.944-08:00Fandango de Tango Looking Back 4<strong>Lesson 4</strong><br /><strong>Steps<br /></strong><br />Taking eighteen classes in five days, you’re bound to learn a step or two. That’s how many combinations I memorized: two.<br /><br />But that’s not the point. I never go to class to learn combinations; I go to do them. Sometimes, being dragged through the paces, I wonder why I bother.<br /><br />Fabian Salas explains…<br /><br />The idea that a follower can blindly follow any step is a fiction. Remember when you were a beginner, learning the cross?<br /><br />No, Fabian says, a follower is like a computer. First you need to download the software, then you can use it.<br /><br />There’s something offensive in his simile, I suspect, but his point is well taken: If a follower doesn’t know how to execute a move, or if a lead asks her to do something foreign or nonsensical to her, chances are she won’t get it right. She’ll resist it or do it badly.<br /><br />Think of volcada. What follower in her right mind would go along with that?<br /><br />I am a pretty good follower, and I still can’t respond to the lead to step forward into the man’s step. Stan does it often when we practice, and I never get it right on the first try. Might a class help?<br /><br />A class gives a follower technique to use in executing a step. The concentrated repetition with many leads forces the follower to develop sensitivity to the lead’s cue regardless of how it is executed. Most important, a class gives the follower permission to take the unfamiliar, perhaps uncomfortable, step.<br /><br />Yes that’s right, the teacher reassures her. With every repetition, the follower gains sensitivity to the cue and refines her execution.<br /><br />By the time class ends, the follower has filed both the cue and the move in her muscle memory. A few sessions at home with a broom or a partner, and she’s ready to take her cool new move public!<br /><br />In a milonga, a considerate lead gives a follower only two or three chances to pick up on a cue. Then he spares her the misery of missing the step. I never want to miss a lead’s cue. Far better to go to class (18 classes in 5 days!) and be dragged through the paces umpteen clumsy times, so when the move comes up in milonga, I’m ready.<br /><br />Don’t ask me what steps I learned at Fandango de Tango. Lead me and I’ll show you.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7779547740060415241.post-53469474715633296262008-12-04T23:56:00.001-08:002008-12-04T23:56:48.133-08:00Fandango de Tango Looking Back 3<strong>Lesson 3<br /></strong><strong>Cabeceo!<br /></strong><br />I’ve been an abject failure at cabeceo. I don’t like it; it’s terribly brash. One does not look at another person; that’s presumptuous. And a prolonged stare across a room? That’s brazen. Am I supposed to behave as if I am interested? I think not!<br /><br />That’s been my thinking, but now it has taken a turn. Apparently, despite my objections, I have been practicing this little trick. In Austin I learned: If you want it bad enough, you can make the cabeceo work.<br /><br />My first cabeceo was born of necessity and not on the dance floor: I knocked over a glass of water. A waiter was scanning the room. I caught his eye, held my breath and held onto the look. In a Texas two-step, he was there, tidying up.<br /><br />Whoa. Seriously. That’s like having a superhero gaze of power!<br /><br />By the last night’s milonga, I was cabeceo-ing left and right. I followed all the rules I learned from Barbara Durr at the Denver festival last spring. During cortinas, I returned to my chair, sat up straight, and scanned the room with lively interest.<br /><br />Yikes! Strangers looked back at me! Doubleyikes! We danced!<br /><br />It felt brazen. It felt like: Here I am, bring it on! I got away with it because I knew no one. Being in a roomful of strangers affects me strongly, one way or another: sends me scurrying for cover or makes me fearless. This week it was fearless. Go figure.<br /><br />Now that I have returned home, will it stick? I don’t think so. I don’t want to be the kind of person who has a roving eye, always on the lookout for the next opportunity. I like to be the kind of person who is happy with what is close at hand. I like to go unnoticed, or to be noticed by few. I like to be approached and to accept invitations. I do not like to put myself out there for the taking, nor challenge men to bring it on.<br /><br />On the other hand…<br /><br />I often use the technique of cabeceo in reverse, to preempt invitations to dance. It is easy to choose a strategic moment to fuss with the shoes or sip tea.<br /><br />I like to dance, and I like certain leads very much, and after about one year of preparation, had good success in floating a suggestion of interest to The Mathematician.<br /><br />I like to not dance, I like to dance. It may be that cabeceo offers just what I need: a way to go unnoticed … until I want to be seen.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7779547740060415241.post-33573950567350628082008-12-04T23:53:00.000-08:002008-12-04T23:54:53.342-08:00Fandango de Tango Looking Back 2<strong>Lesson 2</strong><br /><br /><strong>When a woman dances in such a way that a man is inspired to shower her with gifts, she has hit her stride as a tanguera.<br /></strong><br />After two lovely tandas at the Thanksgiving Brunch milonga, The Gentleman from Austin took my hand. “I want to give you gifts so you’ll remember my name!” he said urgently.<br /><br />Cool! I said, or words to that effect.<br /><br />Four days later, at the last-night’s farewell milonga, he gave me: a Tosca CD and a Got Gancho? T-shirt. And three lovely tandas, politely spaced over the course of the night.<br /><br />How cool is that?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7779547740060415241.post-27495053166216164032008-12-04T23:51:00.000-08:002008-12-04T23:55:57.847-08:00Fandango de Tango: Looking Back 1It’s been a week since the start of Fandango de Tango. What have I learned?<br /><br /><strong>Elegant lady and hard-working Joe make a lovely pair. Witness my shoes: Comme il Faut held together with duct tape.<br /></strong><br />It’s true! Four days before I boarded the plane for Austin, I caught my heel and tore the leather cross strap on my only pair of tango shoes. They have been on their last legs for nearly a year; the straps have already been replaced twice in the past two months.<br /><br />I have been shopping in three states, to no avail. Shoes for big, deformed feet are hard to come by.<br /><br />For six weeks, my goal was to nurse the sandals through Fandango de Tango, and hope to buy new shoes there. Keith’s finesse with duct tape made the repair invisible; through the whole festival, no one was the wiser.<br /><br />And, the grand prize: The shoe vendor at Fandango de Tango who will take a photo of my poor old sandals and have an identical pair made. I covet the Comme il Faut name, but at this point any wearable shoe will be just fine.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7779547740060415241.post-5686587749438255412008-11-30T17:53:00.000-08:002008-11-30T18:29:52.145-08:00Fandango de Tango Day 5: Texas Chain Saw Tanda<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLb5pe5cZWRe5KodEKUCcLZu14k34qkhYXouGBgzXqCOQXYuFXFlAkzaV_-xxGfl-wfKJgjvEmtGVfWWv-3-nhX8KGjBKMjiEXu685IV6UVp885R51Cee-oJQQy6mFmFFu0dybJ7F0gWeq/s1600-h/bubba_cu_wagon.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5274643258710677618" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 257px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLb5pe5cZWRe5KodEKUCcLZu14k34qkhYXouGBgzXqCOQXYuFXFlAkzaV_-xxGfl-wfKJgjvEmtGVfWWv-3-nhX8KGjBKMjiEXu685IV6UVp885R51Cee-oJQQy6mFmFFu0dybJ7F0gWeq/s320/bubba_cu_wagon.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div></div><br /><div></div><br /><div>One of the nice things about festivals is that you meet people. Like so:<br /><br />You work with a guy in class. Maybe he is a beginner and not so accomplished as the other guys. So what? He has a nice presence. Gentle.<br /><br />You see him at the milonga. Ricardo, the festival organizer, has announced that ladies are free to ask the gentlemen to dance. You ask. He looks alarmed, but he is a good sport.<br /><br />Next day ... turns out, he's that. I am not speaking metaphorically. Check out his website: leatherface2.com.<br /><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7779547740060415241.post-39789224935875103152008-11-30T10:49:00.000-08:002008-11-30T18:32:41.928-08:00Fandango de Tango Only in TexasPablo Pugliese is explaining how to do boleo, and he is drawing on the whip analogy. A man in the class, a big man, slowly draws a bandana out of his pocket, begins smoothing it in a ring he makes of thumb and forefinger.<br /><br />When Pablo is done, the big man, shy, raises his hand.<br /><br />Pablo raises his eyebrows.<br /><br />I did the bullwhip, he says. It works like this. He snaps the bandana. It is nothing like a whip, it is too floatiy to snap. Never mind. He gives it a few tries, and people nod. This class is full of Texans.<br /><br />Pablo nods. Apparently he has had experience with whips, or the snap of a wet towel. Later, he uses the analogy of the bandana to make a point. I like Pablo.<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />THERE IS NO CHOCOLATE! Apparently, in this state, the term "black gold" means something else.<br /><br />* * *Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7779547740060415241.post-84236570910817549142008-11-30T10:41:00.000-08:002008-11-30T10:48:33.297-08:00Fandango de Tango: Day 5Last morning blues. Everyone is dragging butt. We are all determinedly upbeat, but we are drragging butt. Last night the milonga lasted until 5 a.m, and classes today start at 1.<br /><br />This morning when I walked into the restaurant for breakfast, I asked the waitress to seat me in a corner somewhere. I didn't care iif it was a corner of the kitchen, as long as there weren't any tango folks in sight.<br /><br />She gave me a knowing look. She is fed up with us too.<br /><br />We are all in endurance mode. the goal today is to just get through it. Over the days we have become famliar with certain partners, and we look at them with relief. It is good to be in the same boat.<br /><br />Last day. We are in endurance mode,<br /><br />We are already looking forward to next year.<br /><br />Grin.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7779547740060415241.post-69571217553555002802008-11-30T10:35:00.001-08:002008-11-30T10:41:30.726-08:00Fandango de Tango: Day 5Festivals are great for meeting new people: This weekend, I met Carmen and Lisa, members of Tango Colorado.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7779547740060415241.post-65530566882948910412008-11-30T01:13:00.000-08:002008-11-30T01:16:20.571-08:00Fandango de Tango, Day 4 PostscriptI would just like to say this: If you come to this festival, bring a lot of chocolate. There is NO FOOD available after 11 p.m. Not even a vending machine.<br /><br />From where I am sitting , I can see through the glass doors of Morsels, the little food store in the hotel lobby. It is locked up tight. I am seriously thinking about becoming a burgler.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7779547740060415241.post-10937707266636538802008-11-30T01:12:00.001-08:002008-11-30T01:12:56.311-08:00Fandango de Tango: Day 4This is brutal. Classes all day and milongas at night, with little break between. There is not enough time to eat or sleep. What are these organizers thinking? This is a tango-maniac’s festival.<br /><br />Grin.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7779547740060415241.post-7859598897815613612008-11-24T21:30:00.000-08:002008-11-24T21:32:30.774-08:00This Is Not About PunctualityI arrive at the Merc at 11 p.m. Stan points to his watch. He’s been there since the music started at 9.<br /><br />We agree to meet tomorrow at the Turn to warm-up. “Music starts at 7:30,” he says. I usually arrive about 8:45.<br /><br />Saturday night I arrived at Patricia’s party shortly after 11. “You’ve been here since she opened the door, haven’t you?” I ask. He nods happily.<br /><br />The hardest thing about tango, Stan says, is waiting for it to begin.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7779547740060415241.post-18317332141875194232008-11-23T16:59:00.000-08:002008-11-23T17:00:35.772-08:00Good Grief 3xI don’t do parties. Nevertheless, I am here.<br /><br />I am not enamored of the idea of practice partners. Nevertheless, I say to Glenlivet, “I would like to practice with you.”<br /><br />He hands me his card.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7779547740060415241.post-50036601248408642242008-11-22T14:22:00.000-08:002008-11-22T14:23:18.690-08:00The Problem with Partners, Part 4First, he will want to exchange contact information. Your real name—first AND last—so he can put it into his interlocking phonePDAbuddylistemailtextmessagingFacebookMac system. “Just in case.”<br /><br />In case of what? In case he can’t make it to class? What difference does it make? Who skips class because their partner can’t make it? Not me. I go to class. I can handle odd-woman-out status. Not to brag, but I’m pretty good at it. Show or no show…I’m happy.<br /><br />He will insist on giving you his business card. Do not let it flutter from your fingers--that is littering. Also, he’s watching. Watch him. When you slip it into your wallet, he smiles.<br /><br />If he is running late or must miss a class, he will call you. He expects you to do the same for him. Now you do not have a class partner, now you have an obligation.<br /><br />Courtesy won’t kill you, my mother used to say when she was still the boss of me.<br />But what function does it serve? If I am going to the class anyway, do I need to know who else is going to be there? The information does not influence my actions.<br /><br />It won’t kill you, she says.<br /><br />It’s a mystery. What makes people need and want and behave as they do? Don’t ask. This is why we have rules of social behavior, so we don’t have to answer such questions on the fly. Take the phone call. It’s easier. And polite.<br /><br />But it does sort of kill you. To the extent it impinges on your privacy, it does.<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />My wallet is adorable! It is red and just a little bit bigger than a dollar bill folded in half. Inside there are a few dollar bills, a credit card, two library cards, a gift card to the Tattered Cover, auto registration and insurance card, driver’s license.<br /><br />On the outside of the wallet is a pocket just the size of a driver’s license. It is clear plastic, so you can easily prove your identity to merchants and police and agents of Homeland Security. Referencing the previous paragraph, you note that my driver’s license is inside the wallet. So what’s in the pocket?<br /><br />Business cards: The Mathematician. Stan.<br /><br />The Mathematician’s is on top; I see it each time I use the wallet.<br /><br />Stan’s has dancing shoes on it. It is not really a business card. Tango is not his business, it is his …. what? It would be easy to say it is his life, but that’s overstating it. Hobby is too milquetoast a word, obsession and addiction too full of portent. What then? Tango is Stan’s habitat.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7779547740060415241.post-26995020787073015412008-11-21T06:17:00.000-08:002008-11-21T06:19:15.417-08:00The Problem with Partners, Part 3At practicas and milongas you can practice your technique on many different partners. This is useful. You learn to read lots of different leads and adapt to each one.<br /><br />If you like to dance with many different leads, don’t commit to any one. Take classes from all the teachers, learn their various styles, then go home and work through them alone. Soon you will discover what works for your body. That’s your technique. Soon you will discover what suits you. That’s your style.<br /><br />When you have trained broadly and have developed a solid base of technique, then you can dance with a milonguero-style or salon-style or nuevo-style or rank-beginner-style of lead, with grace.<br /><br />If you like to dance with many different leads, you can’t be wedded to any one style. A practice partner will wed you to his style. How can it be otherwise? You spend all that time practicing together—and every mile you run on that track is a mile you’re not running on another.<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />If you want to try out having a regular partner, start with a workshop. You’ll soon discover whether you and this lead approach learning in the same way, whether you work well together when frustrated and struggling, whether you can get along when you are not at your best.<br /><br />After the workshop, take stock: Did you help one another learn? Do you still like one another? If the answer is no, you’re in luck. The workshop is over, and you’re free!<br /><br />If the answer is yes … you’re in more-better luck.<br /><br />You would think that, with a record of being the odd woman out of rotation for hours on end, I might find a class partner useful. With a class partner, you never need worry about being the odd woman out. It is nice to have a skirt to hide behind, even if the skirt is a pair of pants.<br /><br />Bah, humbug!<br /><br />The first time someone hinted that I might consider partnering up for a class, I came down on the idea like a Sledge-o-matic. We took the class as free agents. In that class I met Andrey, one of The Five. If I’d had a partner for that class, would I have met Andrey? Would I have taken note?<br /><br />No. When you hide behind something, it blocks your view.<br /><br />I like a clear view, and the way courage feels.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7779547740060415241.post-25876415358693406862008-11-20T18:09:00.000-08:002008-11-20T18:40:36.505-08:00The Problem with Partners, Part 2Of course you must practice.<br /><br />Nina tells her beginners this over and over: With daily practice you can learn to tango in just a few years; without practice, you’re on the 30-year plan.<br /><br />The first-time beginners always laugh at that. Those of us who are repeating beginners for the third-fifth-twelfth time let them have their moment. We were laughing once, too.<br /><br />You must practice. Of course.<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />When you are a rank beginner, it does not take two to tango. Rather, it does not take two <em>people</em>. When you are still trying to figure out how to stand up in your shoes, your best practice partner is a broom or a stick or a mirror or hope.<br /><br />Or the face of a happy man drawn on the wall.<br /><br />* * *<br /><br /><strong>Eleven Perfect Steps </strong><br /><br />Here’s a practice you can do by yourself, adapted from Tom Stermitz’s walking exercise:<br /><br />Walk backward the length of your practice space, then turn around and walk backward the way you came.<br /><br />I don't like exercises; I like to play games. So I invented a game with only one rule: Every time I faltered, I would return to the starting line. No making it to the other end of the room until every step was perfect. My practice space is 11 steps long. Hence the name of the game.<br /><br />Tango, how do I love thee? Let me count the<br /><br />.<br />.<br />.<br /><br />hours<br /><br />.<br />.<br />.<br /><br />days<br /><br />.<br />.<br />.<br />weeks<br />.<br />.<br />.<br /><br />months<br />.<br />.<br />.<br /><br />years.<br /><br />…for heaven’s sake!<br /><br />For days I could not get out of arm’s reach of The Man on the Wall. One step, two thrrrr… bonk! All that scampering back to the starting line disrupted my concentration, I couldn’t get my groove on. It was discouraging, and threatened to become self-fulfilling; one step, two, thrrrr …bonk! could easily become the fixed pattern in my mind and muscles’memories.<br /><br />So, I changed the game. Got rid of the rule. Now there is only an ideal, to take Eleven Perfect Steps.<br /><br />Without the imperative to scamper back, the focus of the game changed. The rule had riveted my attention on each immediate step, each looming, imminent failure. Every step was prolonged torture--anticipating it, dreading it, recognizing it, and imposing the penalty for it. Pass or utter failure.<br /><br />With the shift from rule to ideal, single steps lost their weighty import; succeed or fail, they are always in passing. An ideal is otherworldly; the measure of success is not attainment but attentive effort. Now I do not intend to achieve every step but to love each one, to be attentive, to be.<br /><br />Did it work? Ha! I lurched and staggered, tumbled into the sofa, fell down on the floor.<br /><br />When you hike a steep, tricky slope, it’s smart to keep three points on the ground—two feet plus one body part (for example, the hand). Who knew?! What works for mountain climbers works for tango, too.<br /><br />For miles on end, I groped my way from table to sofa to bookshelf to wall. At first I held on for dear life, then to hold myself upright, then to steady myself. Eventually my fingers ran lightly across the surfaces of things. Eventually I realized--eureka!—the touch was reassuring but unnecessary.<br /><br />Then came the toughest part of the game: weaning myself from reassurance. I knew I could walk unaided, but the gap between knowledge and trust is a wide chasm to cross. There is only one way to do it: keep walking.<br /><br />I am a poet at heart. I love rhythm and repetition, a tiny aperture, tinkering, detail. I can practice Eleven Perfect Steps for up to two hours, subsumed in concentration.<br /><br />I still practice Eleven Perfect Steps almost every day. I have yet to succeed with regularity. It still feels as much like a game of chance as a skill.<br /><br />It feels that way, but I know better. I am learning: Every step is already inside you. Envision the step after the one you are taking, and the next and the next, the whole lovely sequence. Let the beauty you love be the thing that you do. Only walk.<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />To Eleven Perfect Steps, add these:<br /><br />Bookshelf ochos. Turns around a stick. Doorframe boleos. Torso twisting. Elastic collection. Cool hip action. Adornments with a stick stuck in a shoe. Sit ups. Push ups. Balance exercises in the middle of the floor. Adornments in turns. Overturned ochos, moving down the floor. Enrosque. Why not?<br /><br />You can do all these alone, or with props. No need for a partner, not yet.<br /><br />* * *<br /><br /><strong>Goofing Around</strong><br /><br />Practice this every day. You must! Every day put on the music that makes you feel free and do every goofy thing you like. This is self-expression.<br /><br />I like chanson. Frank Sinatra. The Fresedo pieces that remind me of 1940s musicals. The 1940s musicals themselves. Big Bands. Swing. Motown. Norah Jones. Canaro. Celtic new age. Hammered dulcimer straight out of Appalachia. Pugliese.<br /><br />During the holiday season: Eartha Kitt singing Santa Baby and Elvis singing Blue Christmas.<br /><br />I run through all of Tom’s exercises: walking with the cross behind, cross before, the step for tight spaces. Then I move on:<br /><br />Overturned ochos. <span style="font-size:130%;">GREAT BIG STEPS</span>. Ronde de jambe. Pique. Enrosque. Sweeps. Taps with the heel and toe ... syncopated! Planeo. Boleo. Tendu all over the place. An old-fashioned milonga traspie. Soft shoe shuffle.<br /><br />I am Ginger Rogers AND Fred Astaire!<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />Even in class, I like to practice alone. Sometimes when I am the extra woman, I do not even try to join the rotation. I go to a corner and practice. No matter what step the class is learning, a follower can use it to work on technique. I am a technique-geek, happy happy happy all by myself.<br /><br />During a class last winter, Andrey marched over with a grim look on his face. He does not like to see me dancing alone. He believes it takes two to tango.<br /><br />Eventually, it does.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7779547740060415241.post-81952298690022407912008-11-20T05:28:00.001-08:002008-11-20T05:29:32.603-08:00The Problem with Partners, Part 1I like to practice alone. Are you surprised?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7779547740060415241.post-66925322318186191222008-11-05T05:08:00.000-08:002008-11-05T05:23:35.902-08:00CelebratingSome people are in bars. Some at house parties. Hundreds of thousands are gathered in the streets, cheering.<br /><br />In the lobby of the Turnverein, dancers take advantage of the cortinas to watch the election unfold. The small TV that sits behind the welcome desk is tuned to national coverage rather than the usual instructional videos.<br /><br />It is my turn to work the desk when Mr. Obama goes over the top.<br /><br />Cecile has been talking to the TV, urging voters not to disappoint the world. The organizer of the Turn is avoiding the area, looking disgruntled. When Mr. Obama goes over the 270 electoral college votes required to win the election, cheering erupts around the TV set.<br /><br />Cecile makes a name tag that says in French "We won!" But people discourage her from wearing it into the ballroom. The entrance to the ballroom is a doorway into a different world. Politics stays in the lobby.<br /><br />Congratulations to US.<br /><br />Let's dance!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7779547740060415241.post-36609482280268729012008-11-01T20:59:00.001-07:002008-11-03T08:50:21.982-08:00How It’s Done in BsAFrom last Monday’s Tango Colorado listserv:<br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">Hello Everybody:</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">I will be DJ'ing this Tuesday at the Turnverein starting at 7:30 …</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">It has been brought to my attention there has been some confusion as to what happens at a milonga (Salon) in BSAS. I thought for the first half I would play just what they play down there. Tandas, cortinas, and their version of alternative for a little over the first half of the dance.</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">I am very aware that Tango at the Turnverein is both a milonga and a practica. I am sure that the practica side of the room will find the music to be enjoyable, fun and full of energy.</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">Anyone that has questions, comments, concerns about my DJ'ing tomorrow. Please email me.</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">I will also take any complaints that happen to come to anyone's mind about the same subject as well.<br /><br />TangoMan</span><br /><br />* * *<br /><br />To understand the last line, you have to know Tango Colorado: We’re a contentious bunch, and the conflicts often play out around the music played on Tuesday nights at the practica/milonga held in a very large ballroom, split down the middle by a row of tables, in a building call the Denver Turnverein.<br /><br />From what I can gather, traditional means up to (and possibly through) Pugliese; alternative means anything post-Pugliese. There is some debate about where Mr. Pugliese should fall.<br /><br />To settle arguments, both groups turn their eyes to BsA. The way to win an argument is to say your way is “how it’s done in BsA.” This poses a bit of a problem: Various people in Tango Colorado have visited or lived in various districts of BsA during various decades, and there is no consensus on how things are done there.<br /><br />The good thing about a rocking boat is that eventually it comes to some sort of balance. Over time, TC has settled into a canon, a collection tango music that is generally accepted as acceptable. This is the music that is played during the early evening. The 1930s are quite popular, though daring DJs have been known to slip in a Pugliese or Piazzola. After 10 p.m., all bets are off.<br /><br />DJs often post to the listserv to say something descriptive and sometimes defensive about the music they will play.<br /><br />That’s why the impish TangoMan, David Hodgson, has decided to give us a taste of “how it’s done in BsA."<br /><br />To put this in perspective, consider his siganture sign-off:<br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">If you’re going to wreck a room. Wreck the room, do it well, have fun, and with a smile.</span><br /><br />Because I am intrigued, and because it is possible for even the stirrer of a pot to feel unsure of what might ensue, I drop David a line:<br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">Looking forward to it! I am going to pay attention to the music for a change. Normally I just like it all. (Follower’s good fortune—just have to dance, don’t have to think.)<br /></span><br />When it comes to tango music I am a slobbering puppy. If I love all the music, I can learn to dance to all of it.<br /><br />I do not want to be one who comes flouncing out of the ballroom, drops into the empty chair at the welcome desk to declare: You can’t dance to this! I like figuring things out. If I can’t dance to a certain kind of music, I want to practice until I can.<br /><br />David responds :<br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">O, have no doubt the first half will be quite obvious...</span><br /><br />* * *<br /><br />I am at the front desk, which means I have been at the Turn for about 90 minutes. Everything seems normal.<br /><br />My shift is about half over when one of the TC teachers flounces out of the ballroom and drops into the spare chair in the lobby. He is cranky.<br /><br />Most of the time, when someone flounces out of the ballroom, they just need a time out. You leave them alone, they regain their equilibrium and launch themselves back into the fray.<br /><br />There is a cortina, some crazy thing. The DJs use the cortinas for self-expression. This is one of my favorite parts of tango. Then comes the—oh my goodness, it is not yet 10 p.m.!—alternative music.<br /><br />What is this shit? the teacher explodes. He propels himself out of the chair, rockets across the ballroom, making straight for the DJ’s table.<br /><br />I do not recognize the energy that prompts such sudden heat, nor the system of belief that fails to require a person to contain it. This is our well-documented national mental illness: self-indulgence. We do not control our impulses. We do not defer.<br /><br />Still, as I idly watch the tantrum unfold, I smile. David has been into the esoteric side of martial arts for years; he knows how to take a person's energy in, transform it, and shoot it back out.<br /><br />Easygoing is a not a personality trait, it's a skill.<br /><br />The music goes on, the teacher storms out. I can't help but think that if he could have disciplined hiself to inaction, waited out his emotional burst, he could have enjoyed the rest of the evening.<br /><br />I count the minutes until my shift is up, then dance the rest of the night. Nothing snags my attention. David said he would play "Tandas, cortinas, and their version of alternative for a little over the first half of the dance."<br /><br />I have not figured out what makes the music tonight any more like BsA than any other night at the Turn. Is it the selection of songs, the order in which they are played? There was only one alternative tanda in early evening, the one that the teacher disliked. So what is it that makes tonight's music more like BsA than any other night?<br /><br />At the end of the evening, I ask.<br /><br />You don't know? David says.<br /><br />Elvis.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7779547740060415241.post-91315492614511893642008-10-26T06:41:00.000-07:002008-10-26T06:53:51.685-07:00I HaveI have<br /><br />6 windows<br />1 balcony holding 1 chair<br />1 wall painted sage green<br /><br />1 guitar in a battered case<br />1 songbook, battered<br /><br />8 boxes notebooks and journals<br />4 boxes research notes<br /><br />2 candles, clove and sandalwood<br /><br />3 boxes Christmas décor<br />6 Christmas novels<br /><br />1 pair winter boots<br />1 pair hiking boots<br />1 pair winter hiking boots<br />2 pair sneakers<br />2 pair casual shoes<br />2 pair dress shoes<br />2 pair so-so tango shoes<br />1 pair Comme il Faut<br /><br />1 bed<br />1 pillow shaped like a chair<br />1 quilt<br /><br />1 wooden rocking chair<br />1 down-stuffed sofa<br />1 simple old oak desk<br />1 modern office chair<br />1 bookshelf, 6 feet tall by 4 feet wide<br />2 boxes of books that won’t fit on the bookshelf<br />3 boxes of books too valuable to store on the bookshelf<br />2 boxes bound magazines, ca.1890<br />3 file cabinets<br />5 tables<br />3 lamps<br /><br />2 boxes framed photos<br /><br />3 library cards, battered and covered in stickers like well-traveled suitcases, each sticker allowing borrowing privileges from another library system<br />1 library card from the Library of Congress<br /><br />1 beach rock with a hole in it, strung on cheap cord<br />1 wedding ring<br /><br />1 packet love letters<br />1 packet letters from Michigan<br />1 packet letters from Barbara<br /><br />1 toolbox, stocked<br />1 cell phone, mostly turned off uncharged lost<br /><br />230 sq ft of practice space<br /><br />31 tango tops<br />6 pair black tango pants<br />1 pair tight tango pants<br />1 pair tighter tango pants<br />1 pair very tight tango pants<br />2 tango skirts<br />2 tango dresses<br />2 holiday tango dresses<br />1 tango ball gown<br />1 pair skin-tight tango pants, too daring to wear<br />3 tops too daring to wear<br />2 skirts too daring to wear<br />3 dresses too daring to wear<br /><br />1 laptop<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />To the extent that one’s possessions indicate one’s attachments and preoccupations, what is to be made of this inventory?<br /><br />Every possession is a talisman, every one tells a story:<br /><br />… the sofa, a family joke: Two-of-Six’s third or fourth purchase in her Goldilocks effort to find one that is just right<br /><br />… the lamp that looks like the Eiffel tower: where Six-of-Six and I went all the way to the top despite his fear of heights<br /><br />… all of the boots that I own: from Keith, along with thick socks and slippers, gifts for the holiday we dubbed The Christmas of Warm Feet<br /><br />… framed photo of a country barn painted with a portrait of Baldasaare Castiglione, pale moon in a pale blue sky, winter weeds aglow in late afternoon light, captured by Michigan when he was still just a guy taking pictures<br /><br />… scented candles by which I hand-write personal letters<br /><br />… table purchased from Hilda, a Latvian woman who immigrated with nothing but diamonds sewed into the lining of her coat, which she used to purchase the building (next door to Keith’s house) containing the apartment she rented to me<br /><br />… tango clothes purchased from thrift stores with the secret stories of their original owners still clinging<br /><br />… skin-tight pants and belly-baring top, worn to perform (that term used loosely) with Glenlivet in a transitory hippie joint entered through a chiffon curtain leading onto the narrow space between two buildings, off an alley in a neighborhood where the only bright lights were the signs in the liquor store window … afterward worn to the Merc for a full 5 minutes before hurrying to the restroom to change into something modest<br /><br />… almost-done quilt, single-bed size, 24 large squares printed with an intricate, fleur de lis design to be cross-stitched in royal blue, started at age 9, picked up and packed away over the course of 12 years, stitches solicited from summer-camp kids and friends and relatives, then quilted on the same small hoop through an unseasonably cold Arkansas winter, oven on full blast and its door wide open to heat the drafty place, quilt spread over the legs for warmth, in a trailer park on the banks of a country lake actually a wide spot in a river manmade to serve as the cooling pond for a nuclear reactor that the town lobbied hard to get because the tax money would allow the city to reopen its public schools, which had to close despite kids and parents begging door-to-door for money to pay the teachers’ salaries; and despite the jokes about glowing in the dark, the red lights atop the beaker-shaped cooling towers glow in a reassuring way, like nightlights through the bedroom window when the local radio station goes off-air at midnight<br /><br />… guitar, songbook … a season of magic many years long, ending with Barbara<br /><br />… mysterious hole in my arm that never goes away, possibly my personal kipuka<br /><br />… scribbled poem that started it all at age 10 in the dead of night upon being jerked out of sleep by a beckoning idea that could not be followed in dreams but only chased down with feverish pencil … match to tinder, my holy spirit burst into flame<br /><br /><br />The door to my apartment opens on Wonderland. The space itself greets me. Every possession speaks with affection. Beyond the windows are gardens and trees and a street with lively traffic; all the buildings in sight are covered with ivy. This has the feel of both country cottage and Harvard dormitory. I sit at the window and write. Everywhere I look, my eyes rest on beauty.<br /><br />Sometimes I feel that I am connected to nothing at all. This is when I am spelunking, so far inside my head I forget eyes and heart were made for looking outward.<br /><br />Possessions embody all the small bits of our whole, lovely selves. What do I want with a microwave oven, bicycle, nightstand, welcome mat, bowls? These are not my accoutrement. The world of my connection is small and dense. I live in a hothouse, a jungle of flowers. I live in a riot of scent!<br /><br />Sometimes I feel I am connected to nothing at all, and sometimes I feel I am a node on a great, cosmic ‘Net. Ephemera. Connection. This is my context. I like it. We are nothing so substantial as dust on the wind.<br /><br />Words are scent. Memories are. Love is. We are.<br />.<br />.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1