Walking the Tango Labyrinth, Part 5: Labyrinth? What Labyrinth?

It’s not as woo-woo as all that, Glenlivet says.

He’s right. I admit it. There is no end of our capacity to construct magnificent, exquisite edifices to explain our reality.

It is perhaps possible that I could be making a teeny bit too much of all this, reading a teeny bit too much into your dance, constructing an elaborate story around you rather than reading what’s there.

Or, that I’m only doubting my construct because rationality stuck a knife in it.

A superficial wound: quick to bleed, quick to heal.

I tell you, it’s the Circ de Soleil inside my head. Or possibly a Busby Berkley musical.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Walking the Tango Labyrinth, Part 4: The Whole Truth

Every time I am asked to dance, I have to choose what I will be: blank slate, con man, illusionist, daredevil …

… or puppet?

I do not come to the dance to tell my own story. I come to be a character in yours. You are the storyteller; I am the puppet.

That’s the half-truth that makes it a lie.

Nobody gets out of it that easily. Everything is steeped in story.

If you come to the dance as a blank slate, a con man, an illusionist, that in itself reveals your story. Ditto me and the whole puppet thing.

We are characters in one another’s story. I help you tell your story; you help me tell mine.

But consider this: We write the stories as we read them. We believe that the story as we read it is the story that is there. Every story I read is a story I make up, and that includes the story you bring to the dance.

And this: Strong-willed puppets get ideas of their own. They can turn the story on you.

And this: We all are skilled storytellers. We know how to lie.
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Walking the Tango Labyrinth, Part 3: What I Learned

TangoGnostics. Woo-woo walking. In the space of two songs, I have walked 20 years.

What did you learn? David asks.

I was surprised to learn my walk changed with every companion. When I discovered this, I assumed it was all about mechanics, matching my gait to my friend's.

Wrong.

It’s more woo-woo than that.

If you take what I am about to say seriously, then you will want to be conscious of your choices when you dance with me. You can be an erased slate, deliberately blank. Or a con man, sure of your ability to outsmart me. Or an illusionist, secure behind the façade you create with your sleight of hand. Or a daredevil, taunting the edge.

Me too. Every time I am asked to dance, I have to choose what I will be: blank slate, con man, illusionist, daredevil…

…or puppet?

Better to laugh it off, really. Better we should run for our lives.

Because being a puppet is not what it seems. There’s a little woo-woo in it. A little Stephen King.

Your puppet is about to mess with your head.

When I connect with you, I am not reading your body language. I am reading your interior stories, the ones you tell about you. Those that you keep private, that you can’t help but tell when you dance.

I am about to invade your private story. For as long as we dance, I live there.

I am your puppet, your doll.

If your interior world is a dollhouse, I am the doll you move around to make your story unfold. You do not move me about by your will, though it seems that you do. Rather, you move me by your aspirations and dreams, intention and longing--that is, your story.

I do not come to the dance to tell my own story. I come to be a character in yours.

...

You invite me for a milonga to create fancy footwork. This is your will. I accommodate by moving my feet thus. In the first dance of the tonda, we accomplish the goal.

Perhaps that's as far as we take it. Good enough.

Or perhaps…

… you open the door to your dollhouse. Connecting here, it becomes clear that your will to create fancy footwork is only external expression. You aspire to make me smile, you long to play. Your story is not fancy-dancer; it is celebration. That is the interior story; that is the story I share with you. I become a reveler, too. We have the dance of the night!

Or this:

You invite me for a vals, for the pleasure of flowing with the music. Lovely.

Then you open the doorway. Now I see your story. You aspire to be Fred Astaire; I become your Ginger Rogers. You long to play the dashing, romantic Prince Charming; I soften into your Cinderella. Wickedly gleeful, you are the rake; baby, I’m your coquette.


This is not entirely woo-woo, or esoteric, as David would say. I'm not really invading your head. I'm only listening to you.

You are the one who opens the doorway. You tell me your story, you reveal your longing and dreams by the way you hold yourself, the way you hold me, the way you move and breathe.

Or you refuse. You are a blank slate, a con man, an illusionist.

It’s call and response. If you don’t call, I don’t respond.

That’s fine. We don't need to connect at that level to dance well together. We can mesh steps, move our way through the music with style. Every dance can’t be the dance of the night.

That’s what I learned by walking the tango labyrinth.

But now, after hours of musing, this becomes clear:

If half-truths are untruths, all this is a lie.

Walking the Tango Labyrinth, Part 2: What I Noticed

What did you notice? David asks.

We have just walked around the studio naturally, as if with a friend. I have walked with a plethora of friends, all in my head.

I noticed this:

Michigan has a long, fast stride. It is a struggle to keep up with him in real life. In these heels I can’t do it. Intent on what lies ahead, he is soon out of sight. The worm moves at a comfortable pace.

I love Michigan, but apparently I find it easier to connect with a worm.

Hmmm.

Let’s not lose focus.

MKK is an unsuitable partner, made unsuitable by circumstance. Friends from work are unsuitable as well. Where roles and the terms of engagement are wholly artificial—but are nevertheless the ruling constructs of a pseudo-social environment--a change in context is insufficient to produce the conditions conducive to dancing.

i.e., you can’t connect with a partner who is not really there

i.e., it takes two to tango.

With Mary Alice, we are two. I am attentive, wholly engaged.

With Barbara, we were one.

That's what I noticed.

So, David wants to know, What did you learn?

Walking the Tango Labyrinth, Part I: A Lovely Walk with My Dead Friend Barbara

David Hodgson is teaching TangoGnostics. With a name like that, you have to expect a little woo-woo.

In this case, woo-woo walking.

It’s all about the energy, David says. Tapping into the life force, being the conduit. Making that your tango.

He puts on some music. Here are the rules: No stylized steps, no landing on the beat. “Walk naturally,” he urges, “as if you were walking with a friend.”

In four-inch heels.

Glenlivet is hugging the walls, the corners. Even walking naturally, he is making the most of the line of dance. He is behind me, he passes me. We are not walking together, and yet I am attuned to the relation of space between us.

I walk with my eyes downcast. I often walk like this. Does it look shy? It is not. I am shutting out distractions, going inside my head. Daydreaming. Also keeping an eye on the never-dependable earth. Something unusual could happen.

A few minutes ago, the sole of Glenlivet’s shoe found gum on the floor.

Walking naturally, as if with …

… Michigan. We are striding uphill in Charlevoix. It is late summer, early morning. We are going to a café that brags “Hemingway Never Ate Here.” Apparently, he ate everywhere else in town.

Today we are driving to Whitefish Point on Lake Superior, where the Edmund Fitzgerald shipwrecked. Later, we will get lost in the forest, looking for the Two-Heart Campground, which must relate to Hemingway’s story “The Big Two-Hearted River.” We left before sunrise, we won’t be back home until 4 a.m. tomorrow.

Later this morning we will pass a huge wooden sign on a weedy hillside. “Good luck from us!” it proclaims. How cool is that?! The people of Trout Lake, Michigan, love us so much that they pooled their money to wish us good luck! I take this extremely personally. Michigan stops. I scramble up the hillside, pose beside the sign. The photo hangs beside my desk. It heartens me, even when I don’t need heartening.

This afternoon, Michigan will send me away so he can nap on the cold, windy beach. I will hike the waterline to see what’s around the next bend, discover a fat, green worm leaving its trail in the sand.

I sidle up to my friend MKK, who is walking alone. Her husband has a serious cancer. Distracted, she is not interested in this game.

Friends from work? Never will do. Work is a relentless half-sprint, power walking. I come to tango to stop it.

Mary Alice graciously accepts my invitation to stroll. Walking with her is a study in be-here-now. She is nearly sixty, a large, elfin woman with one brand-new hip and a bum one. She walks with a cane, and she graciously accepts all the help she doesn’t need.

In the manner of Jane Austen’s grand dames, we take a few turns around the floor. At this pace, we are not ruled by momentum, we do not take the inevitability of the next step for granted.

Often when people walk, we multitask. We note our surroundings, the people sharing our space, scents, voices, music, traffic. However lightly these things register, however remote on the periphery of our attention, they siphon tiny sips from the attention we direct to our companion.

Mary Alice considers each step; she puts every foot down with care. I sense her consideration, her placement. I do not see the room, I have lost track of Glenlivet. I am not walking-as-walking; I am moving with Mary Alice. I am fully absorbed; my every move mirrors hers.

Mary Alice admires my shoes. So do I. Comme il Faut! We watch them move along, the long legs, the high arch. Drawing on the strand of our shared energy, Mary Alice takes as her own those shoes, those feet, those legs. She is 20 years old again, lithe and graceful as ever. She offers each step as a gift to the cane and the floor. Appropriating my shoes, feet, legs, she is again the girl her daddy called Twinkle Toes. This is what it means to connect.

Mary Alice stops to rest. I walk on alone.

All my life, more than anything else, walking in solitude feeds my soul. The air as it parts is a caress; muscles and tendons cuddle and press as legs swing, weight shifts, joints flex. The subtle contrabody motion--twist of torso as arms swing opposite legs--settles my stomach. The rocking motion, the slow flow of scenery, quiet my thoughts.

Even in four-inch heels.

I am walking as naturally as the shoes will allow. Built to cant the woman’s center of gravity quite forward, they make every step uncertain. They shorten my stride, put my weight too far forward for a natural step. To accommodate the shoe, I go loose in the joints. My legs break free of the habit of walking, swing lazily to land where they will.

With every step, I feel the interior cuddle. My joints go so loose they fall apart. I am tender at the bone.

I’m pretty sure that I look ridiculous, swinging along with the mincing, swaggering saunter of an East Colfax hooker. Suddenly I am aware of Glenlivet again. Yikes!

Later, as we are dancing, I will project a pretty picture, a gift for my partner. For now, I set him firmly aside. I mean to enjoy this moment as an ostrich.

Oblivious to my surroundings, I render myself invisible. There is only me, and for a change I am not in my head, I am buried deep in my body: one heart, dancing.

Now a vision of Barbara rises. It is not real; Barbara never looked back, even when she was alive. Why would she now?

This vision is drawn from a photo. Barbara and I are walking along the Potomac. She is barefoot, carrying her boots. The grass is bright green, the shade deep. We are small in the distance. You can’t see our features or any details. You see only this: two girls absorbed in their own little world, lost to the world at large.

My mother is holding the camera. When she is not annoyed or threatened or worried that we are becoming lesbians, she treasures that Barbara and I have found a home in one another. She snaps this photo with love.

It is a gift my parents have given me, a few hours in DC with Barbara. They picked me up from school in New York, drove down the coast. They have an agenda; they would like to see Gettysburg. I will gladly give them their half-day there. They are giving me a half-day with Barbara.

Our time is up now. I am walking back into real life.

How did that go? David asks. How did it feel?