My Tango Year

The Line of Dance Is a Circle

2008-12-31T21:46:00.000-08:00

[New Year’s Eve: Two years to the day after starting this blog.]

Only connect.
Howard’s End, E.M. Forester

I had great plans for this year. Great plans!

This year would be the Year of Connection. What can be more tango than that?

All year long I touched on what it means to connect.

my hips
my muscles
the many myths of my one body

many teachers, disciplines, styles underlain by a continuous thread,
one teacher, Grisha

the Denver tango community, unbeknownst even to itself, one
larger than the sum of its contentious parts,
in context global and historic, immediate and ethereal

composers and singers, rhythm and tune, the bandaneon
Fresedo and Canaro and the Communist Pugliese
resolved in the beat of one lead’s heart

lovely Comme il Faut shoes duct-taped,
one prayer to hold them together until a new pair can be found

old wood and moguls, the floor of the Merc,
gossip and small talk, Kari's laugh

The Five: Glenlivet, Stan, Tom, Andrey, Mark
plus one: The Mathematician

The Man on the Wall
My Deep-Thinking Friend
each one of them one of a kind

Argentina, its soul

my family, sisters, brother, father, mother
their stories, the story we are making together

my solitude

my story

my one heart

Look to the right, read the section headed “Only Connect.” It’s a catalog.

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.

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.

In the face of such a task, there are only two things a writer can do: drink or lie.

This is memoir. Lying is out.

Here’s a true story:

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.

I didn’t want Barbara’s hair. I wanted a talisman (n., from the Greek consecration).

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.

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.

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.

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.

Barbara once asked: Do you ever want it all to connect?

I do.

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 ping!

But.

It does not matter what I want. As the song goes: Life comes together and it comes apart.

Tonight as I practice with Glenlivet, I tell him all of this.

“So that’s it,” I say. “I’m going to end the blog by saying it’s all just a big, unraveled mess.”

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:

“It does all connect,” he says. “In you.”

in my one heart
dancing

How Visiting Your Family Warps Your Brain

2008-12-30T13:01:00.001-08:00

News from the Frontiers in Evolutionary Neuroscience via the Discovery channel (and yes, that's the real headline):

"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."

Read more.

Archaeologists Discover Demolished Remains of Cafe De Hansen, Famed Cradle of Argentine Tango

2008-12-28T18:56:00.001-08:00

A 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.

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.

The cafe was demolished in 1912 to make way for roadworks.

Read the full story.

* * *

La Troileana

(From Lahontan [Nevada] Valley News)

Another recent and recommended release is “Troileana” (World Village/Harmonia Mundi) by Liliana Barrios.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

* * *

Buenos Aires Gets Tango Monument
They say it is the first time any city or country has honoured a style of music in this way. Read more.

What Is Lonely?

2008-12-19T20:04:00.000-08:00

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.

[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?”

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.

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.”]

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

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.

If the word circus came to town and nobody bought a ticket ...

Writers need readers.

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:

Hey! Read this!

Whale Season, by N.M. Kelby.

Tango Serendipity

2008-12-07T20:08:00.001-08:00

Tango Lovers Dance in the Streets of Buenos Aires last Saturday...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7770374.stm

... same day as the Tango Colorado Holiday Ball!

How much fun is that?

How did they know...?!

Tango Colorado Holiday Ball

2008-12-06T15:02:00.000-08:00

Tonight 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.

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.

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!

What about my dad? This time last year he was suffering from cancer, huddled under blankets and shivering in the aftermath of his chemotherapy.

This year he is well. He has a clean bill of health. The cancer may come back, but it is quite treatable.

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.

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.

Still.

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.

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!

Right this minute I must leave for the holiday ball. I am to help with the cooking. I love to cook for a crowd!

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!

All of this fun, all of this love! How lucky is that?

How much more is this: I am a writer with readers.

I kneel and kiss the ground.

Let’s dance!

Fandango de Tango Looking Back 4

2008-12-04T23:56:00.002-08:00

Lesson 4
Steps

Taking eighteen classes in five days, you’re bound to learn a step or two. That’s how many combinations I memorized: two.

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.

Fabian Salas explains…

The idea that a follower can blindly follow any step is a fiction. Remember when you were a beginner, learning the cross?

No, Fabian says, a follower is like a computer. First you need to download the software, then you can use it.

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.

Think of volcada. What follower in her right mind would go along with that?

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?

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.

Yes that’s right, the teacher reassures her. With every repetition, the follower gains sensitivity to the cue and refines her execution.

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!

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.

Don’t ask me what steps I learned at Fandango de Tango. Lead me and I’ll show you.

Fandango de Tango Looking Back 3

2008-12-04T23:56:00.001-08:00

Lesson 3
Cabeceo!

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!

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.

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.

Whoa. Seriously. That’s like having a superhero gaze of power!

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.

Yikes! Strangers looked back at me! Doubleyikes! We danced!

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.

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.

On the other hand…

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.

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.

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.

Fandango de Tango Looking Back 2

2008-12-04T23:53:00.000-08:00

Lesson 2

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.

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.

Cool! I said, or words to that effect.

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.

How cool is that?

Fandango de Tango: Looking Back 1

2008-12-04T23:51:00.000-08:00

It’s been a week since the start of Fandango de Tango. What have I learned?

Elegant lady and hard-working Joe make a lovely pair. Witness my shoes: Comme il Faut held together with duct tape.

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.

I have been shopping in three states, to no avail. Shoes for big, deformed feet are hard to come by.

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.

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.

Fandango de Tango Day 5: Texas Chain Saw Tanda

2008-11-30T17:53:00.000-08:00

One of the nice things about festivals is that you meet people. Like so:

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.

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.

Next day ... turns out, he's that. I am not speaking metaphorically. Check out his website: leatherface2.com.

Fandango de Tango Only in Texas

2008-11-30T10:49:00.000-08:00

Pablo 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.

When Pablo is done, the big man, shy, raises his hand.

Pablo raises his eyebrows.

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.

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.

* * *

THERE IS NO CHOCOLATE! Apparently, in this state, the term "black gold" means something else.

* * *

Fandango de Tango: Day 5

2008-11-30T10:41:00.000-08:00

Last 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.

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.

She gave me a knowing look. She is fed up with us too.

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.

Last day. We are in endurance mode,

We are already looking forward to next year.

Grin.

Fandango de Tango: Day 5

2008-11-30T10:35:00.001-08:00

Festivals are great for meeting new people: This weekend, I met Carmen and Lisa, members of Tango Colorado.

Fandango de Tango, Day 4 Postscript

2008-11-30T01:13:00.000-08:00

I 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.

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.

Fandango de Tango: Day 4

2008-11-30T01:12:00.001-08:00

This 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.

Grin.

This Is Not About Punctuality

2008-11-24T21:30:00.000-08:00

I arrive at the Merc at 11 p.m. Stan points to his watch. He’s been there since the music started at 9.

We agree to meet tomorrow at the Turn to warm-up. “Music starts at 7:30,” he says. I usually arrive about 8:45.

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.

The hardest thing about tango, Stan says, is waiting for it to begin.

Good Grief 3x

2008-11-23T16:59:00.000-08:00

I don’t do parties. Nevertheless, I am here.

I am not enamored of the idea of practice partners. Nevertheless, I say to Glenlivet, “I would like to practice with you.”

He hands me his card.

The Problem with Partners, Part 4

2008-11-22T14:22:00.000-08:00

First, 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.”

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.

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.

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.

Courtesy won’t kill you, my mother used to say when she was still the boss of me.
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.

It won’t kill you, she says.

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.

But it does sort of kill you. To the extent it impinges on your privacy, it does.

* * *

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.

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?

Business cards: The Mathematician. Stan.

The Mathematician’s is on top; I see it each time I use the wallet.

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.

The Problem with Partners, Part 3

2008-11-21T06:17:00.000-08:00

At 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.

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.

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.

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.

* * *

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.

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!

If the answer is yes … you’re in more-better luck.

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.

Bah, humbug!

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?

No. When you hide behind something, it blocks your view.

I like a clear view, and the way courage feels.

The Problem with Partners, Part 2

2008-11-20T18:09:00.000-08:00

Of course you must practice.

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.

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.

You must practice. Of course.

* * *

When you are a rank beginner, it does not take two to tango. Rather, it does not take two people. 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.

Or the face of a happy man drawn on the wall.

* * *

Eleven Perfect Steps

Here’s a practice you can do by yourself, adapted from Tom Stermitz’s walking exercise:

Walk backward the length of your practice space, then turn around and walk backward the way you came.

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.

Tango, how do I love thee? Let me count the

.
.
.

hours

.
.
.

days

.
.
.
weeks
.
.
.

months
.
.
.

years.

…for heaven’s sake!

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.

So, I changed the game. Got rid of the rule. Now there is only an ideal, to take Eleven Perfect Steps.

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.

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.

Did it work? Ha! I lurched and staggered, tumbled into the sofa, fell down on the floor.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

* * *

To Eleven Perfect Steps, add these:

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?

You can do all these alone, or with props. No need for a partner, not yet.

* * *

Goofing Around

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.

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.

During the holiday season: Eartha Kitt singing Santa Baby and Elvis singing Blue Christmas.

I run through all of Tom’s exercises: walking with the cross behind, cross before, the step for tight spaces. Then I move on:

Overturned ochos. GREAT BIG STEPS. 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.

I am Ginger Rogers AND Fred Astaire!

* * *

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.

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.

Eventually, it does.

The Problem with Partners, Part 1

2008-11-20T05:28:00.001-08:00

I like to practice alone. Are you surprised?

Celebrating

2008-11-05T05:08:00.000-08:00

Some people are in bars. Some at house parties. Hundreds of thousands are gathered in the streets, cheering.

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.

It is my turn to work the desk when Mr. Obama goes over the top.

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.

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.

Congratulations to US.

Let's dance!

How It’s Done in BsA

2008-11-01T20:59:00.001-07:00

From last Monday’s Tango Colorado listserv:

Hello Everybody:

I will be DJ'ing this Tuesday at the Turnverein starting at 7:30 …

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.

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.

Anyone that has questions, comments, concerns about my DJ'ing tomorrow. Please email me.

I will also take any complaints that happen to come to anyone's mind about the same subject as well.

TangoMan

* * *

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.

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.

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.

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.

DJs often post to the listserv to say something descriptive and sometimes defensive about the music they will play.

That’s why the impish TangoMan, David Hodgson, has decided to give us a taste of “how it’s done in BsA."

To put this in perspective, consider his siganture sign-off:

If you’re going to wreck a room. Wreck the room, do it well, have fun, and with a smile.

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:

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.)

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.

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.

David responds :

O, have no doubt the first half will be quite obvious...

* * *

I am at the front desk, which means I have been at the Turn for about 90 minutes. Everything seems normal.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Easygoing is a not a personality trait, it's a skill.

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.

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."

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?

At the end of the evening, I ask.

You don't know? David says.

Elvis.

I Have

2008-10-26T06:41:00.000-07:00

I have

6 windows
1 balcony holding 1 chair
1 wall painted sage green

1 guitar in a battered case
1 songbook, battered

8 boxes notebooks and journals
4 boxes research notes

2 candles, clove and sandalwood

3 boxes Christmas décor
6 Christmas novels

1 pair winter boots
1 pair hiking boots
1 pair winter hiking boots
2 pair sneakers
2 pair casual shoes
2 pair dress shoes
2 pair so-so tango shoes
1 pair Comme il Faut

1 bed
1 pillow shaped like a chair
1 quilt

1 wooden rocking chair
1 down-stuffed sofa
1 simple old oak desk
1 modern office chair
1 bookshelf, 6 feet tall by 4 feet wide
2 boxes of books that won’t fit on the bookshelf
3 boxes of books too valuable to store on the bookshelf
2 boxes bound magazines, ca.1890
3 file cabinets
5 tables
3 lamps

2 boxes framed photos

3 library cards, battered and covered in stickers like well-traveled suitcases, each sticker allowing borrowing privileges from another library system
1 library card from the Library of Congress

1 beach rock with a hole in it, strung on cheap cord
1 wedding ring

1 packet love letters
1 packet letters from Michigan
1 packet letters from Barbara

1 toolbox, stocked
1 cell phone, mostly turned off uncharged lost

230 sq ft of practice space

31 tango tops
6 pair black tango pants
1 pair tight tango pants
1 pair tighter tango pants
1 pair very tight tango pants
2 tango skirts
2 tango dresses
2 holiday tango dresses
1 tango ball gown
1 pair skin-tight tango pants, too daring to wear
3 tops too daring to wear
2 skirts too daring to wear
3 dresses too daring to wear

1 laptop

* * *

To the extent that one’s possessions indicate one’s attachments and preoccupations, what is to be made of this inventory?

Every possession is a talisman, every one tells a story:

… the sofa, a family joke: Two-of-Six’s third or fourth purchase in her Goldilocks effort to find one that is just right

… 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

… 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

… 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

… scented candles by which I hand-write personal letters

… 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

… tango clothes purchased from thrift stores with the secret stories of their original owners still clinging

… 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

… 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

… guitar, songbook … a season of magic many years long, ending with Barbara

… mysterious hole in my arm that never goes away, possibly my personal kipuka

… 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

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.

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.

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!

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.

Words are scent. Memories are. Love is. We are.
.
.

A scent

2008-10-25T09:37:00.001-07:00

But of course a scent does not exist in a vacuum.

(I meant that metaphorically, but it poses an interesting scientific question.)

You might think that because it floats freely, disembodied, scent is not connected to anything at all.

Imagine.

You are walking into the Sears store in Honolulu, the one in the big mall outside Waikiki. You take the escalator to the floor where they sell formal wear. If you’re going to hang out with Honolulu’s Sinatra, who enjoys buying you a tiny dish of ice cream after each night’s last show and gossiping about what’s going on in Chinatown, who learned 14 languages by approaching them as if they were songs, who after the ice cream insists that you kiss on both cheeks and actually takes your head in his hands when you try to get away with air-kisses before putting you into a cab, who really does, like so many discredited men, want nothing more (but what could be more?) than companionship, then you need to have the cool Mamo mu’u, not some hippie calico thing picked up in the Salvation Army in Hilo. You are riding the escalator. Imagine a scent.

Hold on! First it strikes you. Then it floods you. Before you can name the scent, you feel… you are gone.

Don’t take a tumble! Hold onto the handrail!

You are on an escalator, but it is not the one in Honolulu. It is in Detroit, and you are so little you don’t even know how old you are, and your dad has the warm bag in his hand.

It is roasted peanuts.

Scent connects.

An Interesting Scientific Question

2008-10-25T09:36:00.003-07:00

If a flower bloomed in the forest with no one to smell it, would it have scent?

Even in a metaphorical vacuum, a flower would emit its perfume. But perfume is not scent; it is chemical compounds. It becomes scent when it connects with one who has a sense for translation.

And if the perfume found no receptor? Is the flower less alive? Would it, heartbroken, wither and die? No. A flower lives fully, perfuming the world.

Perfume may exist in a vacuum; scent only by virtue of connection.

Words are scent. Memories are. Love is. We are.

Sometimes I think I may be connected to nothing at all

2008-10-21T21:47:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I think I may be connected to nothing at all. My inventory--short-term lease, blank walls, scant furniture, stacks of boxes packed and unpacked (at the ready)--presents mostly ephemera.

This is my context. I like it.

We are nothing so substantial as dust on the wind. We are scent.

I Have No

2008-10-19T20:45:00.000-07:00

Bicycle
Roller blades ice skates
Skis
Satellite Tivo Cable HD
Land line
Internet
TM IM iPod iTunes
Stereo
Radio
Camcorder
TV

Curtains nor drapes
Art on the walls
Framed family photos
Fresh flowers vases
Coffee table knick-knacks souvenirs
Mirror

Refrigerator art
Recycling bin
Garbage bags garbage
Disposal
Dishwasher
Coffeemaker
Microwave
Juicer steamer toaster toaster-oven
George Foreman Grill
Liquor cabinet wine rack liquor
Condiments
Crackers
Hot pads
Pasta
Serving spoons
Cheese knives
Placemats napkins dining room chairs
nor table
Bowls

Air conditioning

Fine sheets soft light
Chest of drawers
Book stack
Bedside lamp
Clock radio
Nightstand
Bible condom-stash gun

Holiday apron
Spare set of keys
Ashtrays
Potted plants yard art
Subscriptions deliveries
Welcome mat

* * *

To the extent that one’s possessions indicate one’s attachments and preoccupations, what is to be made of this dis-inventory?

Clearly the poet has scant attachment to consumer goods or creature comforts or even a domicile.

Perhaps the poet lives in a situation that renders such things moot, for example, a commune, welfare hotel, prison, asylum, nursing home, rehab spa, or monastery.

Every possession is a talisman, every talisman a mirror. Without accoutrement, how do we remember all the small bits of our whole, lovely selves? How do we situate ourselves in the world, space and time?

Without situation, to what can we connect?

Let’s explicate:

The poem is steeped in feminine awareness. Surely the poet is a woman, else the poem would not have been written at all. Or, in the unlikely event, it would have given us a glimpse into other regions of the domicile: the garage or music collection. Would a man have made note of the absence of flour, or the holiday apron?

[Yes. Of course a male writer could mention the flour or apron. But the writer is not the poet who inhabits this piece. The poet of the piece—the character living within the lines—is clearly a feminine presence.]

The poet seems singularly cut off from the world. It is not only the lack of media; every line says it is so. She has no family; a family has bowls. She has no lover; the bedroom is barely utilitarian, a cell. She has no friends—no welcome mat. No media. Not even a magazine crosses her threshold.

Does she live in dead silence?

No art, nor photos nor flower arrangements nor knick-knacks nor potted plants, not even yard art. On what beauty do her eyes rest?

It is precious to point out the lack of a mirror.

Perhaps she has a pet? The poem doesn’t say.

The poem doesn’t say.

Here is an artist’s trick: Draw the white space around objects. You will be amazed by what new things you will see in the same old things: shapes and relationships, varying intensities of light.

White space reveals what is not. In drawing it, you reverse the polarities of real and naught. You make the naught real--and thus render the real, naught?

The imagination laps this stuff up. In the end it leaves you with mystery. This is the holy purpose of art.

But.

It doesn’t do you much good if you’d like to know whether the poet might enjoy a cheese sandwich.

First things first. By making the naught real, the artist does not render the real naught. Of course not. We live in an Einsteinian world: Artists create mystery, they do not destroy matter.

Still, if Einstein were pondering the cheese-sandwich problem, he would be stuck. He could explicate until he was blue in the face. For all its material detail, the white space of this poem gives no answer.

Might the poet enjoy a cheese sandwich? The poem does not say. If you want to know, you must speak first. You must ask, you must say…

Groovy Tango

2008-10-16T15:16:00.000-07:00

Here's a little peace from the Woostock Tango website.

Imagine Janis and Jimi ...

Living the Life You Didn't Intend

2008-10-16T15:08:00.000-07:00

Here was this guy with the big mustache, the big cigar and the silly hat," she recalled in 1982. "I thought, 'I don't know what this is, but it's for me.' "

Read more.

Bingo + Tango ...

2008-10-14T08:14:00.000-07:00

In Chicago:

14 Tuesday2 BINGO/TANGO

The Museum of Contemporary Art adds an interesting twist to the classic game of bingo by integrating both quirky art and tango components.

Bingo games are based on the shapes of artworks in the museum's collection. Attendees learn to tango with professional Argentine tango dance instructors Somer Surgit and Agape Pappas between games.

The free event will take place at 6 p.m. in Puck's Café; cash bar and light fare available for purchase; mcachicago.org

La Milonga Brings Romance and Tango to LA Femme Film Festival

2008-10-14T08:07:00.000-07:00

The film is set in 1920's Buenos Aires and was inspired by the era of Carlos Gardel and the rise of Tango. La Milonga tells the story of a young woman who wanders into a Milonga dance hall, and meets the number one Milonguero .... In this stylized and romantic tango film, the two dancers discover a part of themselves previously unknown.

LA Femme Film Festival is a premier festival that focuses on women filmmakers, showcasing their commercial films for the world wide audience.

Here at the End of the World We Learn to Dance

2008-10-14T07:25:00.000-07:00

In sad, grim World War I New Zealand, Schmidt, an English piano tuner, taught a local girl to dance:

"They danced around the room, and then when the song he hummed in her ear showed signs of petering out he would dash back to play a few more bars, rekindle his memory, then return to her with the retrieved melody. Back and forth he went between the piano and her. … They danced and danced until the late afternoon shadows spread over the lawn outside."

A tale about finding your place in the world through someone else's storytelling.... Seattle Times

Read reviews at amazon.com and LA Times

Take That, One Heart, You Bastard!

2008-10-10T07:05:00.000-07:00

What would you like to work on today? Grisha asks.

I keep a list. It says things like sacadas and Gustavo turn.

Today I did not consult the list.

Today I hemmed and hawed. Looked out the window. There’s a nice bit of lawn. What I want is so off the wall I don’t really know how to ask. I know what I want, exactly, but I can’t form the words. Several disjointed sentences later, it boils down to this: Self-defense.

Why not?

I have faced what The Mathematician would describe as a philosophical dilemma with practical implications: What to do in the face of leads’ bad behavior?

If a woman joins tango she should expect… a favorite lead begins.

At my protest he backs off. A little.

…she should not be surprised … he concedes.

I think he really still means what he first said. Lots of men—and women--do.

Glenlivet is clear in his thinking: It’s a no-brainer. She shouldn’t expect it, she shouldn’t have to. Men should behave. End of story.

I love it when he talks like that. But I do not live in the world of should. As Keith used to say, with a little less class, you can spit in one hand and wish in the other… and what have you got?

I believe you have something that a guy making advances will probably not like to have wiped on his shirt.

* * *

I have asked Nina many times what to do about men who would rather cuddle than dance. She makes me be the lead. When I squeeze her, she gets big. I don’t know how. She just does.

Today, near the end of the lesson, after we have done sacadas and a clever little adornment that I have failed to practice, Grisha says, What did you want to work on?

First we do Holding Too Tight. I am the lead. He makes himself big. He shows me how. We dance with me big.
Wow! he says. That was the best boleo you’ve ever done! We try it again. Wow-wow! Self-defense and a boleo! Who knew? Things are looking up!

What else? he asks.

I try to explain, but I am nearly incoherent with embarrassment. OK, so what I’m going to do is, I’m going to be the lead and I’m going to give you a sign … earlier today, planning this, I thought I could just say the word “now,” and then he could show me what to do. But here in the moment as my explanation unravels, that seems unlikely to work, so I say I will give you a sign, I will poke you like this—I am holding him like I was the lead, and I jab him in the shoulder blade with my index finger—and then you… you know, you act like you’re me and show me what to do….

I pretend we’re dancing, even though I can’t lead one single step and we are only standing still. I poke him, kind of harder than I was expecting.

He rears back. The look on his face is … Hilarious. Awful. He could be an actor. It is shock and consternation and dislike, even disdain.

That’s great! I say. So I should just look at them like that? That’ll do it? Do I walk away too?

He doesn’t really answer. That look is still on his face. I think we are going to have to try this again.

I am the lead again. Tra-la-la-la-la….POKE!

Grisha pinches the back of my neck. Playfully.

That would never work! I say. They will think I am flirting!

Grisha looks confused.

Why are they poking you? he asks.

No! I say. They are not poking me. I am only poking you because … it’s supposed to be like a surrogate … a signal … You’re supposed to… Now I have worked my way into a corner and a frenzy. Ohmigod! I blurt it out as fast as I can: I am poking you because I am not about to grab your butt.

The look he gives me now is truly amazing.

I think we will dispense with the demo. I explain the problem. We talk it over. No need to repeat the painful details. Here is the upshot:

You walk off. You don’t have to say “Take that, you bastard!” You don’t have to speak at all. You can just go away.

I love that! in theory, but

When I am face-to-face with a fellow human being, I can’t be that way. I can’t think of a time I’ve walked away from someone. I don’t think this is a matter of being a woman. It’s just not in me. I can’t do it.

That’s that.

This is the way I was raised: If you don’t do something well the first time you try it, you never will. Move on. Try something else.

I do not wish to try something else. I wish to stick with tango.

Hmm…

Two years ago, I couldn’t stand up in my tango shoes.

I need practice.

I am going to call Kari.

MoveOn.ohd

2008-10-09T16:06:00.001-07:00

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.

Cocooned

2008-10-08T05:41:00.001-07:00

It’s Tuesday night, and what could be more appealing than to spend the night cocooned? No need to go back to the Turn so soon. It will be there next week.

My apartment is especially beautiful at night, the windows black mirrors, the wooden floor glowing in the lamp’s small light.

I have homework from Grisha to practice for Friday’s lesson. Last night, Joe ran me through his version of Eleven Perfect Steps, and there’s work to be done there as well.

I have my DiSarli CD. That is the music for a night like tonight. Everything is inviting.

But.

I am in the midst of a story that is unfolding simultaneously in the blog and in life. I didn’t choose the story, but I have chosen to tell it. To continue to tell it, I must continue to live it…

What the heck, I must continue to live it regardless. You can walk off the floor mid-tanda; you can’t walk away from your own true story.

So tonight I do not cocoon myself in a dancing meditation.

I go back to tango.

* * *

Costume can be disguise or armor.

When I started tango, I often wore long-sleeved, turtleneck tops. Armor.

Tonight I need something very covered up, but subtly so, in a way that will not betray that I am running scared. Disguise.

Costume is its own kind of cocoon.

* * *

I like the spare, severe lines of tight pants.

Pants make a woman look too powerful for tango. Some men interpret that costume to mean she wants to wear the pants in the dance. So I am told.

Pants do not make me look powerful, except in the way that the stem is stronger than the blossom of a flower. That is how tight pants make me be. When I am wearing tight pants, the whole length of me is one piece, flexible and strong and free. Resilient.

When I am wearing tight pants I feel my legs extend strong from my hip sockets down into the earth, eight inches or more below the surface. I am the stem, I terminate in roots. The earth feeds me power, my body gives it back. This is grounded.

The walking trees of Tolkein do not tear their roots free and replant them at every step; their roots remain buried even as they walk. This is grounded.

I love to follow.

I don’t want to own power, I want it to flow through me.

I want to be that strong.

* * *

Tonight I need a costume that makes me feel self
-contained. Covered up,
strong. Something that says I,
myself can hold my own.
Not because a lead is
taking care of me. Because
I am taking care of myself.

Covered up but not
timid. Tonight
I need a costume that holds everyone
yet at arm’s length, says,
My strength can match
any of you, bring it
on and on and-and …
on.

** *

The thick, winter-weight pants. The long-sleeved t-shirt over sturdy lingerie.

Covered up but not timid. The t-shirt is sheer black over a solid black camisole. The lingerie is hot pink, only the strap whispering Psst! from behind the cami and t-shirt, an accessory to match the Chinese character scrawled on the front of the shirt.

What does the character say?

Various leads have made guesses. It’s a game to play between dances. On any given night, any guess can be right. Tonight I choose Rick Moss’s best guess:

Biker Bitch.

Covered up but not timid. The whole thing fits like a stem's epidermis.

* * *

And the Comme il Faut’s with the spike heels.

And the earring, a three-inch saw blade resected from the eviscerated belly of a Swiss Army knife. It can draw blood.

Just in case.

* * *

To those who are not captivated by the surfaces of things, a costume can be quite revealing.

* * *

Each of us has to live our life story. It helps to take it in small doses.

I arrive midway through the evening. It has been my technique. I arrive in time to work the desk, and by the time my shift is up, I am acclimated to the scene and can dance.

Tonight I arrive earlier than usual, in time for the community dance. It is my new tango practice: Dance with strangers. Working with shyness is like taming a horse. Sometimes you have to back off, and sometimes you just have to make it do what you want it to do.

The community dance is set up to create a random mix of partners, each dance interval lasting as long as the lead likes it to last.

I am lucky! My first partner is Nick Jones, with whom I have just had my first private lesson. He whips us into an off-balance turn, the kind he is going to teach this weekend in a workshop titled “Turn ‘Til you Puke,” with Luiza Paes.

I am signing up for that workshop!

My next draw is lucky, too: The Mathematician! What are the odds? The Tragedy of Tuesdays is that he practices all night with a classmate; this brief community dance is the only chance I will have to dance with him. He makes the dance last a lovely long time. Lucky!

OK. That’s enough bravery. I do not trust my luck to hold.

I scurry to the lobby, work my shift at the welcome desk. For the rest of the night, despite the rules against dancing more than one tanda, I take shelter in my practice partner’s safe, familiar, safely familiar embrace.

Miss Tango Manners Is That a Hand on My ...?

2008-10-05T20:11:00.000-07:00

Dear Miss Tango Manners:

I can't decide whether to cry or kick someone.

Last night at the Tango Colorado Harvest Moon milonga, I was dancing with a lead who made advances. [Material deleted. All letters are edited for space, tone, and decency.]

Eek!

I almost walked off the dance floor—but that would be bad manners, wouldn’t it?

What drove him to this? Was he carried away by the music? I was wearing a dress. The neckline is only a little immodest and I cannot imagine the sight of my bony chest where cleavage belongs incited such action. What am I doing wrong?

I made a beeline for the exit. I was nearly out the door when ... [Material deleted. All letters are edited, etc.] ... and I'll put him through a fucking brick wall," Glenlivet said. Something like that.

So I didn't run. For the leads who knowingly or not helped me settle down, I still have stars in my eyes. I danced all night, and my feet are feeling the happy effects.

Sincerely,

One Heart Dancing

* * *

Dear One Heart Dancing:

My dear, your letter disturbs me.

When a lead takes liberties reserved for a lover, assuming of course, that he is not your lover, he is mostly likely not carried away. He is most likely suffering a willful lack of self-control.

You must think of him as the freckle-faced boy in third grade who was caught looking up the teacher’s skirt. Did she make allowances, knowing as she must, false modesty aside, that her mellifluous voice surely drives young boys to distraction--even as it does the endless string of men whom she has wrapped around her little finger until it aches from their combined weight--as she read the answers to the spelling test? Did she draw on the wisdom of Freud, Jung, Wittgenstein to weigh the influence of his idcollectiveunconsciouszeitgeist? Did she spare his feelings?

No! She smacked him with a ruler and sent a note home to his mother.

You must be that lead’s teacher.

Miss Tango Manners concedes that it is unlikely you will have a ruler ready to hand as you are on the dance floor. This does not preclude hiding, in the belt of your dress, a flexible willow switch or perhaps a slim leather whip tastefully dyed to match your shoes with a fair-sized stone tied at the end of the lash, something sparkly with facets.

Similarly, it is unlikely you will succeed in contacting this lead’s mother. This does not preclude you from alerting every follower in Tango Colorado to his behavior. Forewarned is forearmed. (Bulk orders 15% off. Discreet shipping $10 per address. Order from iTangoWhip.com.*)

One Heart, you beseech me to tell you in what ways your dress or your you-ness are to blame for this debacle. I believe that you know. You are a wimp. When you adopt that stance with a bad-mannered lead, you are playing into his hand. So to speak, crudely.

You must stop this Eek!ing business. It is time to grow up.

When a lead makes advances upon your body, you must reveal to him a part of your anatomy he may never have seen before: your backbone.

You must resist the urge to think. You’ll only flummox yourself as you second-guess or make excuses for bad behavior. Actions speak loudly. Listen.

Similarly, with your actions enunciate. There is no need to make excuses for dancing in the embrace that is most comfortable for you. Soft-pedaling opens the door to the Wiggle Room. Though Miss Tango Manners generally decries the slamming of doors, in this case she grants an exemption.

Practice saying No. A worldly woman requires a wardrobe of No’s as large as her collection of tango costumes. (As in: I don’t like it when you… or Please stop … or It is hard on my back when you… or That’s uncomfortable for me.) It would behoove you, One Heart, to turn your attention from your manner of dress to your form of address. Your time and talent are best spent fashioning for yourself a veritable wardrobe of ways to say No.

Include in your wardrobe nonverbal refusals, for example, the adornment Graciela Gonzalez demonstrated in Las Vegas. It’s a simple matter of timing and the correct height of the knee.

Work on your technique for walking off the floor. It is part of the wardrobe of No, as fully justified as the hot-pink, fits-like-paint, fringed minidress in your tango closet. Such options are not suitable for everyday use, but one must admit they serve their respective purposes.

Allow me to remind you, One Heart, as you have a tendency to blame yourself for the vagaries of others (which is, let us admit, a pathetic yet amusing attempt to usurp responsibility for their actions and hence claim for yourself the power to control every situation):

The failure here is not of control but of self-control. The failure is not yours.
To put it simply: Your dress is not the culprit.
To put it crudely: It is not the dress that grabbed your ass.

And now, pursuant to the comments deleted from your note (all letters are edited for space, etc.):

Bestow a chaste kiss on the cheek of the jaguar. A beast who frees the mermaid from her earthly prison has earned a boon. Take care to avoid bestowing upon him the fabled kiss that drives men to dash into the sea. It would be quite a long dash from Denver. The other followers will not appreciate the loss of this charming lead.

As your knight in shining armor, Glenlivet would undoubtedly appreciate some token of the lady’s appreciation. In the days of jousts and quests, ladies would gift their champion with a scrap of fabric. That seems a paltry gift. Miss Tango Manners suggests an invitation to coffee.

Now we come to the difficult case. Apparently, Stan has miraculous healing powers. Did not another follower marvel to you on Friday night that the pain in her foot, which had been plaguing her for some time, vanished as she danced with Stan? And did she not confide that the effect was long-lasting … though perhaps beginning to wear off … and perhaps she would need dances periodically throughout the evening to keep the pain at bay?

When one’s contribution is made by nature rather than effort, no thank-you gift is required. The idea of leaving gifts to nature is out of vogue, notwithstanding the cigarettes and gin that, to this day, some tourists leave(and others shamefully scavenge) at the rim of Halemaumau in place of the virgins that were never really sacrificed there.

No. For Stan, Miss Tango Manners must insist that gin and cigarettes and dead virgins are out of the question. Better to offer a gift he can use: 4 hours of practice on Monday. Perhaps you could use this time to perfect Graciela’s adornment.

Best regards,

Miss Tango Manners

*Gotcha!

Teaching Assistants

2008-09-29T12:56:00.000-07:00

Tango taxis.

It's prostitution! Nina yells.
Is not!
Is too!
Is not!
Who cares?
Is not!
Is too!
Obvious jokes.
Is not!
Is too!

That's pretty much the gist of the TC listserv for the week following a new board member's brainstorm to provide experienced dancers (mostly male) with free admission to a practica if they would agree to dance with the (mostly female) wallflowers so they won't get discouraged and quit.

In the end, the taxis won out. Now every Tuesday at the Turn, you will find several women and a few men adorned with ENORMOUS fake flower corsages, a little smashed. (The flowers, that is. From the close embrace.) Originally, the board member proposed that the taxis wear armbands, so people know who they are. This was deemed too embarrassing for the wallflowers. Hence the Rocky Horror Picture Show corsages.

This is how we do things in Tango Colorado; kind of goofy, but it mostly works out well in the end.

Deb and Brian Sclar, Dance of the Heart, take a different tack. Their taxis are intermediate dancers who are teaching assistants. At the two classes and milonga I visited, assistants offered little instruction or coaching, rather danced with the glut of women. It was nice to have them: It was nice to see no one stuck on the sidelines during class, and during the milonga was nice to have the competition siphoned off to the assistants--leaving the leads I like free to dance with me!

All of this to say, Tango Cherie has an article on this topic at her blog.

Chacarera, part 2

2008-09-28T07:31:00.000-07:00

This is how it starts:

Incense. Prayer. On the table beside the stereo is the Spanish language version of a moving book, The Mastery of Love. With a brief prayer and meditation, Daniel invites us into a space that is not about dancing so much as the movement of our hearts.

The clapping is not so difficult. It is ma-Ma, pa-PA, Daniel says.

The choreography is easy. If you can count to three and cross one leg in front of the other without falling down, you can do it.

Thanks to twelve years of music study I can count to three if someone helps me get started. Thanks to two years of tango study I can cross one leg in front of the other without falling down.

There is some difficulty about the arms. Most people at first, they look like they are robots made of Legos. But if you have always harbored a secret dream to be a chorus girl in 1940 B-grade musicals, you can lift your arms just right.

The steps are easy and repetitious. It's fun to have someone opposite you, not in an embrace but connected just the same.

It's so easy that you can soon forget about the steps and lead wtith your heart.

We end in a circle, praying for peace.

I am cut out for chacarera!

Chacarera

2008-09-27T11:55:00.000-07:00

Here’s how it starts:

Fast, tricky music. Then clapping. Then Daniel and his partner. She sways and skips. His feet fly. He follows the geometry of the rhythm. Who knew? I never imagined rhythm had geometry until I saw it in Daniel’s feet.

Chacarera is a flirtatious dance. The man shows off his fancy footwork to impress the girl, his partner.

The girl has it easy. She just has to raise her arms in a bowed way, as if she were carrying a huge basket filled with flowers, and skip around like a chorus girl in a B-grade American movie about Greece. If she is wearing a very full skirt she gets to play around with it--lift the edges and swish!, showing her knees.

How much fun is that?!

In two hours I am going to find out.

Since the announcement of the classes a month ago, I have been deciding not to go. I have to keep deciding not to go because I keep being tempted to try it.

I am not cut out for Chacarera. It is fast and vigorous, and fast and vigorous scares me. For no apparent reason, but still, one does not have to have reasons to feel fear.

Also, there’s the matter of rhythm. I have none. Whatsoever.

Hmm…

Tuesday night at the Turn Daniel and his partner performed. Last night at the Merc they invited dancers who know Chacarera to join them. Carla and Brian got out there. They had no idea what they were doing. They didn’t look foolish; they looked like they were trying something new.

Hmm…

Later, chatting with a lead, he said he wanted to take the class but had no partner.

Hmmm…?

I am going to stink at this. Really stink. My partner expects he will, too. That will make it easy for both of us.

Even better, we will be in a room full of people who get it … that you have to start somewhere, and some of us start pretty far back in the pack.

They deal with it in the same way that golfers do: give one another allowances, so everyone can play. In golf they call it a handicap; in Tango Colorado they don’t call it anything, it just goes with the territory.

It’s the blessing of Tango Colorado. Sometimes the community is described as a dysfunctional family, but that is not the whole truth. We are a family in this good way too: Even when we are yelling at one another, we preserve a sense that we are all in this together. We stink and then we get better in ways that encompass much more than dancing.

But for today, I only need the space and grace to really stink at this new kind of dancing. I will get both. Not only from the tango community, but from me, too. In the past year I’ve learned that, for all the slings and arrows, my harshest critic is me. But I can also be my biggest fan. When I started this essay I wasn't sure I could go through with the class after all. I’ve just spent the last hour writing myself a pep talk. Here’s the finale:

I am going to really stink at this today … and then I am going to get better. The dance of a thousand intricate steps begins with a single one, etc., etc.

I am enamored of freedom, and there is nothing more freeing than agreeing to let yourself be, really be, a beginner.

I am an Adventurer of the Moment!

The Adventurer must go get dressed. I’m wearing my blue dress. It’s casual and pretty, and the skirt goes Swish!

Magic Lucky Tango Nights

2008-09-22T14:15:00.001-07:00

Magic Lucky Tango Nights. A small festival built around live music.

What does it mean to build a festival around music?

Lively--gleeful, even--give-and-take among musicians and dancers in classes, lecture and concert, milongas.

It was magic.

At first we didn't know what to make of the musicians, then we adored them; they were proud of our progress and told us so. The air glowed. At times, you could see the orchestra and dancers reaching out to one another. Taking to the floor was like entering light. Saying goodbye, one of the organizers said with feeling, "This isn't a festival. It's a family."

We were all lucky to be there.

Magic Lucky Tango Festival

2008-09-18T09:29:00.001-07:00

Today I go to Las Vegas for the Magic Lucky Tango Festival.

My stomach is going with me, but under protest. It has been protesting for the past week.

I could enumerate the reasons but if you have read this blog for more than a week, you can guess all the usual suspects. Here's the short version: Las Vegas is very busy and high-energy, a kind of atmosphere that puts me in cornered-cat mode. It occurs to me there will be strangers there. Walking into a room full of strangers--cornered cat mode. I might be expected to actually dance with these strangers. Cat-under-the-sofa-for-a-week mode.

I am going because Los Hermanos Macana are teaching and performing. There are other very famous people as well. But they are the only reason I am going. If you haven't seen them dance, look for them on YouTube.

When deciding to go o I had half-decided to go, debating the pros (Los Hermanos Macana) and cons (strangers! eek!) when one of my practice partners offered to take the classes with me. This is also not good. I do not want to coddle myself in the face of this phobia of strangers. But I will put that bit on hold for now, because Los Hermanos Macana are teaching!

Still, you don't spend all of your time in classes. There milongas as well. At the Turn, you can always escape to the purple fainting couch in the enormous and beautifully decorated ladies lounge. At the Merc you can calm yourself by popping into the special room set aside for Bad Poets and Leftover Hippe Musicians.

What can you do in Vegas?

Count on magic and luck!

* * *

Warning: Contains Provocative Content

Oh for crying out loud. Am I about to Eeek! yet again?

[Impatient sigh.

Oh. That feels good.

Breathe.]

OK. Better now. Let’s move on.

I am in Las Vegas.

This is Magic Lucky Tango weekend. Graciela Gonzalez. Los Hermanos Macana. Fernanda and Guillermo. Pepe and Pablo Motta.

Whoo-hoo!

But before the fun can begin, I must get from the airport to the hotel. An elderly man sits next to me on the shuttle. He’d like to be friends. I’d like to look out the window.

Oh, my.

I am not prepared for Las Vegas.

I knew to expect the garish, over-the-top, conspicuous consumption Disney-for-grownups outlandishness of it all. I knew there were joints where the dancers are topless and that the window dressing can be quite lovely and even formal, so that the show serves as a palimpsest on which dancers and audience coauthor, over and over, new versions of old tales: holes drilled in the walls of girls’ locker rooms, glimpses through gaps in doors or curtains, Adam after the apple ogling Eve.

I am not prepared for the ubiquity of nudity.

I come from modest people. I don’t believe I have ever seen my father in shorts or a shirt without sleeves. Nor his father. I saw Keith without his shirt quite often, of course, but in general, a conventional marriage narrows a woman’s nudity-viewing options. I have no TV and I do not watch commercial movies. I do not read consumer magazines or women’s fiction. Denver’s billboards sell sports and IT. So perhaps I am a little less prepared for Las Vegas than another person might be.

I am not prepared, for example, for the bus-sized photo of the Chippendale crew. Or the billboard of three gorgeous women, topless but for the black bars photographers use to preserve their subjects’ identities. It seems that every flat surface in sight is covered in body parts, all tanned, some with faces attached.

I am not prepared for the billboard showing a photo of the back of a woman, shoulders almost to thighs—indirect lighting, very artsy--with the tagline “Always a happy ending” and, in huge letters, the word Tao.

This was not covered in The Tao of Pooh.

Nor am I prepared--not in the least, never could be, could not have imagined—that, when the shuttle dropped me on the sidewalk in front of the hotel, I would be greeted by a life-size, bronze relief sculpture of a line of chorus girls, bare backsides to the breeze, glinting in the fading sun … with an aging frat-boy-type tourist crouching near the girl in the center, polishing her curves, huge wolfish smile, mugging for his friend’s camera.

Do I let out an eek? Certainly not! I put on my Hell’s Kitchen face (jaded annoyance), wait until the boys finish, and breeze into the lobby with my “I do not have time for you or anyone else on this planet” walk.

Actually, I do not have much time. In two hours I going to see The Reve, a Cirque d’ Soleil type show with lots of water effects. Synchronized swimming, even!

I did not plan to see a show in Vegas; I do not enjoy pop music or magic or female impersonators and would die of embarrassment if I ended up looking at strangers with an absence of clothes. But a colleague told me about The Reve, and I made the mistake of telling my festival partner about it, and now we are going together, even though I don’t know him except to dance with and the idea of watching a show with a virtual stranger is not only unappealing (I like to be alone!) but has prompted the shyness butterflies to launch their own Circ-style show in my stomach.

It’s business as usual there in the stomach. It does not prevent me from looking forward to the show. I was born to water! I am Aquarius, and though my starstruck friends inform me that’s an air sign, I note that the symbol and the name of the sign is Water Bearer and I was born in Michigan, which is three-quarters island amid inland seas. Also, I once saw an excerpt of a Cirque show, and the inventiveness took my breath away.

Thus I am humming distractedly as I unlock the room, open the drapes to check the view through what turns out to be a tiny window (rooftop courtyard packed with air conditioning machinery), redraw the drapes, unpack, freshen up, scour the attic of my brain for topics of small talk.

This will be fine. There is only one hour before the show to fill with chat. After the show, there will be plenty to talk about—the acrobatics and staging and costumes. During the show, of course, there is no need to chat so, as long as the ladies keep all of their clothes on, everything will be fine.

Yes, this will be great!, I think, right up to the moment I walk out the door, scanning the confirmation paperwork we need to pick up the tickets, and my eye falls on the fine print:

“Contains provocative content not suitable for …”

!!!

.
.
.

Oh, what the heck:

Eeek!

One Heart Responds to Her Critic(s)

2008-09-18T09:29:00.000-07:00

Let's back up a moment, to September 4, In Which One Heart Cooks Dinner.

Two-of-Six writes to say "that's disgusting!"

A writer never responds to the critics. Of course not. Cast not your pearls before swine and all that. No. You think kind thoughts about them, hoping this will create a harmonic convergence in their brain that will either cause them to love you or give them tinnitus.

Nevertheless. Sometimes a critic voices an opinion with such tone and wit that, despite its vacuity and wrongheadedness may become generally accepted.

So. I would like to disclose to you the sordid truth of this person whose opinon with which you may be agreeing. I know this sort of mudslinging is mostly ineffective. Look at Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Bill Clinton: Despite their fallabilities, people still hang on their words.

Nevertheless, a writer's gotta do what a writer's gotta do and at this moment I gotta set you straight on who is the Real Cook here.

Four-of-Six (that would be me) is the author of a cookbook. Not one of those community/church compilations with the weird plastic binding. A beautiful, full-color, illustrated children's gardening cookbook. It earned high reviews in national newspapers and more awards than I ever kept track of, from writers groups and booksellers and parenting groups.

In contrast...

Two-of-Six dusts her kitchen. Yep. Sweeps the cobwebs and dust bunnies off the stove top, out of the oven.

Years ago, she hosted Thanksgiving. She got stuck making the turkey. She tried to fish out the gizzard and neck with a spoon so she wouldn't have to touch anything. She gagged the whole time.

My mother can't laugh. A favorite childhood story involves my mother and her mother in the kitchen one night before Thanksgiving, wrestling the damn turkey, swearing like sailors.

But back to my critic. How much does she not cook? When her children were in day care, they came home one day to share amazing news:

Mom! they said. We had meat on a stick! And a drink on our potatoes!

(Chicken leg and potatoes with gravy.)

Of course, there is a difference between refusing to cook and lacking ability. Two-of-Six can cook. One of the favorites she made for her children has become a family staple. She has to make it for every single family function, and she is darn sick of it. Still, it's better than cooking the turkey.

It is Fluff. It is mostly synthetic. You can make it without actually touching any real food. Jello and frozen strawberries and maybe marshmallow creme or Cool Whip or something.

Disgusting, Two-of-Six. Disgusting!

And yummy.

The Onion Cure

2008-09-17T22:28:00.001-07:00

My grandfather believed that you could cure a cold with a good onion sandwich. He lived to 93 or thereabouts; maybe the onion was more efficacious than he knew. Why not?

Butter some bread and sprinkle sugar on it, then pile on thick silces of onion so strong your eyes water just reading this sentence.

Eat it up! You'll feel better!

Maybe that's what I need.

* * *

Let's say you have had a lovely night of tango and wake up the next morning to malaise.

Midmorning, you skip out to the little bakery near the office, order an egg and dry toast. It is a good breakfast and the owner, who runs the place, is a nice person. You fasted on Sunday, but now it is Monday and you danced for nearly 6 hours between practica and class and the wedding party last night.

You should eat.

Sigh.

It is just too much. Much better to look out the window and watch the cars pull in and then pull away.

After a while, you poke the toast, even touch it to your lips, but biting into it seems the most effort-full, uninteresting thing in the world to do.

The coffee is terrific, however. Near the refills station, someone has left a newspaper. Your eye falls on the headlines:

"National Endowment for the Arts Funds Construction of $1.3 Billion Poem"

"Brave Mountain Lion Fends Off Group of Hikers"

:)

My these eggs are tasty!

Where's the butter and jam?

How can a mood turn on a dime?

The Onion. Good for what ails you.

A Lovely Night

2008-09-15T11:11:00.000-07:00

Last night I danced all night at Halina and Chuck’s wedding blowout milonga, the party of the summer.

The Avalon ballroom is a cross between temple and fairyland: Golden hardwood stretching to eternity, a sky of draped chiffon entwined with tiny white lights.

Every favorite lead is there, a rare treat! Glenlivet is in from New York. Andrey shoots me a stern, twinkly look that says he is ready for some serious dancing. They are dashing in head-to-toe black. The Mathematician, as usual, is surrounded by women, but we know that, as usual, we'll find one another when the crowd thins.

My skirt—yards of layered silk, wrapped round and round--delivered everything it promised when it caught my eye in a shop window.

A great tango dancer once said that, to be a truly great tango dancer, one must be in love with his partner. I am in no hurry to be truly great. For a two-year dancer who has just found her feet, you can’t beat shared history and affection and the comfort of familiar physical geography of your beginner buddies, with whom you have ascended the long learning curve from your first wide-straddled, knee-lifting step.

Lovely, lovely, lovely.

At the end, they had to kick out the last few of us.

Despite the chill—cold enough to make dew on the windshields—The Mathematician and I stood under the big, full moon, chatting about this and that. It was not cold. It was that kind of night.

One Heart's Dad Takes a Shot at the B'ar

2008-09-10T21:47:00.000-07:00

One Heart’s Dad Takes a Shot at the B’ar

Eeek! I say. Eeek!
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!

I am telling my parents about the B’ar and the Rascal and the Dirty Rotten Scoundrel, a fellow on whom I will not waste one written word.

Individually their audacity is astonishing. Piled one atop the other in the space of two weeks, confounding. The world is a wonder.

I am tightly wound on a good day. At the moment I am overwrought. Shrill, even. I know that. And yet

EeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeek! I say.

My mother says nothing. She used to be wound tight, but she settled down.

My father listens. I am not the only emotional one in this family of six women, two men; nor the most tightly wound. He has worked out a system for such moments: He keeps still.

When finally, all eeek!ed out, I flop back onto the couch with a what-do-you-make-of-that? gesture, he takes a moment to ponder.

My mother is incisive; she is quick to speak the unstinting truth. In my overwrought state, I rarely welcome the unstinting truth. Over the decades she has worked out her own system for handling the overwrought me: She lets my dad do it.

My father has a way of bringing cosmic truth down to earth, coaxing it to walk through the front door and sit down beside you. He makes the introductions, coaxes you to shake hands, then, closing the door softly behind him, leaves you to work things out.

I trust my father’s take on the world, his kindness and sense of perspective, the wisdom of his years. I am eager to hear what he has to say, but not impatient. He does not rush to judgment, and his insights are well worth the wait.

Finally he speaks.

Seems like you’re getting out more than you used to, he says.

One Heart Dancing Cooks Dinner

2008-09-04T12:22:00.001-07:00

Let's say it's 8:30 p.m., and you are in your sweats, and you have cilantro, jalapeno-garlic olives and V-8 juice in the fridge. And you're hungry. And there is no tango tonight.

Pour V-8 juice in a small saucepan. Now it is soup. While it heats, munch olives and whole cloves of garlic. Do not munch too many cloves of garlic, or the smell will come through your skin the next day, just like the Old Garlic Lady who spoke little English and always sat in your pew in church when you were a kid and you fought with all of your sisters not sit next to her even though had you but known it she was probably Italian or Eastern European and the most interesting person there despite her scent, and you will not have many dances.

When the soup is not too hot, search the cupboard for those little packets of coffee cream you have filched from Denny's and McDonald's and the coffee bar in the apartment's clubhouse, being sure that you have only filched genuine half & half and not Cremora, also not the Irish Creme or Amaretto or Hazlenut (why don't they call it Frangelica?) or chocolate flavored fake creamers, but just the pure half & half which has probably been irradiated so as to stay fresh without refrigeration, and pour three of those into a cup, add the soup and stir.

One Heart Wrassels a B'ar, a Rascal, and a Passel of Thoughts

2008-09-01T15:11:00.001-07:00

One Heart Wrassles a B’ar
Tuesday, August 19, the Turnverein

This guy was big, taller than me, and wiry. He looked like a long-haul trucker who lived hard, drank hard, loved hard and frequently lost at poker. His hair was longish, thickish, wavyish and white. He had on a permanent press dress shirt and, I suspect, cologne.

So far, so good. A man who carries himself around like a long-haul trucker is sufficiently self-possessed to take on tango. A man who wears a dress shirt and cologne is a man out to please the ladies. For a follower, these are good signs.

He was a beginner, but not exactly a stranger. He had been taking classes for a month or more at the Turn, and he had rented videos a few times when I was working the desk. We had not had occasion to chat, but anyone who deposits $50 for the privilege of renting circa-1970 instructional videos is a serious enough dancer for me.

As a rule I do not judge books by their cover. Well, I do in my heart of hearts, but then I tell my Heart of Hearts to be nice.

So, though he gives me pause, when he asks me to dance I say, “Sure!”

He pulls me too close; apparently his teachers have not told him that the lady gets to choose the embrace. There is a strong odor of hard liquor.

Um-hmph! my Heart of Hearts says.

I make myself big around the middle. This is a trick Nina teaches. She has taught it to me several times on the occasions I have come to her mortified.

He prefers full-body contact. He clasps me to him with an arm strengthened, I imagine, by years of gear-shifting. Then he takes a step … and ah-HA!

As a beginner, he has not yet mastered the skill of coordinating all of his parts, and so he is not very good at maintaining his hold and moving his feet at the same time. Every time his arm slackens, I pull away or make myself big. Every time I do, he re-clasps.

We go at it this way for the whole song, lurching, pulling and hauling. I imagine we could sign on as an act in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show:

One Heart Dancing Wrassels a B’ar!

I imagine this is (a) nothing new to the women of tango and (b) quite entertaining.

The B’ar is insistent, but not rude. He does not clamp me obscenely close; he’s just trying to get into a configuration that feels familiar, right to him.

I am not rude either. I am doing my Beautiful Walk and smiling. It is my rule: Smile when you dance. It is my other rule: Respect beginners by using your Beautiful Walk. In truth, I am on the verge of a laugh. This is slapstick—silliness heightened to hilarity by a dose of discomfort.

I vacillate between hoping no one is watching and hoping Stan is. Someone other than me ought to enjoy this, and if it gives him a chuckle to see yet another hapless situation I have gotten myself into, that would be fine with me.

To be fair, you have to admire a b’ar that can wrassle and dance at the same time without mashing toes or causing crashes. Clearly, the B’ar has learned a few things in his classes. Also, he’s musical. He is a good beginner, and good beginners who stick with it become good dancers.

The dance ends, and we step apart. We started the tanda late, so there is only one dance left. That’s a good thing, because I have a rule: No walking off the floor mid-tanda.

Also, I have a trick at the end of my sleeve: It’s my thumb.

When I was standing in line for my very first community dance, Deb Sclar gave me a tip: If a guy holds you too close, press your thumb into his tricep. Or bicep. Somewhere around there. At first I thought she said armpit, and I reported it that way in the blog. A few days later she approached me: Not the armpit! she said, wrinkling her nose. Sorry, Deb. I know you have more class than that.

I am not above attacking a man’s armpit if he’s holding me too close, but that’s not necessary in this case. When the next song begins, I take a nice, firm grip on his bicep. With my elbow locked at 90 degrees, that gives us about a foot of breathing room.

He tries his best to close the space, but I have muscles and backbone.

“Can you dance open?” I ask, my tone tending toward tart.

He replies in the tone of Leisure Suit Larry: I like to lead with my bod.

My Heart of Hearts erupts in a frenzy of giggles. My tartness cannot withstand such pure, open, outlandish intent.

I admire honesty, even in a B'ar--but no way is he besting me. Not with that line.

I smile brightly. “Some men like to learn to lead open and close so they can dance in the way the lady likes best,” I say brightly. I smile brightly some more.

Score! my Heart of Hearts shouts.

Then my Heart of Hearts settles down, and so does he, and we finish the tanda. I compliment his musicality (positive reinforcement of what he does well) and tell him I enjoyed the dance (positive reinforcement of desired behavior). The wrasslin’ match ends on cordial terms.

Later, when I see him trolling for tall women, I warn my tall friends about the liquor.

One Heart Wrassels a Rascal
Sunday, August 24, The Avalon

He was a short guy, sweet and sort of eager. I had seen him around. He moved like a guy who could dance, though I couldn’t say I’d ever actually seen him on the floor.

The Avalon is a friendly place. If you’re going to stretch your limits, this is a good place to do it. Even if it means breaking a rule to dance with a stranger.

Also, I was having a great night. When I am having a great night, I love tango! Why not share the love?

Perhaps that’s a poor choice of words.

He threw himself on me like a saddle, his arm the girth. I made myself big, he cinched the girth tighter. Then started the pelvic gyration.

Eek! My Heart of Hearts squealed. Help! Help!

My brain bolted for the barn. How else to explain this? I danced the whole, horrid tanda.

I resisted pretty hard but could not put any distance between us. I felt embarrassed and ashamed, even dirty, and hoped no one was looking. Yet I danced the whole, stupid, horrid pelvic tanda. Why?

I had options. I did not need to flop around like a rag doll; just a few days earlier, I proved I have muscles and backbone—and resourcefulness! I could use my thumb to push him off, as Deb Sclar taught me. I could stop dead in my tracks. Say something corrective in a bright, punchy way. Curse in his ear.

I have a rule: No walking off mid-tanda. But I had already broken one rule. Why not another?

I dunno.

Maybe I do know, I just hate to admit it: I’m not consistently good when I find myself in tight places. Resourcefulness is my strong suit, but it requires presence of mind, which in turn requires distance from the situation at hand. Without that, you’re sunk.

Once, after telling Stan how I cleverly extricated myself from a tight spot (the truth is, that spot got a lot tighter than I liked before I got out), I bragged, “I’ve been in lots of tight spots. I’m good at getting myself out of them.”

“Sounds like you’re good at getting yourself into them,” he said.

[Blech. I’m tired of thinking about this. I’m going to take a short break now and look at the photos in Sophia Loren’s biography, which I picked up as a joke for my dad’s birthday but forgot to take to his party. I remember once seeing her in an old movie called Houseboat. She was pretty.

My goodness, her pictures are sexy! I am in no mood for that! But the words are arresting…

Writing of Charlie Chaplin, she says, “The last time I saw him he had some gentle advice for me. ‘You have one failing you must overcome, one thing you must learn if you are to become a completely happy woman, maybe the most important lesson in living: you must learn to say no. You do not know how to say no, Sophia, and that is a serious deficiency. It was very difficult for me, too, but once I learned to say no, life became much easier.’ ”

Amen! says my Heart of Hearts.

And where were you last Sunday? I ask Charlie Chaplin.]

Returning to the question at hand—Why the whole horrid tanda?--my befuddled thinking yields a few possibilities:

He wasn’t a beginner. He knew what he was about. Beginner’s tricks only work on the clueless.

Also, I might have given him cause to believe I would enjoy such a dance. I was wearing jeans that ride a few inches below my waist, with a close-fitting t-shirt tucked in. I like this outfit because the jeans are a little tight in the waistband, which reminds me to dance with my hips, not my knees.

[To be honest, I like the look. I believe it walks up to the line of being sexy without crossing over, but maybe I am wrong. Maybe it does cross the line. When those jeans come out of the laundry, they are going back to Goodwill.]

Also, earlier in the evening I shared a silly moment with a couple of friends, and it put me in a mischievous mood, and when Donna played an Eric Clapton tune that I love, I danced with one of those friends in a way that was downright flirtatious. This could have given him the impression that I am open in that way to all comers.

[And here’s another reason not to dance with strangers. It is not only that you need to spend time observing them so that you have a good sense of what you are letting yourself in for; you also need to give them time to observe you, so they do not misread you.]

Also, I follow best with my face turned in, my forehead on the lead’s temple, and I am discovering that some men interpret that as a personal gesture.

So I reason in retrospect. My Heart of Hearts doesn’t buy it, but I have heard, as every woman has, the suggestion that a woman who chooses to dance a dance like tango has no room to complain about a man’s bad actions. Also, the suggestion that a woman who does not react immediately and vigorously to extricate herself from such a situation does not, in her heart of hearts, object. Also that coercion is not illegal; it is the woman’s job to resist to the extent that is necessary.

My Heart of Hearts doesn’t buy that wholesale, though My Inner Feminist wholly agrees that it's a woman's job, to object as vigorously and unmistakbly as she can.

There are many deeply personal reasons why a woman might be unable to bring herself to vigorously object to the extent that is necessary to extricate herself. In my case, the answer is banal:

I had no presence of mind.

I, who just five days earlier had successfully wrassled the B’ar, had not the presence of mind to use Deb Sclar’s thumb trick nor to follow every teacher’s advice to walk away from a lead who behaves badly.

Why did I have no presence of mind?

At first I was shocked. Everything changed so dramatically and so fast, my head spun. From nice guy to … spirogyropelvisman. I was unnerved. He was much stronger than me, and he was willing to use his strength. Once when I exhaled he cinched his arm so tight I couldn’t breathe. It hurt.

[Do you hear yourself? my Heart of Hearts scolds. Do you hear what you are saying?

Yes, dammit!]

Instead of galvanizing me to vigorous action, it only befuddled me further. I couldn't conceive what was happening, and so couldn't react.

Last summer David Hodgson taught a class in which the followers played a trick on the leads: We planted our feet and refused to take another step. It was great fun, and afterward David said: Remember this, ladies. A man treats you bad, that’s how you do it.

I didn’t forget that lesson, not completely. I mean, I remember it now. Why did I not remember it in the heat of the moment?

Perhaps I failed to feel the courage of my convictions. My mind went to “Eek! Help!” when what I needed was the fire of conviction. It wasn’t there for me to draw on readily, and I couldn’t muster it up in the moment. I find this very interesting. If I lack ready access to that fiery courage, does it mean my convictions are false?

My failings, not his, are the source of my shame.

The blessing of tango is that milonga tandas last for only three songs. His footwork was fast and unfamiliar, I was afraid I might turn an ankle or trip. So, after the lung crushing episode, I gave way and focused on following. I am good at making the best of a bad situation. I am good at survival.

I’m also good at taking care of myself.

The instant the tanda was over, I made a beeline for the door. I listened to Charlotte Church all the way home because she performs nothing that remotely resembles a tango. To stave of bad dreams, I fell asleep to the read-aloud of a silly, charming story set in Moose County, “400 miles north of everywhere”, which has surely never seen a milonga.

I fell asleep feeling dirty and ashamed and woke up the same way. “You know better,” my Heart of Hearts said, but I was unable to shake it.

During a practice session Monday afternoon, I told Stan why I ducked out early the previous night. I was trying to explain why I was dancing poorly, but I didn’t want to say it directly.

Why didn’t you come find me? he asked incredulously. I couldn’t stand to have you around me, I said.

In the entire 2-plus hours of practice, I had 30 successful seconds, when Stan told a joke.

“See, you’re not thinking,” he said as I laughed.

“Don’t think,” is the followers’ mantra. I have been thinking and overthinking this. I have thought about it long enough that the whole picture is ingrained: the experience itself, the feelings afterward, and the analysis. All of this serves a purpose. Finally, I have an answer to Why? that makes sense:

I was caught up in the moment. I failed to distance myself from my circumstances so that I could take reasonable action. This is a failing not of character but of discipline. Practice makes perfect. Next time I will do better.

[Who knew? Detachment is not only the path to enlightenment, but also to self-defense!]

* * *

This isn’t the first time tango has gotten under my skin. I know how to cure it: Hot baths, hard work, discipline and time. A week has passed, I’ve had a hard-working lesson with Grisha, forced myself to dance several tandas with old friends, and taken an unusual number of very hot baths.

Also, I’ve written this. Intellectualizing and stylizing experience is a balm.

Also, a girlfriend told me the guy always dances that way. It wasn’t my jeans or forehead or mischief!

A few hours ago, the annual Labor Day milonga started in the marble pavilion in Cheesman Park. It’s the most beautiful place in Denver to dance. I have a new skirt made of silk, light and floaty and modest. A favorite lead let me know he would be there early. I'm running late, but I’ll get there soon.

Love Is a River

2008-08-30T23:47:00.001-07:00

I don’t have any bad feelings about it, Keith says.

That’s good, I say.

I have many bad feelings about it, or rather one bad feeling, over and over. It carries little emotional weight, but that constantly.

Guilt.

* * *

We have just spent several hours unwinding the final strand that connects us. (For nearly three years it’s been stretched thin and thinner so that it’s begun to unravel, but we—I--haven’t had the heart to finish the job.) We have been to the bank to shuffle accounts, he has invited me to the house to see what he’s done to the bathroom that he tore apart … how many years ago? We can’t remember. He has put air in my tires and checked my oil and fiddled with a few things under the hood. This is how he always said I love you, with his handiwork. Earlier, I paid for dinner; this is how I always said I love you back, by taking care of business. That’s what I’m doing today, taking care of our last bit of business.

* * *

On an insignificant anniversary of Barbara’s death, Keith and I went to dinner. We weren’t marking the day. Eating out was routine, a better alternative to my cooking or my mood when I was cooking.

Still, I was cognizant. I thought: The day everything changed could be the day it changed again. I looked across the table. Said, It’s time. He agreed. Three days later I lived in a different city.

It was that easy. In our marriage, there were few surprises.

* * *

The biggest surprise was the marriage itself. The brainiac and the high school dropout. What is that?

* * *

On the night of the day that Barbara died, my doorbell rang. I had lived in the apartment since spring; that night was November. The bell had never rung before.

It was Keith, the man next door with the beautiful garden, who was always out tending it in the afternoon when I got home from work. We had often chatted over the fence.

I opened the door, my face full of tears. Somehow we got to this moment: He invited me to a concert. I refused.

What must he have been thinking? I wondered later. He said, I wondered why you answered the door.

I did not walk down from the third floor because I was curious to see who was there. I was hopeful. I hoped it was her.

* * *

Seven months later, the woman Keith loved with all his heart died.

* * *

Imagine Hansel and Gretel without the breadcrumbs. How do you survive? We were not strong for one another; we were equally bereft.

Consoling one another, we never said, “It’s OK,” or “It will be all right.” We said, “I know. I know.”

Then one day Keith stopped saying, “I know.” He had stopped needing to hear it long before I did, but on that day I knew he was right. You can’t say “I know” forever. At some point something changes, and then you can say only, “I remember.”

* * *

Keith and I have this in common: unrelenting creativity. Keith’s genius resides in his hands, and I am not being sly. He can take anything—he can take nothing at all—and create a thing of function and beauty.

Once he built a wooden clock from plans ordered from a magazine. The gears didn’t mesh right. With a compass and protractor, the high-school dropout figured out the geometry used to create the number and size and placement of teeth on gears of various circumference, and the height and slope of the sides of each tooth, and the width of the top of each tooth. Then he drew up his own plans.

He cut the gears from oak, black walnut, guncalo alves, purple heart, bird’s eye maple. Even with all of the gears’ various sizes and weights and grains and resistance, the clock keeps time within seconds per day. One museum has already laid claim to it.

The clock sits in a corner of Keith’s workshop, the gears choked with sawdust. He never fully finished the project. The pendulum is a cheap dowel piercing an orange plastic ball; the weight is scrap metal. I know why he left it like that: The creative work was making the gears; the rest was mop up.

In this Keith and I are exactly alike: What interests us is always what’s in the making, never what’s done.

* * *

Several friends said, We never could see what you saw in him. Beyond the creative genius part, I never tried to explain.

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly," Saint Exupery said. With my heart I saw:

Keith is an enlivened heart. To tell me who he was, he played for me this song by Tret Fure:

My house I leave open
My faith lies with friends
If I can’t trust my instincts, I’ll lose in the end
I’d rather risk injury than be on my guard
That side of the moon is too dark.

It became our shared point of reference, our song. Recently Keith gave me a CD onto which he copied the song. Even as we go our separate ways, it's still true north on his compass and mine.

* * *

If you ever grow heartsore, seek out Keith in his workshop. Only spirit can take you to that hushed place where you become the thing you are doing. Watch him, attentive and tender, coax new meaning from metal or wood, and you will be restored. You will see:

“Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”

Not to paint too soft a picture: The man is 6-foot-5 and can bench press me. He owns a rifle and pistol, which he uses to shoot beer cans on stumps and doughnuts hanging from trees. He drives a motorcycle, a dirt bike, and a riding lawnmower he geared up to make it go fast. He likes to do wheelies on it, and more than once he has flipped it. He swears like a trucker and tells dirty jokes. He loves Pink Floyd.

He likes beer, and the more he drinks, the sweeter and more gentle he gets.

* * *

Keith and I were lucky. We were lost in a dark wood, and we walked out together. As children we had been bullied, jeered at, browbeaten and left to rot. When we discovered one another, we stared with amazement and admiration. If we didn’t love in a soul-binding way, we lavished on one another the necessary precursor: profound, enthusiastic certainty that the other was wholly worthy, doubly so, of a place on this planet.

We did more than survive grief. We engaged life. Certainty is contagious. We believed in one another, and then we believed in ourselves. We helped one another stake a claim in the world, and build our lives, and step into them.

We were divinely lucky to meet when we did. Fate dealt us a good hand, and we played it well.

Still, I can’t stop apologizing every time we meet. Keith needs a friend by his side. I need solitude the way a tree needs wood. I was not always nice about it.

You did fine. Don’t feel guilty, Keith says.

* * *

At dinner, Keith heaps some of his food onto my plate. He knows I want it, and he’s offered to let me nibble right off his plate as I did when we were married, but I decline. That day is over. Besides, it used to annoy him no end.

I miss it, he says.

Do you ever think about Mary? I ask.

I am not starting anything. I just wonder.

I do, he says. More and more lately. I don’t know why.

I think one good-bye brings on another.

* * *

The sun is on the slant.

Now that we have finished with the bank and dinner and house tour and mechanicking, Keith is leaning against the back fender of my car, his arms crossed. We chat, but things are winding down. It’s well past time for me to go, but we have never been quick to say good-bye.

I have something to say, and this may be my last opportunity. After this moment there will be nothing between us, no connection to give me the right to say personal things.

I want to say, Love is not what we thought. It is not a bridge, uniting two grieving hearts, then falling down.

I want to say, Love is the river that carries us into the future. That’s what our love did, is doing now.

Instead I say, I still love you. Quickly I add, Like a brother, like family.

Keith smiles sadly. He knows. The affection we feel in this moment, it is old affection. He has a girlfriend now, and I am meeting a favorite lead at the Turn in two hours.

It is time.

Keith pushes off the car, his arms open, and wraps me in a bear hug. My face ends up smashed in his armpit, and we laugh. Soon after we were married he read that women need frequent whiffs of the pheromones emitted in a man’s sweat, and he kindly volunteered his. It’s silly joke, and it gives us a cozy moment.

You can say all you like about the intimacy of the tango embrace, it is nothing, it is not a pale image, it is not even of the same ilk; it is a caricature of this: genuine, old, familial love. This is the connection that requires no tending. If I never see Keith again, we will always be family.

We know that. We know how way leads on to way. When two roads diverge, you cannot travel both.

Don’t be a stranger, Keith says.

He helps me into the car, then shambles over to the crabapple tree, picks fruit and tosses it into the grass as I back down the driveway.

We wave and wave and wave as I drive away.

Tango in the Town of the Democratic National Convention, Part 1

2008-08-25T19:10:00.001-07:00

Last Friday night: Early-bird weekend for the DNC.

Along about midnight, the music cuts out. Finally! I have been looking forward to this ever since Marilyn McGinnity, the old hippie who owns the Merc, sent an email to Tango Colorado promising a special, antiwar tango performance.

This is a prelude to the Democratic National Convention, which will start in 2 days just a mile or two away. The city is already bursting at the seams. A friend is choosing the wine for a party the Washington Post is hosting for the 200 staffers it has brought to town.

The machinery of national politics leaves me cold. I vote the party line, don't bother me with the details. But...

I love performances! I love antiwar!

Andrey and I stand at the edge of the floor. We do not immediately head back to our seats, because I am filching chocolate candies from a basket set out for the purpose.

And that's a good thing, because on her next breath Marilyn orders all dancers onto the floor. We are the performance, she said.

I love performance art! I love communally created meaning. I love when the role of the observer is subsumed in the role of the creator.

The ones who are creating the art--and thereby its meaning and message--are themselves the intended recipients of its beauty and meaning and message. Roll over, Marshall MacLuhan: You said the medium is the message. Under Marilyn's direction, Tango Colorado is about to say this: Creation is the message.

This is the ultimate in self-referencing art. Imagine the Borg painting a picture. Imagine God creating the world.

Do you want to? Andrey asks.

Oh, I don't know, I say, are you antiwar?

It's a question of appropriateness, he says.

So, with my mouth full of chocolate, we enter the dance on a thoughtful note. The music is a gorgeous tango. Then the voice.

I am the disappeared of Argentina ... Your war ... your generals ... your Army ... your money ... men and boys murdered ... raped me and killed me and your money your generals my country ...

Andrey growls in my ear. I can't dance to this. I can't hear the music.

I am not helping. I am quaking in his arms. With laughter. Really, this is ludicrous. LIke a tasteless comedy skit.

Andrey is determined, but we are both relieved when the song ends.

Then another begins.

The ranting goes on. It grows uncomfortable, but not in a meaningful way. You, Marilyn, ask me to put myself into a very close embrace--really, with my buddy Andrey, intimate is not too strong a word--and then you rail on about rape? I am not feeling guilt, only embarrassment.

Oh, that's very nice, I say in my most sarcastic voice so I will sound jaded, which is often interpreted as self-assured.

Andrey grumbles on.

OK, I think. This is a moment. I don't want to lose it. I love performance art! "Just go with it. Find the musicc," I say aloud, to both of us.

Then I don't hear the rant any more because Andrey is dancing to the music itself, and the music must echo the rant because our dance is sharp and dissonant and energetic. It feels ugly. And then it is over.

And that's it. No effect. Nada. My Whitebread American guilt is no greater than it was 10 minutes ago. I have no sense of creation, or art having transpired. No sense of what Tom Stermitz describes as tango transcendence, when all the couples on the floor dance as a whole. No. This ending, it feels like pulling into a parking space at McDonald's.

Soon the tango orchestra Extasis returns to the stage. I have lovely dances until my feet hurt, and then I have a few more, and then one last tanda with a favorite lead, and then go home.

There I putter, do a little housework, jot notes for tomorrow's writing, slip into the CD player a cozy murder mystery, luxuriate for 30 seconds in clean 'jammies, clean sheets, sore feet and the bel canto of George Guidall's narration, and then I am dead to the world.

This is what my friend Ralph believes: What the religious call Heaven, this is It. Today, the Earth. Heaven is a co-op, we are its member-citizens. The heavenliness of Heaven derives from social action. Us.

Shane, my anarchist buddy, left town this week. He's seeking buffalo and serenity in Yellowstone National Park. The irony of his destination cannot be lost on him. Still, he's an anarchist. Leaving town is his political action.

Ralph is an activist. He has long experience in peaceful protest and in being arrested. He will spend much of this week within a few feet of police in riot gear.

I tango. I write. I dream. I wake in the morning to the image of Nero fiddling while Rome burns, and my most pressing question is: What song did he play?

Then I heard a cello

2008-08-18T09:33:00.000-07:00

Then I heard a cello and thought,
Oh. That's how you say it.

Courtney Queeney

"Notes for My Future Biographer"

from Filibuster to a Kiss and Other Poems

Eden Raine, 3 Years Old, Gets a New Heart

2008-08-13T11:09:00.000-07:00

Eden Raine comes home today! Whoo-hoo!

Last fall, the doctors told us that she never would live to see 3 years old. They said that, without a new heart, she would die this very month.

Last week, I got a call: She's having the transplant today.

Now, look at her go! She wants off the bed, she wants her toys, she is ....

feisty!

Yes!

Eden Raine has the heart of a 3-year-old boy. There is never a moment when you can rejoice for her but also grieve for his parents.

How do we live on? Is our life contained only within the sum of our bodily parts, or do we live on in each surviving part? Is there intelligent life at the cellular level? Is there soul?

Dead is dead, gone is gone. That's what I say. Still, I love that this tiny, doll-like girl who never knew a feisty moment in her life, might have a tiny bit of boy in her.

Blessings on you, little boy, and the ones who love you. As you reap may you sow. In love we live on.

Live on, little boy. Live on, Eden Raine.

Previous post on Eden Raine.

My Glasses, My Heart: PS, The Final Part.5

2008-08-11T13:06:00.000-07:00

(Voice mail picked up at 12:30 p.m.)

Electronic voice:
Voice mail received 9:26 a.m., Monday, August 11. … 20 seconds. To listen, press 0.

Voice message:
Hi, I’m calling from Kaiser in the contact lens department to let you know that we got your lens in. You can pick it up here upstairs in the optical dept. Thank you!

* * *

And that's that. We close the book on another tango adventure...

My Glasses, My Heart: The Final Part

2008-08-11T09:55:00.000-07:00

It is this simple.

He takes the glasses carefully from my hands as if he were well-accustomed to handling fragile things, and slips them into the protective nest of his pocket. The pocket is clean and well-pressed, prepared.

He looks to ascertain my approval. Then his expression changes: Let’s begin.

He enters carefully into the embrace. He moves confidently and with precision. We dance first in the open embrace and, as we become acclimated, he pulls me close.

His arm is strong against my back. Some women feel it is too much, he says. He asks more than once, Is this too much?

It’s nice, I tell him. I don’t say what I feel: Encircled. Secured.

There is nothing in this dance to awaken my dread. No fancy steps he can’t quite lead, nothing I can’t follow.

Well-cared for. Protected.

My forehead rests in the soft hair at his temple. My curls brush his cheek. When the moment is right, I whisper.

Sometimes after a tanda he forgets my glasses are in his pocket. He stands on the edge of the dance floor and chats, and I don’t ask for my glasses because that would be his signal to move on.

Eventually he remembers, or I remind him. Then he removes my glasses from his pocket, opens them, orients them so they will be easy for me to put on, and offers them. He holds onto them until he is sure they are safe in my hands.

If it were not completely stupid, I would be jealous of them, my glasses in his hands, in the pocket next to his heart.

* * *

Who would have thought such a mundane nuisance as glasses could yield such a rich field of possibility for self-expression?

Who would have thought the way to my heart is through my glasses?

My Glasses, My Heart Part 4

2008-08-09T16:37:00.001-07:00

Then I tore a contact. Then the fun began!

Who knew? Who knew that, in the hands of an imaginative and considerate lead, solving the problem of spectacles could be a form of creative expression?

Three gentlemen raise spec-tiquette to an art. One wows my heart.

* * *

Robert has decided that if I am not going to wear my specs, he won’t wear his, either. He drops them in his pocket along with mine. After the tanda he pulls them out. They emerge as a piece, tangled.

This could be a film, French, of course, with atmospheric lighting and smoky music from the ’30s. The girly glasses slip coyly into the pocket, the boy specs dive in after. The music commences. The dancers are unimportant; they are only a vehicle for the pocket. The shot is quite tight, but of course the camera cannot reveal what is happening inside that dark, roomy space. We see the outward signs, the movements within suggested by the stretch and sway of fabric. The music ends, a masculine hand (a fine Gallic hand, a few dark hairs on the fingers) reaches into the pocket, pulls out the glasses. They emerge as a piece, tangled.

Last week at the Turn, I was standing beside a box speaker when Robert asked me to dance. I slipped off my glasses, then hesitated. For all my talk, I am self-conscious about asking leads to take care of them for me.

“I’ll just leave them here,” I said, setting them down.

He took them up quickly. “This is better,” he said, slipping them into his pocket.

* * *

I thought that pocket protection raised the bar on spectiquette as high as it could go.

Silly me. David Hodgson does not raise bars. He toys with them. It would not be beyond him to turn the bar into a pond, for example. It would not be beyond him to turn the bar into a pond and himself into a fish and you into a fisherman in an old wooden boat, and the merry game is on.

Is that too woo-woo for you? David would calibrate his magic, turn the bar into something you would find familiar and comforting--an umbrella, say, or a toaster.

I do not dance with David Hodgson. Last winter I took two private lessons from him, and I could not even walk straight. Teachers make me nervous, and David has an inventiveness that I like very much, so of course my feet were all thumbs. It was painful. He doesn’t ask me to dance, and if he did I would demur.

So a few weeks ago, when he asked me to dance, I demurred.

David, I said, we can’t dance together. Don’t you remember? I torture you.

He grinned. Herpetologically.

(Several months ago I confided in David my secret ambition to produce a tango show based on an old folk tale. The problem, I explained, is that no one is going to want to play the Devil. David grinned. I swear I heard a hiss.)

Oh come on, he said temptingly.

Without hesitation I slipped off my glasses, proving I am indeed a daughter of Eve.

“You’ll have to bring me back here,” I said, dropping the specs on a table at random. “Otherwise I’ll never find them.

“I can’t see a thing,” I added, reaching out a hand so he could lead me to the dance floor like the blind woman I am.

He grinned. Yesssssss.

After one quaking moment, I gave myself over. When you’re dancing with the Devil, you’d best give as good as you get.

When you’re a beginner, tango is a standardized test. For every question the lead asks, there is only one right answer. This is when you’re learning basic steps and technique.

When you’ve moved along a bit, tango becomes fill-in-the-blank. The lead integrates pauses for you to fill in. This is when a follower learns adornments.

When you’ve moved along a little bit more, tango becomes an essay test. You get the idea …

Dancing with David Hodgson is defending your dissertation before a panel of advisors from the New Goth College, the Potter School of Fine, Dark and Martial Arts, and the American Academy of Hula Hoop Queens.

It’s important to know that when you are defending a dissertation, you are not answering an attack. You are conversing. There is no mistaking who is teacher or student, but for the purposes of the moment, all are on equal footing.

Not to belabor the point, we had fun. When the last song of the tanda ended, I opened my eyes.

Look, David said. We were standing right next to a table, where sat—my glasses!

Wow! I said. What are the odds we’d end up here?

David grinned.

Yessssssss.

* * *

Ssssssso, I say to the next lead who snags me.

Apparently I am feeling a bit devilish still. I tell him David’s trick, give him a flirtatious “top-that” sort of look.

Hmmm, he says, considering.

I like this lead. He’s been dancing a year and he is like me, which is to say he has some natural affinity for music and movement and he aspires to dance well and he enjoys learning new things and practicing and he’s inventive.

He is different from me in that he actually has natural ability to go with that affinity, and so he is learning quickly while I am enjoying a painfully leisurely pace.

For this reason I call him Alaric, which is an actual name, at least it was in the very first romance novel I ever read (Barbara Cartland, who else?). That Alaric spoke Gaelic, which I believe would make him Irish.

I do not call this lead Alaric because he is Gaelic or a romantic icon, though I imagine he has broad appeal. Rather, Alaric sounds like alacrity, which is a Latin word traced to the fifteenth century, meaning lively.

Here is one example of Alaric’s alacrity: Recently, I learned from Gustavo to do a quick-step in the giro during vals. Alaric was not in the class, so I showed it to him. I did it once or twice. That’s all he needed to make it his.

You could watch his line of thought as it developed: If a giro is a grapevine, then this quick-step could work in any grapevine-type step … in any direction … and if the man could lead it at will … and if he did it along with the follower … and we were circling the floor with our new, very cool move!

If he were a Viking you could call him Alaric the Fearless. But that would be precious. Vikings didn’t dance tango.

Sssssssso I said to Alaric, then ditched the glasses and we were off, lively and just a bit devilish.

You think you know where this is going, don’t you? Don’t set yourself up. Alaric is no David Hodgson. No. Alaric is just my speed.

I like dancing with Alaric when we are playing around, and when we’re working hard and when we’re dancing for pleasure. We dance in open and close embrace, and when we go into close embrace, I close my eyes.

When I open my eyes at the end of the tanda, every single step, including the missteps, has been a pleasure. Tonight we were dancing to dance, with fun and inventive moves from the very first step straight through to the very cool pose on the very last beat.

We are in an odd corner, a bit outside the line of dance. Alaric touches my arm, indicates the way I should go. Of course he is walking me back to my table. He wears contact lenses, he understands my plight.

I can tell he enjoyed the tanda. His smile is a touch diffident, as usual, but also a touch self-satisfied. He is in no hurry to go trolling.

When I turn in the direction he indicates—surprise! We are standing two steps from the table on which sit my glasses!

How did you do that!? I squeal.

Alaric looks sheepishly proud. The DJ was playing a three-song set. It took all of the first two songs and part of the third to complete one full turn of the floor. Knowing there wouldn’t be time enough left in the set to make another full circuit, “I just danced right here until the end,” he explains.

That explains the odd corner, out of the way of the other dancers. But what about all those cool moves? It didn’t feel like we were stuck in an eddy. Every step was a pleasure!

Add gratified to that diffident, self-satisfied smile.

Wow! This goes way beyond etiquette or courtesy. This is full-bore, pedal-to-the-metal, dazzling charm. Alaric, you are indeed just my speed.

I am gushing. Here’s why:

I asked for a gift, and Alaric, inventive soul that he is, presented it to me done up with ribbons. That’s connection.

* * *

These are the three gentlemen. Tomorrow: The one who wows my heart.

My Glasses, My Heart, Part 3

2008-08-08T11:29:00.000-07:00

Then I got contact lenses.

Very handy. I can spot a cabeceo, and I can walk myself off the floor. Men and women alike tell me I look prettier.

The leads no longer escort me to my table; there’s no need. They walk a bit in the general direction, say a nice thank-you, and wander off.

According to Kari, my tour guide to the dance scene, that’s because as soon as one tanda ends, everyone—leads and followers alike—start trolling for their next partner. They are afraid that, if they take time out for etiquette, someone will snatch the next partner they want or worse, all of the good partners will pair up, leaving only the dregs.

I am not fond of dancing back-to-back tandas. After a tanda, I want to bask. At the very least, I like to get one lead out of my system before another one takes his place. For more than a year this worked quite well; I often enjoyed the space of several tandas between dances. Since I started wearing contact lenses, however, I am often waylaid before I even return to my table.

This can be simply explained: Without an escort one is assumed to be trolling.

Also, to be honest: If a lead whom I like charts an intercepting course, I do not initiate evasive maneuvers.

Also: Some leads are gratified by my choice to wear contacts. They interpret it as a courtesy I extend to their temples or as acquiescence to their advice. They’re right on the first count, and perhaps on the second, though I hate to admit to acquiescence to anything. Nevertheless, to be honest: If it had not been so often suggested, would I have made the move?

Also: I have become a better dancer.

Never mind the causes, the effect is singular. When I wear my contact lenses, I rarely sit out a tanda.

Then I tore one contact lens.

My Glasses, My Heart, Part 2.75

2008-08-07T10:09:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you wish to speak publicly. That's etiquette.
Sometimes you wish to chat. That's courtesy.
Sometimes you wish to put your heads together and whisper.
Yikes! What is that?

My Glasses, My Heart Part 2.5

2008-08-07T10:01:00.000-07:00

I have become a connoisseur of pockets. Andre favored dress shirts. Bill is a cowboy—pockets with snaps. Robert often wears something unusual in fabric and color and cut with a fine, roomy pocket.

There are many other pockets, I’m sure, but I have not made an acquaintance with them. I am not a pocket-hussy. I don’t remove my glasses for just any lead, and I won’t put them in just any pocket. One likes to maintain a sense of propriety.

Once I took off my glasses to dance with a stranger; he left me stranded on a huge, foreign dance floor, and that was that. Now I use my good sense.

When you go out on the town with a man for the first time, it’s smart to keep taxi cash in your pocket. When you go out on the dance floor with a lead you don’t know, it’s smart to make sure you can walk yourself off.

This week at the Turn I took my glasses off, thought better of it and jammed them back on as I joined a new lead on the floor. Smart move.

Other than with Andre, I never put my glasses in any of The Five pockets. The glasses-in-the-pocket thing is a touch common. The Five and I maintain an elegant formality that is its own kind of dazzling.

Andre is long gone from tango now, but he has left his mark in these lingering thoughts about etiquette and courtesy, the character and purpose of each.

Etiquette is good manners, a code of conduct conveying respect. In a society that reveres the casual and brisk, there is a tendency to be utilitarian in our dealings with one another. Etiquette requires us to slow down. It says: I see you, I am paying attention.

Courtesy is the expression of the care we take for one another. When Andre walked me back to the bar and handed me my glasses, he was doing more than etiquette demands; he was saying: I wish to do you a kindness.

It may seem as if etiquette is the lesser of the two, but that is not the case. Not at all.

Etiquette paves the way for social commerce. As a code of conduct, it has broad range; it can speak volumes or not at all. It preserves boundaries and conventions and roles. Etiquette serves us best in situations where these things are of primary importance.

Courtesy says, I like you. Do you like me? Mannered conduct gives way to improvisation. Courtesy lends itself to the personal, but don’t let that mislead you. Conventions relax but persist.

Etiquette serves us in ways that courtesy does not. When we wish to express warm personal regard and even affection from a neutral stance, etiquette serves.

The Five are the leads with whom I regularly dance. I like them and vice-versa; at milonga and practica we seek out one another. Four of The Five are involved in significant relationships. Propriety is of primary importance. Etiquette speaks volumes, and the word spreads all along our interlocking webs of social connection. When it serves in this way, etiquette is outwardly focused, a form of public speaking.

My Glasses, My Heart, Part 2

2008-08-06T20:58:00.000-07:00

The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. It’s the way to many a woman’s heart, too.

My heart, as you may imagine, is staunchly contrarian. Dinner, candy, midnight nibbles: All leave me cold.

This makes me a cheap date … but not an easy one. I am a sucker for courtesy. Trust me: Dinner and sweets are much easier plays.

I am not judgmental about this, nor hard to please. I enjoy the company of every well-meaning person, even rude jokers, and my own manners are not as nice as I’d like. But I am not talking about manners, rather awareness … thoughtfulness … a sense of being tuned-in … ah, there it is: connection.

I am easy to please, but hard to impress. Pity the man who takes interest in me.

Or in whom I take an interest.

* * *

Tango and glasses do not mix.

That is why I wish I didn’t wear glasses.

When I dance in the style I prefer, my forehead to his temple, my glasses are an occasional annoyance, in turns and other moves that require a reorientation of the head.

When a lead insists that I dance straight-on, we encounter a problem: The protruding corner of the frame of my glasses pokes him in the temple. This is uncomfortable for both of us, due to the Rule of Equal and Opposite Force: When you exert a force against something and that thing resists, you feel the resistance as a force pushing back.

Einstein said that, and/or Machiavelli.

If I hold my head just right, with a fair amount of effort I can mimic the temple-to-temple position while keeping my glasses clear of contact … until the lead makes an unexpected move and our heads bang together. This is like getting a whole dance worth of equal and opposite force in one blow.

Ouch!

This is the sort of thing that prompts a man of weak character to abandon a woman on the dance floor.

For a long time I removed my glasses to dance. I laid them on the table where I was sitting, relying on the lead to return me to my table at the end of the tanda. This is the etiquette of the dance, Nina explained in her followers’ classes.

Other teachers weren’t teaching that lesson, or the leads weren’t listening.

I started to warn all comers: Happy to dance with you, need you to walk me back to my table when we’re through.

Well, no. I didn’t warn all comers. Some required no etiquette lessons. Glenlivet. Stan. Tom. Andre. Four of The Five. Not bad!

Once, as Glenlivet was walking me back to my table, we passed a group just in time to hear a man say, “… but you have to walk her back to her table.”

I did not see who said it. I wasn’t wearing my glasses. Also, I was bedazzled by Glenlivet’s charm.

* * *

Andre raised the bar on spectacles etiquette.

At the Blue Ice, where we studied as beginners, there is a long bar along one edge of the dance floor. Couples always entered the dance floor at the corner of the bar. Andre began every dance the same way. He would take the glasses and lay them in an protected spot; after the tanda he would lead me back to the bar, pick up the glasses and hand them to me.

One day during class, far from the bar, Andre invited me to put my glasses in his shirt pocket. He held it open and I dropped them in.

Wow!

Here, please listen for the twittering of birds … sunshine and rainbows or whatever corny thing you like.

You’ve had moments like this. Who hasn’t? Everything that has happened is happening still. Let’s all take a moment to bask.

My Glasses, My Heart, Part 1.5

2008-08-05T12:42:00.000-07:00

I can see about 2.25 inches (6 cm) beyond the end of my nose.

I've always wondered.

My Glasses, My Heart, Part 1

2008-08-04T19:11:00.000-07:00

I wear glasses. I wish I didn't. Not because they're ugly, or inconvenient, or restrictive, which they are: You are always at the end of their tether. No matter how late it is, how tired or distracted or otherwise engaged you are, you can't take them off without making very specific note of where you set them down. Really. It's like parking your car at the airport.

I cannot see the bottom of a lake while I am swimming, nor the stars as I fall asleep under them. Walking in the rain is a bitch, as is coming in from the cold. Snuggling can be problematic (reference the tethering issue).

On the other hand ...

When I look at a Christmas tree with my natural vision, every tiny twinkle light diffuses into a cloud-ball of color, hovering disembodied against an undefined backdrop. This is heaven: lying on the sofa in a dark room, Christmas tree lit, music playing, glasses laid carefully aside.

What do I see when I'm swimming? I lie prone, my cheek resting on the surface as on a pillow. My line of sight is the horizon, the exact point where water touches air. Limited to what is immediately before me, I see this: The horizon is not a straight line, it is a negotiation; it shifts and flows to accommodate the motion of water. It bisects me.

Above the horizon the light is sharp as crystal. The shore is a long green smear, the blue-white plate of sky dissolves into the distance. The light imparts vigor. I am blind to anything smaller than a landscape. No matter, the light itself lives.

Below the horizon all is luminous. The water is infused, the water itself becomes light. On a bright day in clear water, light descends to the depths. You can follow it down. Sometimes I walk out as far as I can, wearing my glasses, look down to see the bottom. Then I walk back to shore, lay my glasses carefully aside, and swim out, blind. I am not in the dark, I am feeling my way in the light.

These are the two aspects of the horizon: enlivened and enlightened.

When I remove my glasses, there is no precision, no definition. Objects lose their independent identities; all melt, thaw, resolve. Shape and differentiation fade to abstractions. The loss of the particular undoes logic, language, thought. In the world of my natural vision, there are only impressions.

With my natural vision, I see the world as it is, without a manmade, distorting lens. Perhaps you are blinded by your vision. Go to the doctor; ask him to remove the lenses from your eyes. Then you will see: We live in a diaphanous world.

* * *

Lately I have been troubled by the problem of war, or rather, the impossibility of peace. Now here's a new thread: Perhaps our problem is clear vision.

How can we see peace when we see only the particular, the clear definition of this thing and that? Clear vision gives rise to specificity, and specificity to difference, and difference to war. The clarity of vision is at the root. we must become a little bit blind.

For purely pragmatic reasons, nearsightedness could give peace a big boost: If we were all banging blindly about, it would be very difficult to wage an effective war.

Vision determines action. when you see the world as a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If you see the world as a bomb, everything looks like a target.

What if, looking at a bomb, your poorly tuned eyes registered a big, fluffy ball? What if the words of every religious text blurred into one dark smear on the page?

Eeeek!

2008-07-26T19:16:00.001-07:00

I’m standing in front of the mirror, aiming a lipstick at my mouth, when I spot something on my arm.

Eeeek!

My fingers go numb and the lipstick nearly takes a tumble.

Is that my bone? This can’t be! Where did all of my fat go? I’ve lost lots of weight, but not lately. Surely I haven’t. I don’t own a scale, but I’m pretty sure.

I have been eating and eating. I have gained weight. Surely I have. You can’t believe how much I eat.

If I go to my parents’ house with this bone sticking out, they will take it as proof of their suspicions that I am anorexic and pack me off to one of those places in the Utah desert where they will force feed me like a goose.

Eeek!

Take a moment, One Heart. Conduct a reality check.

My right arm is frozen in the position of lifting the lipstick. With my left finger, I reach across my body. Tentatively. Medical things gross me out. Bones and muscles are medical. So is fat. So is skin when stretched taut over a mysterious shape.

I brush the thing with the tip of a finger.

It doesn’t hurt. Doesn't bite. No Alien monster bursts out of it, roaring and spewing foul saliva.

I touch it lightly. Hello?

Inside, something resists. It is neither hard nor squishy. Not bone or fat. Not a Lump.

It is long and narrow but plump, like a fish swimming upstream to my shoulder.

I give it a poke. The thing goes flat and, when I remove my finger, it pops right back up.

Oh!

It’s a bicep!

* * *

Excuse me, but I need to get personal for a second.

My lingerie is too tight.

It is important to the story to tell you this; a good writer is always in service to the story. This does not prevent mortification, or a hot blush.

Let’s move on. Quickly.

* * *

These are your wings, Nina says. She is standing close, her arms reaching round. Her fingers meet at the spine and trace out to the shoulder blades.

Spread your wings, she says.

I hunch my shoulders, round them, pull them way down. Over months, I try dozens of contortions. One day I get it right. Who can say how? I surely can’t. I can’t repeat it, can’t hold it. And then I can, occasionally. And then every day. And then I can make it happen at will. I never know how. I don’t actually do it. I only imagine a word—strong—and there it is.

Presumably, there are muscles involved.

* * *

A few weeks after I started tango, Judith hosted a ladies’ party at Mercer’s, a consignment store on South Broadway far enough from central Denver to be severely un-tres-chic and therefore quite cool.

I arrived late. There was no one in the front room of the shop. It was quiet. Crossing to the back room, the sound grew loud.

More than a dozen women roamed the racks, piling up armfuls of things to try on. They had made a dent in the mimosas.

Look what I found! they called out. This is sooo right for you! They shared dressing rooms. There were squeals and giggles and groans and plaintive appeals: “Let me have that if you’re not going to buy it. … You don’t want it, do you?”

There were dares: I dare you to come out here in that! And bargains: I will if you will.

I found a few things and a storeroom to change in.

Some things that you like are not what you would wear. I found a kind of tank top, bronze silk, with flowers and leafy vines embroidered in bright reds and greens. It had stays, and it hooked up the front.

It’s called a bustier, Andrea said.

It doesn’t fit. I showed her. The hooks down the front didn’t quite meet; you could see a little line of skin there.

That’s how it’s made, Andrea said with a good deal of patience. Let me try it on if you’re not going to buy it.

Too tight, she said, seconds after she disappeared behind the curtain. My muscles are too big.

That’s a novel expression, I thought.

She pointed to her ribs, circling her side and around to her back. These are the muscles you use when you hold the frame, she said.

Sure thing, I thought. Women will make any excuse for a little fat in the corners.

The bustier fit me perfectly, Andrea pronounced. She decreed I should buy it. I didn’t really need her decree; it is the most beautiful piece of clothing I have ever had on.

Not that I have had it on often. I did not buy it to wear but to look at. With winter coming, I put the bustier in my best-sweater drawer. Every few days I got a glimpse of beauty as I dressed for work.

Occasionally I would put it on. The last time I tried, it didn’t fit. I could still get the hooks done, but the little stripe of skin was a wee bit wider, and I couldn’t breathe.

Wow!

Yikes!

2008-07-23T07:50:00.000-07:00

Is it true, as my father believes, that creative, smart people go looking for trouble to spice up lives that are just too easy?

He says this about Five-of-Six, who has put herself in more dire straits more often than you can imagine. He says it about her, but he says it to me. A word to the wise.

I do go looking for trouble.

Trouble—complexities, obstacles, impossible challenges, the alien, surprises, threats--spices up a life I could otherwise live, have done, with one hand tied behind my back.

Living without using all of your faculties is subsisting; routine is a sensory-deprivation tank. Trouble calls on all of your faculties, all at once, urgently.

Looking for trouble is not chasing cheap thrills. Not at all.

Challenges and sensation-seeking: These are nothing. The Adventurer of the Moment bats them away as a superhero does henchmen, and for the same reason: to get at the Main Man, the Joker. To see in the mirror.

Trouble is not trouble if it doesn’t rattle your edifice and the ground it stands on.

Trouble is not trouble if it doesn’t rattle your soul.

Tango is a world of trouble.

Heh, heh.

* * *

Some people don’t go looking for trouble. They are like my father. They do not need to be shaken in order to use all of their faculties. Their territory is the intensity of the particular rather than the vast deeps.

When he was in high school, my father read a novel. Two sisters live in rural England, in the merchant class. One goes to London, pursues a glamorous career on the stage; the other stays home and takes over the family business.

I wanted to be the one who stayed home, my father says.

I am the luckiest daughter in the world.

* * *

Lately I have become better at tango, more accomplished at the gross motor movements, more relaxed about all that shivers me timbers.

I can keep my balance. I can follow most moves. I can set myself and my shivers aside. This spring something clicked, and since then I have been quite sure of my edifice, façade and foundation.

I have not mastered all of the vagaries of tango, and the edifice can go wobbly without notice. Still, for the most part, I stand on solid ground. If I can’t exactly dance with one hand tied behind my back, if I still run too often to the ladies’ with attacks of the vapors, there is a certain routine quality developing.

It no longer takes all of my faculties to dance tango.

This is the only explanation I have for my behavior last Friday night at the Merc.

(No, wait! Here’s another: Dan Diaz was playing.)

I would like to blame it on Grisha, but the poor guy has enough on his hands in trying to teach me this dance. And, I am not such a wimp as to hind behind the skirts of my teacher.

So. This is on me. I took his advice, and a little too far.

Infuse the dance with character, he said. A color, a childhood story.

I take this to mean, Dance what the music evokes.

I can never do this in a lesson. When I am in a lesson the only thing I feel is conscientious.

Friday night, I danced what the music evoked. And then took it further, and danced what I felt. Me.

Yikes!

* * *

I never flirted until I joined tango. Who knew? This is fun! I like to flirt with my speech and my eyes and my dance.

Flirting works because of parameters. Here are mine: I did not come to tango to make friends. I do not hug. I do not take phone numbers, nor give mine out. I do not date. My tango friendships do not extend beyond the milonga. Everyone knows this. I make sure they do, quite early on. The ones who don’t get it, I tell them.

This is a philosophical stance ... with practical implications.

Yes. Here’s one implication: I can flirt as much I please. Where there is no intent, there is no complication.

* * *

Friday night I was not flirting. Friday night I danced with intent.

Yikes!

Sunday night

2008-07-22T14:50:00.000-07:00

Thinking outside the box is a good thing. Acting out, outside the box is something else entirely.

Tango Countdown ... Two Hours

2008-07-20T16:04:00.000-07:00

Friday night at the Merc I behaved ... well, not badly. Let's not put a judgment on it. Let's just say out of character, out of my league.

In two hours I must be in in Boulder, at the Avalon, delivering dinner. I promised I would bring dinner in the weekly host's absence.

I am pretty sure to run into someone from Friday night.

Yikes.

I NEVER forward things like this but...

2008-07-17T13:08:00.000-07:00

Why is it that everyone starts their junk mail forward that way? I am forwarding this to every powerful woman I know, starting with my mom.

Powerful Women

Live your life in such a way that when your feet hit the floor in the morning, Satan shudders and says... 'Oh shit ...she's awake!!!'

Tango's Other Capital

2008-07-13T07:06:00.001-07:00

Montevideo Doesn't Defer to Buenos Aires
From the Washington Post, July 11

"Buenos Aires is smart. They've marketed their tango to the world," says José Solari, a 49-year-old teacher of tango at Montevideo's Joventango Institute, a downtown studio housed in an aging art deco market. "But it's become so commercialized there that the only thing they see is pesos. . . . What we do, we do for love."

Elvis Costello, Zitarrosa, Lágrima Ríos Do Tango

2008-07-13T07:06:00.000-07:00

sort of ...

Here's a review of the CD Mar Dulce, from the NYT:

BAJOFONDO
There’s a quandary right at the core of Bajofondo, the group led by the Oscar-winning Argentine composer, producer and guitarist Gustavo Santaolalla and the Uruguayan programmer and producer Juan Campodónico. Bajofondo’s beloved tango depends on impulsive shifts of tempo and dynamics: hesitations and rushes, passionate crescendos. Yet Bajofondo’s equally beloved electronica defies tango’s spontaneity, flattening dynamics with programmed repetition.

The instrumentals can be stalemates between the programmed beat and the hand-played sounds of tango’s bandoneon (accordion), piano or violin. So Bajofondo brings in guest vocalists as wild cards: singers including Nelly Furtado, Elvis Costello, the Argentine rockers Gustavo Cerati and Juan Subirá, the Mexican rocker Julieta Venegas and the octogenarian Uruguayan tango singer Lágrima Ríos, in her last recording, as well as rapping by Mala Rodriguez (from Spain) and Santullo (from Uruguay). They tip the balance toward imperfect, immediate humanity, and their drama rubs off on the instrumentals too.

* * *
and from Newsday:

Bajofondo dips into tango...

On "Zitarrosa," a track from the new Bajofondo album, "Mar Dulce" (Decca/Surco), the voice of the late Uruguayan singer and poet Alfredo Zitarrosa can be heard over a dub-electronica backing track. "The milonga is the child of candombe just as the tango is the child of the milonga," he intones. In that one sentence, he sums up the historical evolution of a regional Latin American music just as the electronica-based arrangements take it into the future.

Formerly known as Bajofondo Tango Club, this eight-member Argentine-Uruguayan collective is led by producer-composer Gustavo Santaolalla and DJ Juan Campodónico. Their new project is not so much a fusion version of tango than a collection of contemporary music from the Rio de La Plata area (which includes both Argentina and Uruguay) grounded in the musical language of tango.

As Zitarrosa - whose work was once banned by Argentina's dictatorial rulers - implied, the tango had its roots in African (candombe) and Spanish (milonga) genres. Bajofondo mixes in elements of hip-hop, dub, techno, house and rock, finding a frontier that Carlos Gardel never dreamed of. "Mar Dulce" accomplishes this in part by employing an attractive roster of guest collaborators, such as La Mala Rodríguez, Nelly Furtado, Gustavo Cerati, vocalists from rock bands Peyote Asesino and Bersuit, and even Elvis Costello.

Dance, and the Whole World Dances With You

2008-07-11T14:47:00.000-07:00

Even if you don't think you dance well, you do...

French Tango

2008-07-09T22:19:00.001-07:00

A classic writing assignment: Choose a picture and write a story about it. What is this lovely story? From ParisTango.

The Milonga Is Not the Place to Teach

2008-07-09T07:40:00.000-07:00

A charming lead sent this excerpt last week to apologize for being a "DFT," dance floor teacher. Needless to say, when someone you have known for a year and have danced with a few times gives you a few pointers mid-milonga, that is a different thing than what is described here.

Click the link to read the full essay.

The Milonga Is Not the Place to Teach
http://tangothoughts.blogspot.com/

Tango possesses so many positive qualities, yet sometimes wrong conduct sabotages the possibility of these positive qualities coming together. "

. . .

"One reprehensible behavior is teaching anyone to dance after the start of or during the time of the milonga."

. . .

"The usual victim is the novice or inexperienced dancer at the milongas, eager to learn and enter into our marvelous world or, better yet, the occasional dancer, most likely a beginner, who has spent little time on the dance floor, who will acquiesce silently in order to avoid facing major troubles."

. . .

"At first the intention [of someone teaching during a milonga] would appear noble and generous, but this hides the true and unpleasant expression manifested by this behavior which is to assert oneself or make oneself appear to be an expert within the dance. "

. . .

"A second intention of he who attempts to teach or make corrections during the dance is to imprint an indelible message upon his partner that she lacks skill, is clumsy or is not capable."

Raul Cabral (translated by Dianne Castro)

My Body, My Self: One Story

2008-07-08T15:35:00.000-07:00

There is a screen as big as a skyscraper. There are three blocks of color. The top half of the screen is blue and white, the bottom half is tan. The right third is filled with a big white curve—the left hip of a bikini-clad woman, swinging as she walks. With every swing, the size and shape and relation of every color block changes.

Thus another woman’s lifelong relationship with her body begins.

* * *

There is a beach-bunny movie. It is on at the drive-in theater.

Mom and Dad fold down the back seat of the station wagon, make up a bed big enough for three or four little girls, depending on how well they are getting along. Early on, when the novelty—the skyscraper screen and the metal speaker that hangs on Dad’s window (he drives from parking spot to parking spot to find one that works) and the girl whose orange-trimmed-in-white uniform gives her an air of supreme competence such that I would trust her with my life and sometimes do when I get lost trying to find my way back from the kiddie playground brings a Coke for everyone to share (because Dad feels he owes a little extra to the drive-in’s owner in return for packing seven people into one car on flat-rate night) along with the fruity drinks and snacks we have brought in a cooler--when everyone is too excited and hyped up to sleep, then four little girls pack into the middle seat and one gets the prize seat up front between Mom and Dad.

The best seat in the house is the least comfortable one. It’s the bed in the back. If you kneel up straight like a good girl in church, you can see right past all the obstacles—heads and dash and rearview mirror. Your legs get tired, and you had better have a pillow for your knees, and you can’t quite shake the saintly feel of it all, but there you are.

The cartoons are bright but pointless. This is the time to eat snacks, or wander among the cars pretending they are a maze, or say you are going to the bathroom but really hitch a last ride on the fire engine that circles the lot like a good-natured racehorse that in retirement has found its vocation.

And then it is dark and the uniformed girl has returned you safe and sound to your mothership and you take the scolding because it’s a fair trade for a ride on a fire engine.

Now the grown-up movies begin. The sound from the window-speaker does not carry to the back of the car, but it doesn’t matter because adult conversation is unintelligible anyway.

To a four-year-old who has never met a teenager or a beach, this movie is a National Geographic special. There are the exotic setting, tan sand and blue skies, the teenagers who look just like grown-ups but don’t behave like any people you have ever seen. They smile and laugh all the time, but they don’t really play. They don’t have chores. The boys don’t wear shirts, and the girls wear bikinis.

There is one girl in particular. Her name is Ann-Margaret. She wears a white bikini, a big, old-fashioned one. There is a scene, an expanse of beach with teens lounging in the distance. Ann-Margaret walks into the scene from the right with her back to the camera, and she must be very close to the camera, because on that part of the screen all you can see are her hips in that big white bikini, and they are going la jumba, la jumba.

Soon I am fast asleep. I’ve had my snacks, my ride on the fire engine. Who cares about teenagers?

Who knows of what the little girl dreamed? Felix the Cat with his magic bag of tricks? Playing cops and robbers in the sand, a much better movie for the four-year-old mind? I was a chubby kid, maybe I dreamed of the snacks.

I suspect that I dreamed of Ann-Margaret. How else did this image so clearly endure? The shot lasted only a few passing seconds; I have not seen the movie again, I do not even know what movie it was. I do not know if the memory-image is accurate. It is what I remember. But we do not remember what we see; we remember what comes of it after we make it our own.

What does the four-year-old make of those hips? It is not the sexuality that adults are bound to see, but its precursor: the affinity for pure physicality that young children have.

When you’re a little kid, you enjoy your body in motion, the vigor, your little muscles and bones working away. The physical sensation is a wonder, you cannot get enough!

At four years old you have been an embodied being for only four years—and you have been self-propelled only part of that time. With every move you make, your muscles and bones create a miracle. You did that! You did that!

What did you do? You created relations.

What is motion but a relation? A relation of self to body and body to space. With every move, you stake a claim. You toss a line from self to body, from intent to effect. You create a new spatial relationship between your body and the space around it and the objects in the space.

When you are a baby you are not the boss of anything. People can pick you up and put you down where they please. But now … look at you go! You invade this space, you occupy it, and by occupation rearrange the relative positions of all it contains. You are the boss!

When you have been at this for a long time, you become blind to the wonder. But when you are a kid, you still notice. When you take up a new body language, like tango, you notice again.

What did little One Heart make of Ann-Margaret’s hips? Three blocks of color, blue and tan and white, two stationary and one flowing. Every swing of her hips was a kaleidoscope’s twist, shifting the shapes and sizes of each block, their relations. All the colors and shapes loose in their sockets, all dancing to La Jumba together.

The next day I walked like Ann Margaret. I liked using my muscles in a new way, the big, wide swing, the twist in my waist. I liked invading the space around me, on this side and that. This was my first foray into dance.

You look like a duck, Three-of-Six said. Stupid … retard … all the typical big-sister things.

Other things were said as well. Also yelled. If you want to know the truth, it was a shock. Not so much what was said as the out-of-the-blue, disproportionate-ness of the response. How are you supposed to be a good girl and stay out of trouble when merely walking across the dining room inspires such a storm?

I understand my mother’s concern: This is not appropriate behavior for a four-year-old. If it were my daughter, I would want her to stop. What might the neighbors suspect? What dangerous attention might she attract? And really, what kind of child draws attention to herself in such a way? Wouldn’t you say whatever was necessary to get her to stop?

At this late date, I would like to interject: I was not trying to draw attention; I was just being my weird, artsy, experiential, experimental, self-absorbed self.

Nevertheless.

It worked. All of it did. The wonder and the shaming.

I fell in love with my hips and my body power and remained defiantly, covertly, so. Even when the fashion models were sticks, even when the boys called me Hippy, even when I studied ballet, even when I got skinny, even though Levi's never fit right, even though I walked like a tin soldier, even though construction workers’ lewd comments shamed me all over again, even when, even though ….

Ask any woman: What is new under the sun?

Thus another woman’s lifelong relationship—fascinating and problematic as any lifelong relationship can be—with her body begins.

Liberty Lies in the Heart

2008-07-03T14:41:00.000-07:00

Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it…

What is this liberty that must lie in the hearts of men and women?

It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not the freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty and leads straight to its overthrow.

A society in which men recognize no check on their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few — as we have learned to our sorrow.

What then is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define it; I can only tell you my own faith.

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right;

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women;

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias;

The spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded;

The spirit of liberty is the spirit of Him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned, but has never quite forgotten:

That ... the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest.

Judge Learned Hand, 1944

Blessings, my friends. May we all live up to the ideals of the liberty we cherish. With love, One Heart Dancing

Argentine Tango Music Legends Make Beautiful Music Still

2008-07-02T17:47:00.000-07:00

Argentine tango veterans revive glory days
By Jack Chang McClatchy Newspapers

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — As a sold-out crowd in Buenos Aires' historic opera house erupted in applause, veteran tango singer Virginia Luque took the stage backed by some of her country's greatest musicians.

The applause trailed off, and a few flirtatious whistles rang out. The 78-year-old was used to such attention, having starred in nearly two dozen tango-themed movies since the 1940s.

Nonetheless, Luque looked moved by the response and purred back to her invisible admirers, "Todavia, puedo." "I still can." She and the rest of the band went on to prove just that during an epic rendition of the tango classic "Buenos Aires Song."

Since forming five years ago, this super-group of tango legends called the Cafe de los Maestros has shown the world that its musical powers remain as potent as ever as its members passionately play the long-lost hits of tango's golden era.

Several of the maestros, such as Luque, came out of retirement to join the project, which culminated in the August 2006 performance at the Teatro Colon. With some members already in their 90s, a few of the maestros have died since joining the group.

Their work is featured in an award-winning double album and a just-released documentary that's won accolades at film festivals around the world. Many have compared the project to the veteran Cuban salsa group the Buena Vista Social Club, which also was the subject of an album and a documentary.

Musician Gustavo Mozzi, who helped produce the Argentine record, said the Cafe de los Maestros wasn't just about "rescuing" the genre's classic voices but also about showing off its continued vitality. About a dozen of the maestros did just that last month at a well-received performance in the historic Salle Pleyel theater in Paris.

"This wasn't a melancholic or nostalgic project," Mozzi said. "It's a vital work that's about this music's roots but is also thinking about the future of the genre."

For violinist Fernando Suarez Paz and the other maestros, however, the project was a bittersweet affair. Many of them hadn't seen each other in decades and were conscious that this could be their last time working together, they said.

"This is paying homage to these people not when they've already died but while they're still here," said Suarez Paz, 67, who's played with luminaries such as tango composers Astor Piazzolla and Jose Libertella. "We want to enjoy them in the last years of their lives."

The group was the brainchild of Gustavo Santaolalla, the California-based, Argentine-born musician who's found international success since leaving his home country in 1978. He's won two best soundtrack Academy Awards and has produced the albums of some of Latin America's biggest stars.

In starting the Cafe de los Maestros, Santaolalla wanted to capture the allure of tango during the mythical 1940s and 1950s, when Juan Peron was the president and the music was the country's most popular genre.

Santaolalla recruited Buenos Aires-based Mozzi to help out, and the two went looking for the musicians behind those classic songs, in Argentina and in the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo across the River Plate.

They found a hall of fame of tango stars, such as legendary player Leopoldo Federico, who wrote some of tango's greatest songs but hadn't performed regularly onstage in decades.

To honor the music's African roots, Mozzi and Santaolalla invited Uruguayan singer Lagrima Rios into the studio, a black musician who sings to tango and to the percussive, Uruguayan genre candombe.

"We wanted to rescue the voices that were the founders of tango and were fundamental to the story of this genre," Mozzi said.

The pair also sought to revive the genre's most beloved tunes, many of which were long lost and available only on scratchy vinyl recordings.

They asked conductor and piano player Osvaldo Requena to transcribe nearly two dozen songs from the old records, a task that consumed endless hours.

"Some of this music hadn't been played in a long time," Requena said. "It was like remembering a system of life that's not there anymore and friends who are no longer with us."

Even as the Cafe de los Maestros worked to rescue the history, more of it was disappearing.

Rios and two other maestros passed away after the group finished recording in 2004. The Teatro Colon, one of the world's greatest opera houses, closed indefinitely for renovations shortly after the group performed there.

That sense of loss, however, seemed to feed the musicians, Suarez Paz said.

"Tango isn't happy music," he said. "It comes from melancholy."

For the film's director, Miguel Kohan, watching the maestros at work conjured images of a lost world unknown to most Argentines — including himself — of tango orchestras broadcast by radio across Buenos Aires and of giant tango clubs crowded with dancing couples.

The film, which doesn't yet have a U.S. release date but is scheduled to open in the United Kingdom, France, Japan, Brazil and elsewhere, depicts that world through old photos and clips and tales told by the maestros as they walk the streets of the Argentine capital. And, of course, the songs live there, with their tales of doomed tango dancers, Carnaval revelers and cafe intrigues.

"Tango has its own cultural system, with its own codes and its own universe," Kohan aid. "It was a discovery, or a rediscovery for me, and I feel privileged to have been there."

Men Are Easy

2008-07-02T07:53:00.000-07:00

I am working on musicality. Never mind with whom.

Slip into a character, the lead says.

I consider the options. I am a ham; I love to perform for myself. Also, I am a writer; I have centuries of characters to choose from.

The music begins. I can't decide.

Audrey, I say, who do you like? Answer quick! Before I finish the thought...

Audrey tilts her head in the direction of her alter ego.

Really? I say. Are you sure?

Do it! she says. She sounds like Julio Balmaceda, her eye twinkles like his.

OK, I say.

The music grows fulsome.

I channel my inner Sophia Loren.

Mmmmm, my partner murmurs.

You poor, sweet thing. You never stand a chance against us.

La jumba!

Learning Boleo: May 20, 2007 - June 12, 2008

2008-06-28T19:27:00.000-07:00

2007: May 20

Nina is teaching boleos. These things are impossible! Stand strong on one leg, let the other go dead.

Seven women, facing the wall, pivoting and swinging away.

* * *

In the movie of your mind, let that scene play and replay, interspersed with images of One Heart missing the boleo with every lead, in every practica and milonga, every single time it is led. Watch the seasons change. Watch her hair grow long. Watch her other dance skills come along. Choose a nice piece of background music. This is the B-roll.

Voiceover:

Here’s the thing. Boleo can’t be done. It’s not physically possible. To see why, think back to Nina’s followers’ class:

Noodle leg! Nina calls out. All of the women line up facing the wall, leaning against it with both hands. We stand on our left legs, let our right legs go limp and swing and swing.

Limp is a relative thing. Kari’s leg flops around like a cooked noodle. Mine is straight out of the box.

Like this, Kari says, laughing and swinging away. Kari is always laughing and catching on fast.

I go silly and overcooked, too. That’s fine if you’re dancing with a wall, but it’s no use at all with a live partner.

Think about this: You cannot have some overcooked noodle for a leg when you are dancing tango. You don’t know what the next step is. What if it’s not a boleo? What if he sends you to a step? Your noodle leg would collapse beneath you.

I have not been able to convey this idea to one single person. Still, I persist. I know I am right! It is logic.

Think about it: Your working leg has to bear weight, it has to be strong. How can you let your free leg go limp if you have no idea whether in the next microsecond it is going to become the working leg? You can’t transform from limp to strong in a microsecond.

Think further: More often than not, he is not going to lead a boleo. You can’t go all noodle-y with every step in anticipation of a boleo that happens only a few times in a dance.

No. If you let your leg go limp and the next step is not boleo, your noodle-leg will not support you, and you will fall down. A strong leg is the only defense against the hard floor. Do not relax your defenses.

I have explained this to Nina a half-dozen times. Yeah, she says. Do the noodle leg.

I have explained it to Grisha. He looks at me as if I am speaking a foreign language.

I have explained it to Tom. To Stan. To Kari. The boys are polite. Kari laughs, nicely.

I will explain this again if you don’t understand. By understand, of course, I mean agree.

I will repeat it again and again, louder and louder, if that will help.

.
.
.

Summer 2007 to Spring 2008

I don’t like boleo. It’s too sharp and sudden, like the flash of a switchblade. Every time I see it, I flinch. When Gustavo and Giselle performed here, I flinched so much I got sore.

.
.
.

A small boleo is lovely. Maria has a small boleo. Her foot traces a little crescent moon on the floor. A crescent is a lovely shape. I wouldn’t mind doing that. … If it happens. I am not going to push it. This is never going to be one of my steps.

.
.
.

Grisha doesn’t ask what I want to learn. He just leads it.

You have a small boleo, he says. That’s OK. That’s your style.

Nice.

.
.
.

I am in a class on boleo. I am faking it. I have learned how to do that.

The teacher notices, works with me for a minute.

That’s your first real boleo! he says. He is pleased. I give him a smile.

I faked it better.

.
.

.

I’m late every time because I have to go noodley before I can fake it.

I think Grisha is on to me.

.
.
.

Grisha brings up boleo almost every week.

Good grief. He may be as stubborn as I am.

.
.
.

Into the floor with your foot, Grisha says.

There is a swishing sound on the floor, just like a real boleo. Sounds nice. Also, I like the feel of the floor pressing on the sole of my foot.

My boleo barely comes off the floor, but I like it that way. Very tasteful. You wouldn’t see Audrey Hepburn doing a Giselle-style boleo. No. That would be unseemly.

Audrey would not carry a switchblade but a stiletto. With a pearl handle. In an embroidered silk sheath in a tiny designer purse with a diamond on the clasp, which she would carry everywhere, including to Tiffany’s, where she would foil a trio of armed robbers by charming them as she fumbled prettily in her purse.

Yes, that’s my boleo!

.

.
.

I practice tango every day. Boleo is part of my practice. I hang onto the doorframe or the bookshelf, noodle away to Canaro.

I push into the floor, and the push down makes the leg go up all swirly. It’s a little gust of wind; not wild but not controlled, either. This is a little unnerving. The leg could fly out in any direction with any kind of force without warning. It does that kind of thing. It’s good I’m practicing on drywall.

.

You can tell when boleo is coming, a man says. It may have been Grisha, or another teacher, or a lead, or a video lesson. I have lost track of my sources.

Boleo comes out of back ocho, the man says.

Clearly, it’s not Grisha speaking. He’d never limit his choices that way.

Still, there’s a broad shaft of hope. If you can tell when boleo is coming…

I need to think about this.

.
.
.

2008: Mid-March

You have to learn this, Grisha says.

It’s just mental, he adds.

He’s right.

.
.
.

2008: Late March

I go to Florida. At the conference hotel, the elevators have marble floors and big mirrors. I get caught practicing my cool new hip action when the doors open unexpectedly.

A week later, I’m in another hotel, in a huge bathroom with a huge mirror. My cool new hip action is coming along, but boleo refuses to leave the starting gate.

It’s a good thing you’re not a racehorse, I tell my boleo.

.
.
.

2008: Mid-April

Most of the time you can tell what step is coming next, Grisha says.

Of course he can. He’s leading.

.
.
.

2008: The following week

I’m still faking it, I say to Grisha.

I know, he says.

.
.
.

2008: The following week

We are perplexed. I am also frustrated. I would like to start catching on.

.
.
.

2008: Early May

I concentrate very hard on noodleizing my leg.

Don’t think about your leg, Grisha says. It comes from your hip.

I give up.

.
.
.

My hipbone makes a handy shelf. He puts a hand there and pushes down on my hip at the same time he leads the boleo. My leg swishes up all by itself.

Wow!

I totally get it! Your hip is a hawk’s wing, on the air of the music. Why didn’t anyone say so in the first place?

.

… that very night at the Merc

Wow! Tom says. You did the boleo! He falls away from me, grinning.

Me too. It was a big swishy one, and I did it for real! I don’t know how; it just happened.

You led it, I say.

He scoffs. That’s not the point.

I agree.

.
.
.

2008: Denver Memorial Day Festival, Alternative Milonga

This is my favorite milonga of the year.

All the leads I dance with are out-of-towners or The Five. I let it all hang out, as the hippies used to say. Audrey Hepburn on a single, tastefully elegant toke.

Casually I toss off a couple boleos. Acutely self-conscious and resolutely not faking.

Groovy!

.
.
.

2008: Post-Alternative Milonga, the drive home

Faking is a crutch. Enough is enough. No more arguing (though I know I am right!). Swallow the story, accept the dislogic.

If bumblebees can fly over the rainbow, why can’t I?

Boleo or bust!

.

2008: Every Day for 2 weeks Following the Festival

Front and back, back and forth. Knees together. Cross in front. Use your hip. Don’t think about your leg. Don’t think about think your foot. Don’t think about the swish. Don’t think…

I am channeling Grisha and Nina and the guy in the video and Tom Stermitz and a half dozen helpful leads and Kari and God knows who else. Every day I stand in a doorway or up against a bookcase, swinging my leg from my hip. After a while, I don’t talk to myself, just watch my hip swing my leg around. After a while I don’t even watch, but stare at the wall, enjoying the feel of my hip as it swoops like a wild bird’s wing.

.

2008: June 12

Yes, Grisha says, you are getting it some of the time.

.
.
.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. (Rumi)

Tango and Chocolate: One of These Things Is Just Like the Other

2008-06-26T14:33:00.001-07:00

Quote of the day:

"Gas could be $55/gallon. We're still going to buy chocolate. That's not negotiable."

--Some guy on the news, interviewed in a candy store with his kid

DiscoTango

2008-06-25T10:13:00.000-07:00

Spare me. Please.

At 8 a.m., a band has taken over the front room of my favorite coffee shop. They are wearing costumes—curly wigs and weird clothing. They are disco impersonators.

A television station is filming them. It’s a promo for a gig tonight.

The announcer has done his voiceover. The musicians are warming up.

Who listens to disco? It is not cool. It was not cool even when it was popular. The best you could call it is kitschy.

Also very loud. I am trying to write. Crammed in a back corner, I am working very hard to screen out the music, concentrate on my thoughts.

At the Denver Memorial Day Festival one month ago, Grisha taught a session on tango music, what defines it and makes it irresistible for dancing.

Disco has nothing in common with tango.

So why am I rocking in my chair?

Cool Tango Move Saves Baby

2008-06-24T19:24:00.000-07:00

This story is to Brigitta Winkler’s credit. Glenlivet’s too. But mostly Brigitta's. If she hadn’t inspired Glenlivet to get tricky with his tango lead, there would be one banged-up baby today.

This story is also to Grisha’s and Nina’s credit. If they hadn’t persisted until my cool new hip action took its tentative hold, there would be one banged-up One Heart today.

It is to my credit, too. I am the Clark Kent of Tango!

Here is the story …

Some time ago Glenlivet advertised for a practice partner. I cautiously volunteered. Cautiously because I don’t like the idea of practice partners and I had sworn off my sole partner to date, The Man on the Wall.

Still, I wanted to dance well with Glenlivet, who had progressed much more quickly than I had in the year since we were beginners together. Also, I wanted to undergo the experience so I could write about it.

We agreed to meet before a Sunday evening milonga. We would practice a bit, then join the fun.

He didn’t show. The milonga began. I joined the fun.

Sometime later Glenlivet appeared. He apologized for arriving late, but he was not sorry. He was glowing.

Tell me!

I just had a lesson with Brigitta Winkler, he said. In an isolated corner of the enormous ballroom, he showed me his new way of dancing. In no time, I was glowing, too.

Glenlivet has never looked back. He has become utterly, fiendishly inventive. His lead says, “Let’s do this … no, oops, let’s turn that into this and how about this, too?”

The key to dancing with the new Glenlivet is to be poised on a dime. Don’t relax into thinking you know what’s coming next. At any moment you will shift-shift-shift weight, change direction, transition to a wholly new concept of the music, all on that one, tiny dime.

This is crazy good fun!

Fun, but not easy. I struggled for months until my cool new hip action kicked in and I found my balance.

One week ago today Grisha and I worked on ocho cortado and, yet again, hip action. At one point, it all came together. He said, “You have perfect balance.”

Later that night Glenlivet appeared at the practica after a long time away, and …

Whoo-hoo!

So it’s thanks to Grisha and Nina and Glenlivet and Brigitta and all that crazy good fun that today in the Denver airport, a little kid’s face got saved from an escalator’s shark teeth.

Mom had three bags, two kids. I waited while she got the first kid situated on the escalator, then herself. I didn’t notice the toddler until she turned around to help him on board. She was already four stairs down and he had decided to follow. Now he had one foot on the top landing, one foot on a step and was doing the splits, clawing for a handhold on the Plexiglas wall. As the escalator dragged him down, the foot on the landing lost its grip. Slowly he tipped forward, his face heading straight into the serrated edge of the stair between his legs.

I have long arms and I know how to snatch up a child. Now I had one foot on the landing, one on a descending stair. Now there were two stairs between me and the upper landing, now there were three. Now I was doing the splits. Now my suitcase and briefcase on the landing above began to teeter. Now the mother was reaching out.

Handing off baby, I used my cool new hip action to do a little rock step--shifted my weight to the foot on the landing, collected ever so slightly to land my left foot on the next step up even as it descended. Three or four quick rock steps and—voila!—both feet were back up on the landing, nicely collected, suitcase and briefcase upright, and me too.

Wow! Who knew tango could give you superhero powers? Somebody, get me a cape!

Why credit tango?

Despite the awkward, off-center, half-splits position, the quick grab came straight out of heightened, turn-on-a-dime awareness; the shift-shift-shift-rock-step maneuver was Brigitta-Glenlivet’s tricksy ocho cortado; and all was made possible by the hard-won technique of cool new hip action and the voiced blessing of Perfect Balance.

How to Get into a Boat, Tango-Style

2008-06-22T17:22:00.000-07:00

Getting into a low boat from a dock is a trick.

Me before tango:

You bend over and put one hand next to your foot on the dock. Then you put one foot in the boat, and then the boat drifts away from the dock and you have to sort of drag it back with the foot that is in the boat, using the muscles of your inner thigh, and then you, quick, before it floats away again, do whatever it takes to get your other foot into the boat. You look like a beetle's gracelss cousin. Sometimes you look like a beetle's soaked, seaweed-covered cousin.

Now

Now I step lightly onto the edge, move my center, collect ever so briefly and hop down ionto the boat.

Family Vacation Tango

2008-06-22T16:05:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow night I go to tango at the University of Michigan Monday Night Practica.

I am uncertain.

Not about my dancing.

Not about my shoes, even though they are falling to pieces. They will hold for another few hours--and I have my backup flats.

A little bit about what to wear. I have a dress, but it's cold here. I could wear my tough-grrrl power outfit, black jeans and a tight black t-shirt. But we are not far from Motown, and someone might take me up on it and then I would fold.

Not about the directions and how to get to the "Pittsfield Grange," which I assume is some holdover from the Good Old Days, when the grange hall was where the farmers gathered in their Sunday best to dance to the music of fiddles and spoons.

Normally I would worry much about how to get to a new place. I get lost at the drop of a hat.

Not this time. I have a local driver. I think. At the moment, I have three. Tomorrow I could have a half-dozen, or none. This is how my family organizes things--like commodity traders in the pit. Right now, I am the ticket held aloft, and all the shouting surrounds me:

Ride, ride, she needs a ride!

I'll take her! No I have to get the dog groomed! She can borrow my car! No, don't let her drive, she always gets lost! I said I'd take her! Last week, you said no! You take her! No, you can't drive! Let Cx take her! She's only 17! (That's me shouting; last time Cx came to tango I sat next to her glowering at every man who threw an eye her way, as if I were her Sicilian grandmother.) I have to get the dog groomed! I could take you at 6 and you could take a book and read... and I could come back for you at 8. Will that work? Are there buses? The highway is under construction... Don't worry, One Heart, we have 20 hours, we'll figure it out!

Don't listen to any of this. I don't. I know how it works. There will be much fuss and bother and in the end, there will be a ride or there won't.

Right now the plan stands as this:

One-of-Six will take me. So will Cousin D. So will a woman I have only really met for the first time on this trip, another cousin's wife. They will meet at One-of-Six's house and carpool to Three-of-Six's house, where I am staying, and we will all go together, possibly with Three-of-Six too, if we can convince her to let go of her life for a night.

For them, it will be ladies night out. They will drink if there is a bar, and laugh loudly and possibly break into the U-M fight song as I dance by. These are the things my family does, the things I love about them. They are fearless, and they know how to take advantage of a good time when it is presented to them.

I will wear my floaty blue dress and my lovely, tattered Comme il Faut shoes, and the sparkly polish my niece wants to paint on my toes.

This is the plan. Don't get invested in it. I am not. At any point tomorrow, anything could change. In the end, this plan will pan out or another one will. This is my family.

Still, I will go practice now.

Let's Dance!

2008-06-21T09:59:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I took the blog private. People want to know why.

I will tell you a story....

Agatha Christie once disappeared for 11 days. Some people think she went on a secret mission as a spy or a Scotland Yard investigator. Some think her marriage was breaking up. She had an affair. A nervous breakdown. Alien abduction. Dementia.

Whatever.

Where you have been is never as interesting as where you are going.

Let's dance!

My Fingers Are Covered in Shoe-Black

2008-06-13T14:30:00.000-07:00

My fingers are covered in shoe-black. I think that’s what it’s called. There’s a small, flat disc inside a small, flat can shaped like a tin of chewing tobacco. I think that’s right. I have not used shoe black or chewing tobacco, so I am hazy on the details.

The shoeblack appears to have once been a paste. Now, it’s a shrunken, tarry puck too small for the can.

You are supposed to smear this stuff on your shoes, then buff the shoes with a cloth that came with the paste. The cloth is so little it’s cute.

I am not sure what you are supposed to use to smear the stuff on. Paintbrush? Sponge? Paper towel? I am an unartistic, stinky-sponge-averse environmentalist. I settle on the only disposable paper product in the house.

There is a milonga tonight, and I’m taking no chances on staining my hands. I need rubber gloves but have none. I wrap my fingers in the only disposable paper product in the house.

* * *

My fingers are covered in shoeblack.

I am polishing my lovely, lovely Comme il Fauts. They are black leather, with a strip across the toes, a cup around the heel, and a skinny strap across the ankle. They are adorable, black leather bikinis.

These shoes have seen better days. Between leather’s natural stretch and a recent mishap that blew out my best buckle-hole, the bikini bottoms are downright baggy.

The bikini top, too. It sags—the right one does, anyway. I have stuffed two gel pads in there and am considering a third.

The gel pads fill the space, but they do not solve the problem: My shoe slides off-center, so that Roast Beef, Had None, and Ran Wii Wii Wii All the Way Home dance on the bare floor. They do not like it, and the heel complains.

This is easily remedied: Whenever I get a spare split-second, I collect with a little kick, that is, I smack the bunion of my left foot with the bunion of the right, to force the shoe back in place.

I believe the leads do not notice... or, they admire my innovative adornment. Yes, that’s what I think!

This solution has two shortcomings:

1. It hurts.

2. All the leather is worn away from the shoe-bunions.

The intake nurse at Dardano’s shoe repair shop points out some ripped stitching on the left shoe. Also the whiskers sprouting from the remaining buckle-holes, and the threads and flotsam that trail from the straps as seaweed from a ship.

[I trim the whiskers and weeds almost weekly. A cuticle scissor would do the trick, but I don’t have one. Sewing shears and paring knives and teeth make poor substitutes.]

Thirty-five dollars to replace the straps, $3.95 to outfit the bikini with enough padding to stop the slip-slide, she says.

Deal! I say.

Next Friday, she says.

Deal-breaker!

The Strawberry Moon milonga is Saturday. Sunday, Patricia’s house party. Tuesday, a private lesson. I could give all that up, but on Thursday I fly to Michigan—home of the University of Michigan tango club--and I am taking my shoes!

I need an interim measure.

If you’re selling a car that has seen better days, the first thing you do is wax it. If you’re wearing battered shoes to the Strawberry Moon milonga …

A Great Way to Start Your Day

2008-06-06T09:53:00.000-07:00

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xe5w0_ray-charles-jerry-lee-lewis_music

MIT Tango

2008-06-03T21:34:00.000-07:00

Tonight I tango at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Building 36, Floor 7, Lobby, is what the website says.

The elevators open onto a patch of geek heaven: small, functional and forgotten by time. Two walls of glass open to mid-distance vistas. College-dorm plants and beat up wooden tables have accumulated in one corner. Computer monitors, the big, old-fashioned TV-set kind, line the base of one wall. The floor is linoleum. The elevator doors are gray; in the ladies’ room the stalls are red-orange. Everything is circa 1970 and aging well.

At 6 p.m. on a weeknight, the space is filled with silence—not the silence of a deserted building, but the stillness of concentration. You sense computer and human brains absorbed in one another behind the locked double doors marked Alarm Will Sound.

From the ceiling hangs a bright blue banner, the directory for this building. It says:

Quantum Computation and Communication
Circuits, Systems, Signals and Communications

Tango!

* * *

Actually, I’ve been deep into tango all afternoon. I’ve been listening to Patti Maes, founder and director of the MIT Media Lab’s Interactive Experience Research Group, talk about just-in-time information.

You may have heard of just-in-time, the buzz word of the 1990s. It means don’t stockpile inventory, make the stuff as orders come in, and use FedEx to ship it.

That’s not exactly what Patti means by the phrase. This is MIT, after all. Take the quantum leap.

Personal Interaction with Augmented Objects.

This is cool stuff. There’s a lot of RFID and Bluetooth and infrared gadgetry. Databases and messaging and matchmaking (that’s technotalk for networking). Fantasy applications for health care, the environment, shopping, research … and, though Pattie doesn’t know it yet,

Tango!

By way of example, consider three gadgets:

Wristband Know-It-All
It looks like a sports watch with a chip instead of watch face on it. The chip knows what you like. Never mind how.

Now, let’s say you go shopping at a (real-world!) bookstore, where every book is outfitted with a chip of its own. Every time you touch a book, your chip and the book’s chip have a little chat. If they like each other, your wristband sends a message to your cell phone, and your cell phone searches the web for more information about that book. After all the searching is done, your cell phone calls you.

This is MIT, so of course, the cell phone is an overachiever. It offers you everything it learned on the web: product description, images, reviews, comments from other users, rankings, related products … and on and on, right on down to the table of contents and sample chapter. All meant to help you to decide whether to buy the book in your hand.

The Ring of Power Shopping
This one is much simpler. Just like the wristband, your ring has a chip that knows what you like. The merchandise has its own chip. You buy only organic peanut butter? In the grocery store, just start pointing at jars of peanut butter until the ring lights up. Bingo, you’ve found a match!

Gaze-Based Interface: Caught You Looking!
You wear a cell phone earpiece with an infrared receiver built in. You stand before an object—a car’s engine, let’s say, since Pattie Maes does. The engine is covered with infrared beacons that are constantly send out signals. The beacons are like little lighthouses.

When your gaze falls on a certain area of the car’s engine, your receiver picks up the signal from the nearest beacon. Bingo! That part of the engine talks to you.

Pattie Maes showed a video of this. In the video, a woman is examining a car’s engine. She stops to look at a part that resembles an octopus.

The engine says to the woman: “Would you like to know how the air intake manifold works?”

The woman says, “Yes!”

Everyone laughs. Of course. I assume that, like me, they already know.

The MIT Version of Real-World Applications

Wouldn’t it be great, Pattie says, if you wore this wristband, and every time you picked up a can of diet soda or Dunkin’ Donut, you got a brief message about health risks?

She is drowned out by laughter. We honestly think she is joking.

Wouldn’t that be great? she persists, but in the wake of our hilarity she sounds forlorn.

Someone asks whether the Media Lab patents its inventions.

If they have commercial application (read: useful), the lab registers patents, Pattie says. How many so far? Five, Pattie says. She’s been at it 15 years--but of course, usefulness is not the point.

Pattie is a small, tidy woman, but in her mind she is that crazy guy from Back to the Future. She and her crew are inventors and, like all mad scientists and academicians, they are clueless when it comes to the real world.

A wristband that gives you the table of contents for the book you are holding in your hand? Please.

What these gadgets need is big, ubiquitous, perplexing problems to solve. They need opportunities to do things so much better than the way they are currently done that no one can imagine how they managed before.

Killer apps, that’s what we’re after!

E-mail is one. Here’s another:

Tango Is the Killer App

Yes, tango is the killer app for Pattie’s whole array of Personal Interaction with Augmented Objects inventions. Consider the options:

The Lead Detective
It’s Friday night at the Merc. The place is packed. You’ve enjoyed dancing with the leads you know. You’d like to expand your circle. But dancing with strangers is so hard…

You are wearing a beautiful bracelet. You can hardly see the eenie-weenie chip embedded in the scrollwork. As you enter the embrace, your bracelet passes by a chip embedded on the back of the lead’s neck.

Bypass the ringing cell phone. A chippy voice files its report in your ear:

“Style: Classic milonguero. Ranking: Intermediate. Best for vals. Does not lead the cross. Would you like to hear reviews from other dancers? Would you like to leave a comment? Would you like a list of other, similar …?”

This application has the weakness of complexity. When you’re building a killer app, it’s best to simplify. Let’s keep looking.

The Sorting Stone
My what a lovely ring you are wearing! Look at the size of that rock! You circulate. As you pass by each lead, you raise a languid hand. If the stone glows emerald, you will catch his eye later. If it glows ruby, you pass.

High-Tech Cabeceo
He looks at you. You return his gaze. The beacon embedded in his temple sends a signal that strikes the diamond dangling from your ear. A chippy voice murmurs. Perhaps you smile. Perhaps you look away.

New Company Seeks Investors!
From the prospectus:

…Personal Interaction with Augmented Objects, Inc., recognizes that these apps require leads to undergo the minor inconvenience of surgical embeddings: A chip here or there, an infrared beacon… This should be considered inconsequential, like microchipping a pet.

It’s all outpatient, local anesthetic, you’ll feel a pinch, a few small lumps under the skin. The rate of infection is less than 8%. Side effects may include redness, swelling, itchiness, twitching. Chips may malfunction, causing a screeching or squawking sound. Chips may migrate.

Personal Interaction with Augmented Objects, Inc., anticipates that early adopters and investors will be women. For this reason, PIAOInc is offering free, onsite implants to the first 100 investors’ leads.

The prototypes are done. The patents are pending. I’m putting Pattie to work on Phase II: stealth-implantation technology. All I need is an investor.

If this were 10 years ago, venture capitalists would be ringing my phone off the hook.

I miss the technology bubble.

Writing Word Music, Part 2

2008-06-02T22:41:00.000-07:00

All of this listening feeds into my work.

I was being disingenuous earlier, when I said I had exhausted by songwriting career. Everything I write is a song.

When I write, I spend as much time on rhythm as on image or meaning. Even when it might interfere with the meaning, I’ll take rhythm first. See there? I had to have the word “first” to end that last sentence. It wouldn’t land right without it. And there—“land” had to be a one-syllable, accented word. And there—I rewrote that last sentence twice until I came up with the musical phrase, “one-syllable, accented word.” (A previous draft said “one syllable word that carries an accent.” See? No music there.)

You never noticed? No matter. Reading is like dancing. You don’t need to be a master of musical theory to have a nice dance. You don’t need to understand meter or rhetoric to enjoy a good read.

(See there, I instinctively added “al” to music theory. Why? I don’t know; it’s not correct. I go back to look for a cause: It’s because my rhythmic sense wanted both of those last two sentences to have exactly the same number of syllables.)

Now I’m just showing off.

* * *

During the Denver Tango Festival, I attended a lecture/performance about tango music. Grisha talked about what makes music inviting to dancers. As Grisha spoke about music, I made notes about writing.

Here’s a writing problem:

Authors must create “tags” to identify characters. A tag is a subtle clue that leads readers to easily identify a character. For example, in a mystery, Albert might have a sniffle. If the murderer sniffled just before clobbering the good guy, you would assume the murderer was Albert. Sniffling is his tag.

Dialogue is difficult, because you don’t want to overdo it. Albert might use a habitual phrase, but not too often. He could have a dialect or accent, but no one since Zora Neale Hurston has gotten away with long passages of that.

You need something subtle, something that won’t snag the reader’s attention but will make an impression almost subconsciously…

Rhythm!

Grisha said, Where you put the emphasis is different between waltz and zamba.

That prompted me to write: “in language--changes in accent or tone of voice emphasize meaning.”

Duh. That’s the oldest trick in the book. Just try saying this sentence three times, each time emphasizing a different word: I saw that.

Why would I bother making that note? What I really was thinking was this: What if you had someone who spoke in Waltz rhythm? And someone else who spoke Zamba? How might the different speech patterns interfere with understanding and create mayhem?

If my default speech pattern were 1-TWO-3, then, if I said to my colleague in a meeting, “Do YOU agree?” it would be a simple question from my point of view, but my colleague might hear it as a power play or an attack.

Wow!

If I wrote for Star Trek, I would plunge Captain Jean Luc Picard into a diplomatic misadventure in which two cultures on a planet are immersed in a centuries-old feud based on Waltz versus Zamba speech patterns.

Only Data (the android) would be able to resolve the dilemma, because only he would be able to separate the meaning of words from their various emotional/rhythmic colorations.

With Data serving as interpreter for both sides, the crisis is averted, the feud ended. Thanks to Data, the planet is saved! The people beg him to stay. They will make him Chief Councilor, he will rule forever!

Data declines, because of course the two cultures must overcome their differences for themselves. Tentatively, resolutely, the two cultures reach out to one another.

In the end, Data stands in the captain’s office with a sympathetic Jean Luc Picard, gazing through a window at the stars flying by, bereft because this success only points up yet again that he is not human, he will never achieve his dream of becoming so.

Jean Luc Picard, being the sexiest know-it-all prig in the galaxy, sums up the whole thing with a little Latin poetry. Unfortunately, its meaning is all wrapped up in its cadence. Data doesn’t get it. (This scene lies on the cutting room floor.)

* * *

I did no writing at the coffee shop. All I could hear were new rhythms.

Now in my spare moments I am obsessed with silly games:

Describe a scene using sentences that contain four beats, then five.

Write a dialogue, one person speaking Waltz, one Zamba.

When this man gets agitated, he speaks in syncopation. Heeeere’s J-Johnny!

This girl speaks only in 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2 with the accent rotating from 1 to 2 to 3:
Marilyn, have you seen Jerry?
Will someone please answer the phone?
Oh my God, that was great dim sum!

Writing Word Music, Part 1

2008-06-02T22:22:00.000-07:00

E.L. Doctorow wrote the novel Ragtime in ragtime rhythm. Not the whole book, of course, but enough to create “a stunning conjuration of ragtime music,” according to one reviewer. He won the National Book Award for it.

* * *

I am in my favorite coffee shop. Every day the music is different. Today it’s what I call jazz, which is to say it’s not rock or classical or tango, and that’s all I know. It’s a guy with swingy rhythm and a rough voice. Whoever it is, I like him.

I have been out of town for several days. I need to write! But as I open the laptop, something catches my ear.

“Ain’t nobody, ain’t nobody home…” the guy sings.

Four beats, then five. Four beats, then five. The asymmetry catches my attention, over and over yet again.

I close the laptop.

In the next song, the accented beat is always on 2. Sometimes the music skips the first beat altogether. Who needs it?

In the next song, the accented beat is on 2, the same as before. No, wait, there’s something … The accented beats are both 2 and 3! How cool is that?

Alert! If triplets are merely adornments in tango, they’ve staged a coup here. Triplets are overrunning this song!

Here’s a nod to Lawrence Welk: and-a ONE and-a TWO…

This one is syncopated. Every “and” beat is late, so it almost runs into the following beat. I love that!

Enough now. Enough beats, enough coffee, enough basking in the sun. Time to work.

* * *

You know what I like? I like dancing to music that is lazy. It slides hither and yon, and then it runs up against a beat. I like it because it goes all limp and boneless and then suddenly catches itself on a beat. I like both parts, the limp and boneless, and the sudden catch.

I cannot think of a single piece of music that you could describe in this way. But I like it anyway. Sitting here in the sunny window of the coffee shop, basking in the sun, filled up with music, I can feel it …

Hey, One Heart, no nodding off!

* * *

When I was a kid, I wrote a song that went one-two-THREEand-four-FIVEand-six-SEVENand-eight. The 3, 5, and 7 were accented quick notes. You snuck them in with your pinkie finger while your other fingers were doing the serious work. It was great fun. It repeated six times with various chords. That was it. I couldn’t figure out what to do next, so I just played that little fragment over and over again. I think this is going to be the extent of my songwriting career.

No matter. My wordwriting career is going just fine. Though it could use a little attention right now. I will do this: I will take a bite of biscotti, and the loud chewing will drown out the music that is distracting...

wait, what’s this?

Not the accent, but the pitch!

In this song, the rhythm section is a piano. Beats 1 and 3 are low notes, beats 2 and 4 are high ones. The momentum of the music is not carried along by accent but by a predictable pattern of pitches. How cool is that?

Here’s another song without drums. A big bass cello is keeping the beat. 1, 2 and 3 go up the scale, and on 4 the bottom drops out. Imagine yourself in an elevator or an amusement park ride.

Imagine yourself on a dance floor…

Beats, not Notes

2008-06-01T13:59:00.000-07:00

One night in February, Glenlivet and David Hodgson and I were listening to music.

“That’s fast,” Glenlivet said.

“No, that’s slow,” David answered with his sly grin.

Many things David says are inexplicable. But I suspect he was putting us on. That music was fast.

* * *

Lately I have been staring fixedly at a certain track on the CITA 2005 DVD.

I love Osvaldo and Coco. Their dancing is simple and sweet. Osvaldo slips in clever footwork; Coco indulges his flights of fancy. Look: In their dance you can see their relationship, a courtship grown mature.

Look again: See them young, their courtship brand new. Osvaldo the suitor offers fancy footwork, a gift to say, “I like you, I want to impress you, do you like me?, here’s my heart.” Coco, wise in the ways of dancing men, smiles inwardly. Fondly they embrace. When the dance ends, they kiss.

What I can’t figure out, now, is why Osvaldo is wasting this milonga. Here he is, up on the stage, in front of a big crowd, in front of a camera. The music runs merrily over the couple like water, but Osvaldo is not dancing on the waves. He is walking through them as you would through deep water. Walking beautifully, but look at all those notes he is missing.

The younger dancers do it much better. They revel, they dazzle, they leap and sparkle. Yes, that is more like it!

* * *

We need to work on milonga, Grisha says.

I do.

He puts on some music. It is intimidatingly fast.

Wow, that’s fast, I say.

No, it’s slow, Grisha answers.

What’s this? I am slow-mo by nature, but by any measure, this music is fast. Have David and Grisha formed a pact to mess with my head? Or am I in Warp-world, where nothing I know, not even the definitions of everyday words, holds true?

We dance. It is fast. Trust me on this.

Then it’s not. Grisha has put on the brakes. He is dancing like Osvaldo. Warp-world. I have learned not to fight it. Then it’s fast again. Then we are done.

I am not panting; I have an efficient cardiovascular system. But I am not fooled.

That was fast, I repeat.

Grisha repeats, No.

He shows me sheet music. It is fussy with notes.

Don’t look at the notes, he says, look at the beats. He replays the milonga, taps to the beat.

For several measures I rely on his hand to tell me where the beat falls. Then I hear a few beats here and there, and then I hear them all. Wow! I feel my face go alight.

Who knew? Every milonga is two rivers at once: the sparkling surface, the quiet deep.

Osvaldo, you clever fox, your feet whispering secrets in plain sight. Coco, your inward, knowing smile.

This fancy bit whispers, “Remember, my dear?” This one teases, “We still have what it takes.” Slow steps murmur, “All that and more, dear, is ours.” Fondly they dance. When the dance ends, they kiss.

Let the young dancers leap and sparkle. Let the deep current run true.

* * *

It’s Friday night at the Merc, the big night of the week for Tango Colorado. This is when we dress up, to the extent that Coloradoans do, and show off our stuff.

I am dancing with a new, favorite lead. He comes to tango from swing dancing. We have scampered through all kinds of quick-step dances at the Avalon, where Donna plays alternative music on Sunday nights.

But this is a traditional milonga. He is lost. He rocks, takes a few steps, rocks some more.

Wow, this is fast, he says.

Sure enough. The notes are coming at us like a river in flood.

I don’t really know what to do with this, he says.

This is not a practica, not the right place to offer an impromptu lesson. I am no master of milonga myself. I have one piece of information that I can share, and I don’t know if I can explain it in a way that he will understand. I have a music background, so I already knew the difference between beats and notes; I only needed Grisha’s help to apply what I knew to this style of music. I don’t know what kind of music background this guy has. And, I don’t know if he would appreciate a follower offering a suggestion—many leads don’t. I don’t know …

What the heck. My new friend is dying here. I give it my best shot.

There are beats under the notes, I say. Listen for the beats. It’s not fast.

His face goes screwy with concentration. For several measures we stand stock-still; we are not even rocking in place. I can’t help him, I have shared the full measure of my knowledge. (Still, I’m pretty impressed with myself. I said, “It’s not fast” just like an old pro!)

All of a sudden, his whole face lights up

and we’re off!

I Am the Glenwood Canyon Highway

2008-05-29T21:24:00.001-07:00

One of these things is just like the other: The Glenwood Canyon Highway and One Happy Heart Dancing.

In the 1970s the Colorado highway department decided to rebuild the highway through Glenwood Canyon.

The river that cut the canyon still runs along its floor. It is narrow as rivers go, and happy-go-lucky. After miles and miles of majestic, barren sky and landscapes, relentless sun, the canyon is an oasis. Trees and grasses grow all along the banks, and there is shade. It is cozy down here by the water.

A two-lane highway runs along the edge of the river. It is impossible to drive it slowly enough. You don’t drive this canyon, you loll about in it.

Unless you are a trucker or a traveling salesmen or a parent with a carful of kids, all of whom have only one goal: Make good time.

These are the people the highway department had in mind when they decided to widen the road. They called it improving the highway. The environmentalists disagreed.

For decades, the environmentalists blocked the highway department’s every move. No plan was good enough. Real estate developers and trucking companies and everyone else who stood to make a penny off increasing the volume and speed of traffic through the canyon railed against the environmentalists. The greenies stood firm.

There was much screaming. Road-building costs skyrocketed while the environmentalists obstructed the developers’ plans. The developers took the case to the public: Look what this will do to your taxes! The environmentalists took their case public, too: Look what this will do to your pretty, beloved canyon!

Nothing good can come of this! both camps cried.

Eventually, the highway department scrapped its patchwork plans and proposed something brand new: an elevated highway. Now there would be no need to blast away the canyon walls, channel the river through enormous buried pipes, remove the tops of peaks, or move mountains.

They had everything they needed to make it happen: Lots of pillars and a brand-new technology that would allow the pillars to be set—and continue to stand—on mountain cliff walls for 100 years.

Voila!

Glenwood Canyon is not what it used to be, but to focus on that is to miss the miracle.

The miracle of the Glenwood Canyon highway is this: All that tussling, all those delays—inconvenient, messy, seemingly hopeless—created a space of time in which new capabilities could emerge, techniques could advance to such a degree that when builders and environmentalists finally came together, the resolution far surpassed what could have been accomplished had the project proceeded as planned.

Patience is a virtue. Persistence pays off.

Lovely, lovely, lovely.

Day After Festival Highlights

2008-05-26T20:25:00.001-07:00

In the midst of a family party, my father and I compare notes on Grisha's music lecture/performance.

Your sister gave me a CD a while ago, he says. Guitar music. I used to listen to it, but it got boring. He ways this sheepishly, as if it's his fault.

I'm going to get it out and listen to it again, he says, see if I hear different things in it now.

Ultimate Highlight of the 2008 Denver Memorial Day Tango Festival

2008-05-26T16:59:00.001-07:00

Exiting the festival’s last class, a radiant Janette announces to the world, “I love this dance!”

5 Highlights of the 2008 Denver Memorial Day Tango Festival

2008-05-26T16:59:00.000-07:00

1. Skilled teachers, fabulous music, gorgeous dancing. Especially the last. It's impossible to get enough of the pure, greedy pleasure of enjoying the show, as participant, spectator or understudy.

2. Lovely dances with out-of-towners. Sonny, Lev, Homi, Mark, a guy from Boulder, which is not really out of town but what the heck. Women complain that the local leads don’t dance with local women during festival weekend. I'm with the guys on this one.

3. Tomas’s class for followers on finding your voice. Listening to the other women talk about the difficulties they’ve had with that, I am relieved not to have to deal with that on top of balance and coordination and everything else I’m trying to learn.

I have never not had a voice in the dance. Many of my struggles in tango are due to my very loud voice. When a teacher insists that I move in a certain way, I acquiesce for the space of time I am in their class. Then I go home or to a milonga and do it my way.

After Tomas’s class, though, I have to tone it down because I find myself contributing a little too much … er, shouting right over the leads. They let me play around, but I can see one old favorite is counting the minutes until this festival is over and I consider the possibility of occasionally following again.

4. Playing dress up. Friday night I wear the softest, sweetest dress I own. It is gold and pink, ultrasimple, ultralight silk--the ultimate party dress. Saturday afternoon, I need a shot of grrl power, so wear tight, low-riding black jeans with a distressed, tight-fitting black t-shirt. I have saw-blade earrings in my bag, but this outfit is so tough I don’t need them.

5. My dad at the final day of the festival. He is 10x more shy than I am, and just as curious and adventuresome. We sit in the second row at Grisha’s performance-lecture on musical traditions that contribute to tango music. He observes Brigitta’s class on tango landmarks—from the very farthest back corner of the room. He squirms as I introduce him to friends in the hallway. And, he meets festival organizer Tom Stermitz.

“You must learn tango,” Tom says. My father demurs. “You must,” Tom continues. “It’s a requirement for all men of international mystery and intrigue!”

My father—avid fan of international mystery and intrigue, avid admirer of clever turns of phrase—shyly smiles.

Dancing Scruffy Cheek-to-Scruffy Cheek

2008-05-24T18:30:00.001-07:00

Brief ABC News report on gay and queer tango in Buenos Aires.

One Happy Heart Dancing

2008-05-21T07:09:00.000-07:00

Patience is a virtue, the sister of Persistence. If this were 1700 New England, you would have girlfriends with such names.

I am both of those girlfriends.

Patience is meek and mild. Persistence is a pushy broad.

Patience lounges on the sofa eating bon-bons, allowing things to unfold. Persistence is always tinkering, coaxing the world to align with her stars. Both are relentlessly optimistic.

Patience is a virtue. Persistence pays off.

For months I have been persistently friendly to a lead I turned down for a dance in December 2006. I would love to dance with him—but no luck. He’s friendly right back, but no invitations to dance. I have been patiently waiting.

Until last night.

Lovely, lovely, lovely.

Festival Week Begins

2008-05-18T22:18:00.000-07:00

Whoo-hoo!

If You Dump Me Mid-Tanda ...

2008-05-18T22:04:00.000-07:00

I wish to speak simply.

Since last Tuesday night I have spent more than 20 hours doing what writers call clearing my throat. That is writing circles around a thing—dressing it up with lyricism or wit, dazzling, analyzing, explaining, contextualizing—all as a way of sidling up to a subject or avoiding it altogether.

To no avail.

That’s how it goes. You write, you toss. Write-toss, write-toss until you discover what it is you’re not saying. Then you say it. Like this:

If you leave me on the dance floor in the middle of a tanda, I won’t dance with you again.

It happened to me last summer, a lead dumped me mid-tanda in a way designed to call attention to the act.* I was humiliated, but I don’t think that was his intent. I think he staged the drama for his own benefit, to say to the crowd: I’m too good for this shit.

I’m over it. I’ve gained confidence and skill, and now when I see him I don’t cringe. Also, Tango Colorado is a large organization; we may see one another across a ballroom, but the chance of our paths crossing is slim.

Except for this: He keeps asking me to dance. Three times in the past several months.

The first time I simply said no. The second time I explained: You left me on the dance floor last summer. I will never dance with you again.

Last Tuesday night at the Turn, he asked again.

This persistent asking is a mystery. Other men, I turn them down once for very good reason--my feet are on fire, my taxi is waiting--and they never again ask me to dance. For months I have been friendly (painfully so, quashing every shy urge to run and hide) to a lead I would love to dance with--but no luck. He's friendly right back—but no invitations to dance. I turned him down in December 2006.

So what’s with the Bad Cowboy?

I have my theories—he doesn’t remember who I am from one day to the next, he thinks if he keeps asking I’ll change my mind--but that’s all conjecture. I prefer fact.

Here it is:

If you dump me on the dance floor in the middle of a tanda, I will not dance with you again.

Never in your lifetime.

Stop asking, please.

_____
*This is not the spectacular dumping described in a previous post, only the warm-up act.

Let Those Love

2008-05-15T20:18:00.000-07:00

Let those love now who never loved before;
Let those who always loved, now love the more.

Thomas Parnell

Even the Earth Wobbles on Its Axis

2008-05-08T22:25:00.000-07:00

This is a good thing to remember.

Balance 2

2008-05-08T22:11:00.000-07:00

Once I stood on one foot through the whole of The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys. The song is 11 minutes long.

This was before Jaimes Friedgen taught me that standing on one foot is hard. Rather, before Jaimes Friedgen taught me that standing on one foot is not the same thing as finding stability, achieving balance.

* * *

We often objectify balance by using it as a noun. We say that we try to ‘attain’ balance in our lives—but balance is not a static place that you can actually reach. Like an active verb, balance constantly rebalances itself each moment in a moving equilibrium of relationships. (Yoga Journal)

* * *

Last Saturday, under Jaimes Friedgen’s direction…

We Jump!-ed, we balanced, more or less. We got scolded for putting a foot down prematurely. That was the warm-up. Great fun!

Now we move on, Apilado.

I have no idea what this is. But I am not worried. The class is billed as moving in and out of close embrace. Two weeks ago, I took a class on this very same topic. I had a great lead; he and I moved in and out like nobody’s business. I am sooo ready for this!

Do this, Jaimes Friedgen says.

Shit no. No. No. No.

You have got to be kidding. Never. No. I am not doing this.

There are many moves in tango that I don’t like to do. Gancho. Boleo. Volcado. I like to watch them, I think they’re pretty. Someday I will enjoy doing them. After I achieve balance, perhaps.

Apilado is different. It is the one position in tango that I abhor. The woman thrusts her breasts into the chest of the man as if she had just escaped from a deserted isle where she had been sequestered for all of her reproductive years save this day, this one, her last desperate chance. It is an appropriate move for springtime. If we were doing it in the wild, the animals of the forest would applaud.

It’s a shared axis position. The man is supposed to be leaning into her, too, so that neither could stand alone, but together they find balance. But when I look in the mirror, I see only the women in this exaggerated pose.

What woman in her right mind lets a man shove her around the floor by her breasts?

Eeew!

Partner up! Jaimes Friedgen says.

* * *

“Full inhalations and exhalations create a supple and centered body, while shortened or suspended breathing creates rigidity and disconnection…. (Yoga Journal)

* * *

I am built like a boy, so the whole breast thing is not really an issue. I have much better issues than that, anyway: Control. Trust. An existential hatred (hatred, yikes! yes) for domineering behavior. Not domination as in the Hallliburton-World Bank-OWG conspiracy theory. More personal than that, like Nurse Ratched. I will always be McMurphy. I will never outgrow the refrain: You are not the boss of me!

I abhor apilado. It is vulgar and demeaning. And don’t even say the word Gavito to me.

This is only my opinion, of course. I believe that, whenever you have a strong opinion, you should examine it closely.

Why?

It is fun to mess with your own head,

and…

“We have conclusions, which are the products of senility or incompetence or credulity, and then argue from them to premises. We forget this process, and then argue from the premises, thinking we began there.” (Charles Hoy Fort)

An opinion is a conclusion. It’s a thought and a feeling combined. You can’t do anything about your feelings, but you can examine your thoughts.

You can refuse to be dead-ended by your conclusions; you can say to your own strong opinions: You are not the boss of me!

* * *

As Jaimes Friedgen explains what we are to do next, I buck up. I am an adventurer of the moment! And this is some moment!

I can do this, no problem. It’s just a matter of lowering the veil, the steel partition. This is standard procedure for women under mortal duress. It would help, though, if I could breathe.

I rotate through a few partners until I come to Roberto, who is embarking on his own teaching career.

I do my Audrey Hepburn apilado.

Lean more, he says. More.

Fine! I give it everything I’ve got. If he were a Mack truck with brakes full on, he could not withstand me.

More, he says.

I sneak a look in the mirror. He is not meeting me anywhere near halfway. I hold my position, miffed. Why should I do all of the leaning?

Would you fall over if I stepped away? Roberto asks a touch impatiently.

I like Roberto. He helps me dance better, and as long as I’ve known him, he’s always been kind.

So I don’t retort, Are you insane?! I give him a look that retorts it for me.

Also I do not say, Why should I trust you now?

* * *

Don’t worry about being able to maintain perfect balance right away. Instead, use these poses as opportunities to explore how balance works, and watch the subtle ways that your body moves to find balance. (Yoga Journal)

* * *

A friend and I talk about the nature of certainty.

There isn’t any, he says. That’s hard.

No. Uncertainty is easy; you can rely on it. The lullaby doesn’t say “If the bough breaks…” but “When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall.” Uncertainty is easy. You stand poised at the ready, and when it strikes, you ride it out.

It’s certainty that’s hard. It’s hard to go along blithely whistling, ever poised but never quite ready for the bough to break.

So the long answer is no, Roberto, if you stepped away I would not fall down. No way! I am not about to put myself in a position in which I would go tumbling if—when—that upon which I rely were to suddenly vanish.

Whoa, One Heart! It’s only a dance.

Change partners! Jaimes Friedgen says.

* * *

All balancing postures provide an opportunity to learn and experience the dynamic nature of balance. …

No matter how still or statuelike you become, you will notice that you must continually listen, feel and react responsively to each moment, or you’ll fall. (Yoga Journal)

* * *

I am not about to let my own strong opinion be the boss of me! I am going to do this horrid thing, and do it well.

But now Jaimes Friedgen is raising the stakes. We are going to do this without using our arms, with the basic eight exit, or something like that.

The first step for the man is a back step. There is no telling how large or how small his step will be. To keep from breaking her nose against that beautiful bamboo floor, the follower must Velcro her breasts to the lead. This requires some serious thrusting effort.

IamanadventurerofthemomentIamanadventurerofthemomentIamanadventurerofthemoment!

Stand like this, Jaimes Friedgen says. He thrusts his chest out, throws back his shoulders to pinch his shoulder blades together, rotates his dangling arms so the tender flesh of the inner elbow points forward.

This is how girls stand, he explains. He looks a ship's figurehead, like that girl in the movie Titanic.

Good grief.

At moments like this, how can you not believe in God? Clearly, there is Something out there that just can’t leave well enough alone. And we are made in its image.

* * *

Those who are motivated only by desire for the fruits of action are miserable, for they are constantly anxious about the results of what they do….

Therefore, devote yourself to the disciplines of yoga, for yoga is skill in action. (Bhagavad Gita, 2:50)

* * *

I’m OK, they’re OK.

After two hours I’ve had a few go’s through the rotation and am willing to give these leads a break. They are not really Nurse Ratcheds or Leisure Suit Larrys. They are just guys trying very hard to steer without using their arms or stepping on toes or letting anyone fall on her face.

I’ve been close to tears twice, but nothing full on, nothing I couldn’t work through, though I feel sorry for David, who saw them.

I despise this position as much as I did when I started. More so, because once you’ve done a move, it is inside your body and even if you haven’t done it well, it’s part of your muscle’s memories.

Eeew.

So why do it?

* * *

Balancing involves correcting errors and then, in turn, correcting any overcorrection of those errors. …

To an external observer, you may appear to be still, or “in balance,” but from the inside, you will be able to feel the continual adjustments within this stability. You will feel the constant interplay of movement within stillness, and stillness within movement. (Yoga Journal)

* * *

My deep-thinking friend says:

"Thoughts arise in our minds as a result of our existence in the world. Which thoughts one thinks is a influenced by not only our interaction with the world, but also our upbringing, education, training, habit or all of the above.

Emotions arise from thought. Emotions can cause people to act, and thus have consequences, but I would say the real culprit here is thought and not emotion."

Which comes first, thought or emotion?

I have always felt my emotions come first, shaping my thoughts as they rise. In this class, I was surprised to hear thoughts roaring through my head like a freight train, with emotions rushing in its turbulent wake.

I know my ego is not queen of the show. I know this knee-jerk, judgmental reaction I have to apilado comes out of my thoughts, my upbringing, education, training, experience, habit or all of the above. I know it was not my axis that was seriously off-kilter in this class, it was my internal balance.

Many people stand on two feet solidly planted in the illusion of certainty.

Some people can balance on the tip of one toe for what seems an eternity.

We wobble like the earth on its axis, like the dancers we are.

* * *

Balancing is a journey, not a destination. You will not find it by following systematized or formulated modes of living and being; you will discover it by developing a sensitive awareness that responds and adjusts to the ever-shifting moment.

In other words, instead of seeking to attain balance, you will fare better by learning the art of balancing. (Yoga Journal)

(Yoga Journal, March 2008)