still dreaming

On the southeast corner of Stone and Wetmore is a moveable sign of the sort often employed by churches and small businesses. It sits at the corner of what looks to be an office building, but seems to exist only to subject passerby to an often aggressive viewpoint, like an overgrown bumper sticker.

The first message I remember seeing on it was

NO INCUMBENTS
THROW THEM ALL OUT

Another memorable one - which stayed up for some time - was

PHX BRICKYARD SELLS 3RD QUALITY BRICKS
DON'T BUY EM

 

When I drove by this Monday, it read

MLK AUG 28 1963
50 YEARS AND WE'RE STILL DREAMING

 

Although the sign's rants often come off as paranoid and angry, this particular message resonated with me. I'm still dreaming, too, and I worry that fifty years is not half the time it'll take to rid this country of the prejudice that infects it.

for brian

April 21, 1984 - August 10, 2013

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

on argentine tango

I often find myself attempting to explain to people the why behind choosing to devote a significant portion of my free time to social dance, and Argentine tango* in particular.

Social partner dance is fun on a basic, human level: it's structured interaction with a variety of people, often from a great variety of backgrounds (both cultural and professional). There's the endorphin high from the exercise. There's the joy of movement connected to music, which is a way of experiencing two different kinds of art at once. And the lead-follow interaction is a form of physical communication you don't get many other ways.

Argentine tango is more, though. They say it's the hardest of the social dances to learn, for many reasons. There is no real basic step, no pattern inherent in the movement to hold on to. You could, hypothetically, go into any move in any rhythm at any point in the dance, which makes it even more essential than most dances to listen intently to - and match - whatever the music happens to be doing at the moment. It is danced almost entirely in closed embrace, with the leader's chest communicating the movement. There is often a shared point of balance between the dancers through that chest connection, which creates that upside-down V shape so characteristic of tango, and which requires a great deal of balance and strength on the part of the dancers. True tango is entirely improvisation, and the best dancers will even perform without having choreographed it first (as opposed to, say, ballroom, where couples rehearse the same three minute routine for months on end).

In most social dances you can attain proficiency in a couple of years at most (even less for simpler dances like two-step and blues), but two steady years of tango might put you at the low end of intermediate. And it is a perpetual challenge. As soon as you think you've mastered one aspect of it, you discover how much more you don't know. That challenge proves endlessly exciting to me.

There's also a ritualism to tango that doesn't exist in other dances. There's an entire culture of behavior that goes along with the dance - the codigos. They're mostly designed to make an evening of dancing as enjoyable as possible for everyone, but they add another layer of complexity to what is already a complex dance. As I've moved through other dance communities, I find I consistently prefer the rationale behind tango culture.

For example, tango is the only dance I'm aware of that routinely uses body language to request a dance, in what is called the cabeceo: two potential partners make eye contact; typically the lead nods, the follow returns the nod, and then the lead walks over to escort the follow to the floor. (Especially here and among friends, the nod can turn into wiggling eyebrows and silly expressions, and may be initiated by either partner, but the structure remains the same.) It saves many forms of embarrassment once you get the hang of it, as if you don't want to dance with someone you should be able to simply avoid eye contact with them, thereby skipping the awkwardness of an outright refusal. A verbal request seems gauche, even in other dances, after you've adapted to the cabeceo; it comes off as unnecessarily pushy, especially when the entire point of social dance is non-verbal communication.

The general tenor of the emotion in tango also greatly appeals to me. The "passion" that gets so over-blown in tango caricatures is, in the real dance, quite varied and often powerful. Even what sound like upbeat melodies often turn out to have melancholy lyrics, and the balance of that dichotomy I find endlessly interesting.

Although videos are generally inadequate and don't capture the true visual appeal of the dance when you watch it live - and certainly don't at all approximate the feeling of dancing it yourself - ending with a couple visual examples certainly can't hurt.




The variance between her small adornos (decorations) and the energy at the end is awesome.





If any of this appeals to you, I strongly recommend taking some beginner classes in your area. Most places don't require that you bring a partner, and despite its difficulty, tango is incredibly rewarding. If you're in Tucson, we have a tango calendar of events: http://tucsontango.com/. The Phoenix calendar is here. Elsewhere, a Google search of "argentine tango" and your city should bring up results.

Also, if you haven't seen them, I have a post about learning a social dance and one on tango shoes you might enjoy.

* Note: American ballroom tango is something different, essentially a cheesy bastardization - that ridiculous stereotype of the man with the rose in his mouth - and is not at all what I'm talking about here.

the world through a wine glass

birches

[it is good to remember winter in the heat of summer]

. . .

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay
As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows—
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

- Robert Frost, 1969