Coffee

Coffee
Jerry McCarthy

When we sleep, our personal darkness drains out of us
And floats upwards into the night
To replenish the spaces between the stars.

We awake hollow and empty and light
And in need of some fresh new darkness
To recharge our soul’s energy.

Coffee is the hot enlivening darkness
We pour into ourselves to put back the night
So that we, as tiny specks of dust, can shine again
Against the great cold dark matter of all that is.

Double mochaccino latte grande day
Banish our light, empty, sleepy selves away.
Amen.

SWF(ollower) Seeks 41 Milongueros

Registration for the Memorial Day Festival is closed to women. Classes and milongas. Zip. Zilch.

I am the 41st follower on the waiting list. Tom says I might get in, if more men sign up.

I never register early. Once my stomach realizes it is committed to a new tango adventure, it’s clear liquids for me. Two days before the Pulpo workshop I registered. By the time the workshop ended, I thought I would faint.

But missing the festival is unthinkable. There is something at stake!

I had intended to give my new black vest—a cropped, zippered, nylon-lycra-and-satin parody of a biker’s vest--its first outing at the alternative milonga during the festival.

Along with an earring made from the blade of a dismantled Swiss Army knife (just one, in the left ear) and stilettos that look like black leather bikinis for the feet.

And, if the stars and planets aligned with the wine, I was going to go very blonde.

Hmm….the costume demands to be worn…

… when one door shuts, cut a hole in the wall…

Eureka!

If I am shut out of the festival, I will have to take my costume to the Hog Heaven Biker’s Ball this summer in Sturgis.

OR …?

Register now for the Labor Day festival.

OR ... ?

Recruit 41 men by next week. Sign up here.

Great Moments in Tango Teaching 2: Pulpo

Friday, May 11

The final approach to the Memorial Day festival begins with a special guest teacher:

El Pulpo. In English, The Octopus.

Everyone talks about his fancy-leg style. Ganchos, sacadas, paradas, things he makes up.

Partners wrap their legs around one another, pretzel and pivot this way and that. Occasionally they take a step. Much of the time they stand on one foot, messing around with their intertwined legs.

Very tricky.

Very intricate.

Very dependent on balance.

One false move and we all fall down.

Of course I’m a wreck. I am not eating. Or talking. Or breathing, really. Just waiting. Also starving. At precisely the time I sent in my (very late) registration, the stomach closed for business.

By some mischance, I arrive at The Merc early. The hosts, Nick and Tara, are here. There are CDs for sale, DVDs, shoes. Flyers for the workshops here, more flyers for workshops in Argentina. Shoes. Beautiful men’s shoes with unusual stylings.

A man sits with the shoes. He is not selling, only sitting. He is Pulpo. We exchange an unsmiling look, and here’s the first surprise: He is quiet. Not inscrutable, simply quiet.

The Potomac River is like this; you have to toss a twig in to see that the water is moving. Then you see it is not merely the surface but the whole huge mass that is flowing. The surface does not reflect what lies underneath. No eddies, no confusion of waters. This is Pulpo at rest.

What will this Pulpo expect? In a grainy publicity photo on the flyer for this class, his hair is spiky and he is contorting with a woman who appears to be levitating.

What will this Pulpo expect? How much and how fast? I drive myself crazy with questions. His legwork is so complicated, how can anyone master it?

When Javier came, he expected us to know sacadas; that’s where he started. Will this Pulpo expect us to already know ganchos? I have done only a clumsy few with Grisha and The Man on the Wall.

I am not ready for this. I should never have listened to what Nina said about taking hard classes. I should work at my own skill level. I don’t need to stay. There is always The Man on the Wall.

I walk out

but can’t go.

Pulpo has a personal vision, a unique take on the thing that he loves. This exploration of legwork is not some cheap trick. He speaks of it analytically; he develops it with talent and inventiveness and rigor. What is that but genius?

How often do you get to spend time with genius in its own element?

I have spent time in rooms with Joyce Carol Oates, William Sytron, John Barth. In every case they were out of their element. A writer’s genius is nothing to see: they sit at a keyboard, they type. When they read their work, they are two, three, four times removed from their genius, as light from the sun bounces off the moon, filters through curtains, strikes a mirror and falls into your eye.

At midnight Pulpo will perform. He will be in his element then. Meanwhile, we have class.

Pulpo is as quiet in his teaching as in his sitting by shoes. He has economy of movement. He gestures a bit, his voice rises and falls. Luiza is beautiful, with expressive eyebrows, a musical voice and hands that dance to her words.

Luiza translates for Pulpo. He looks students in the eye while he is speaking and while Luiza translates for him. It is as if he were speaking in her language, her voice.

Here’s the second surprise: Pulpo is in his element as a teacher, too.

He encourages us to learn both lead and follow. We learn this standing still, facing one another, a simple exercise.

Shortly after we begin, my partner pronounces this exercise stupid and wanders away. Pulpo, observant, leads me to another lone woman.

I hold out my hands before me. My partner places her hands in mine. When I move my hands to the left, she shifts to that side … to the right, she shifts again. I move one hand forward, so goes her foot. Here, there, back again, her foot follows. We go for a cross front and back, some other thing Pulpo has asked us to try.

I want her to collect but she won’t. I don’t want to make her feel in the wrong, but I need to know why. I ask, “What signal do you need from me to tell you to place your feet side by side?”

She is a beginner. She doesn’t know to collect. I explain what it means; she suggests the signal that will work best for her. We try again. As I place our hands side by side, she collects.

Wow!

I made that happen?

!

I move my hand, bring it back. Look, she did it again! And look, yet again! As I move, so does she. This is magic!

Nina tells the men, “She is your puppet!” Luiza says the same thing.

They are wrong!

With a puppet the limbs dance, but there’s nobody home.

This is much better: My partner is sentient. She is right here. So am I. She is not merely waiting for me to pull her strings; I am not merely pulling her strings.

She is paying attention to me. I am paying attention to her. With my hands I whisper, with her feet she whispers back. We are intent on our whispers.

I am being gentle and slow, taking care not to hurt her by holding too tight, not to startle by moving too fast. I hold her like a big, crystal bowl, not because Nina once said so, but because she is a person who trusts me, and that is a fragile and beautiful thing.

Tamora Pierce has written a series of books in which teens under duress can spin their energies together into magic. From each teen comes a bright thread of light; when the threads comingle, there is magic.

This is magic!

Every move she makes is a miracle, a saying of yes.

No wonder men love this dance!

I have heard the expression “every step is led” so often it has lost all its meaning. It never had much. Of course steps are led. The lead is the boss of me. This is tango. I am the pretty, passive puppet. The girl.

Now, playing the lead under the quiet and observant presence of Pulpo, I understand something new:

There are no puppets here, no puppetmasters. Seeking connection is not the same thing as awaiting instruction. It is not the same as being tensed for action, ready for flight.

I don’t know what more it is, or I don’t know how to say it. But I feel it.

I feel it as a lead, in goodly intent toward my partner.

I feel it as a follower, in respect for my partner.

These are the elements missing from puppetry: kindness, respect. The generous touch.

…

The class goes on. Pulpo extends our skills in a well-planned progression of baby steps, one after another after another and another. They pile up.

By Saturday afternoon we have ganchos. When the last workshop ends Monday night, we are all officially pulped!

Muchas gracias, Pulpo. Muchas gracias, Luiza.

The Hot New Tango Fashion Accessory. Get one of these before the Memorial Day Festival

Nora Ephron feels bad about her neck.

I feel bad about my collarbones.

They stick out.

Way out.

My little brother used to reach in and close his fingers around them. Ow!

Ugly bones. Or so I thought until yesterday…

…when The New York Times style section pronounced “this season’s hot accessory: a prominent clavicle.”

Ha!

“The well-chiseled clavicle is in,” NYT says.

“Toned shoppers who want to show off their self-discipline in the face of dessert are choosing dresses with a low but not plunging neckline, a look that is transforming the area above the breasts, into an unlikely new subject for women to obsess over….

…

“Why the new emphasis on a body part most women—and more men—have paid little attention to in the past?" NYT asked.

…

“Showing off your clavicle is the opposite of showing your thong,” said Valerie Steele, director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan.

Yikes!

Cool Cat Billy Melton

Not tango, but very cool

http://pajamagardener.blogspot.com/2007/05/cool-cat-billy-melton.html

To Avoid Wear and Tear on the Smoke Alarm

Note to Multitasking Self with Gas Stove:

If you turn on the burner to melt butter in the sauté pan so you can fry an egg, then, before you turn away to practice cool new tango moves, be sure you’ve turned on the burner under the pan and not the one under the carton of eggs.

Private Lesson with Grisha, Aftermath, riffing on wings

Find a way to engage my wings without going light. Stream of consciousness, calling up images and metaphors.

This morning, commuting to work, I stopped at the corner of Eighth Avenue and Speer. A pigeon was walking, looking for crumbs. He kept lifting his wings, wriggling them, laying them down. He couldn’t get them comfortably settled.

Birds with broken wings. They drag heavily. Those birds are doomed. Do they know it? I think that they must. If they don’t conceive of death exactly, they must know that next time a predator strikes, they’re not going to make a quick getaway.

Big wings. Turkey wings, huge and meaty. Despite their huge wings, turkeys can’t fly. Canada geese. The bones of their wings click as they shove air.

The wings of Michaelangelo's angels. Beefy types, whose wings look to weigh twice as much as their bodies. Every feather looks weighty. When I lift those heavy, heavy wings, I get lighter. They are lifting me up onto my toes.

Heavy. Think heavy.

Airplane wings. In theater, an area off-stage, whence dancers come and go. The wings of buildings. The Denver Art Museum’s new wing. Soaring, angular, bulky and light.

Think wings that aren’t light. Wings that don’t soar. That don’t lift you up. Wings that are heavy. Dragging. The wings of angels banished from paradise. Broken.

That guy who flew into the sun with his wings made of wax. What was his name? What was his story? I believe he burned and crashed.

Back to my own culture’s myths. Jesus pinned like a butterfly to the cross, emaciated arms like wings outstretched. Sagging, chest collapsing, suffocating. Lifting himself, leverage against the nails in his hands, for sips of air. Crying out yet unable (or unwilling?) to make the quick getaway.

Yikes! Those wings aren’t for me.

DJ Dave says tango is mournful, even when it sounds peppy. Julie Taylor describes the bitter melancholy that informs the staid milangeuro. They are all banished angels. Yet they dance. They have wings.

A banished angel dragging beautiful, broken wings. Yoked to those wings as an ox at the plow, leaning forward to pull hard, even and steady against the crush of history. Wings as they drag gash furrows in the earth, raising blood.

Argentina.