Well, duh...

I read this really interesting post on a blog I check in with from time to time entitled synch-ro-ni-zing. It is depressing, but not surprising revelations. Anyone who has actually gone through a writing program could easily tell you that there are many more people out there who feel like they have something to say than there are people willing to sit and listen to what others have said before them. People who's work comes from being opinionated or from having OD on too many fantasy novels, rather than from a well of literary tradition that they've dug themselves with dedicated readership. Lots of writers are just noisy, inarticulate assholes. Hmmm...could I number myself among them? I read books...right? Lots of books. I always wish I was reading more. Maybe that's just a reflection of my insatiability.

Also, as an aside, today is my birthday. When I blow out my candles, I will wish for an incredibly talented, incredibly versatile, incredibly gorgeous dance partner who will waltz (literally) into my life and make it so I never have to worry about going places where there a more follows than leads. Phhhhhhhhh...

S.

Out Walking

Sorry it's been a little while since my last check-in. I was having a technical issue, which is now resolved. In the interim time, work continues to be crazy, but I have briefly escaped down to Houston to visit my family for the Eastertide. Now we're all caught up.

So tonight, while Mom was busy working on Heather's taxes and Heather was busy with a project for school, I snuck out for a walk, enticed by the rosy edge of the storm clouds that have been rolling in and out all day, but were now illuminated by the setting sun. I enjoyed the warm, sweet air so particular to this corner of Texas, softened by notes of jasmine, oleander, and rose. I saw scraps of torn paper strewn over the grass and imagined the epistle of a spurned lover, or perhaps the frustration of a man feeling cheated by the outcome of his tax return. Ever since I got to Houston, I feel like all I've wanted to do is go walking. I thought that was strange until I considered that, in Buffalo, it hasn't really been warm enough to go walking since January. But, even more than weather factors, I can't go walking in Buffalo. I live in a pretty rough neighborhood and wouldn't feel safe going walking by myself in the daytime, let alone at night. In an ironic twist, society has deemed it necessary that I find some male escort to at least give me the illusion of safety in warding off what would probably be male assailants. I have no male escort, but as I have made obvious, if there simply were no men, there would be no problem. Alas, this is not the case. So, no night-walking for me.

But tonight I started thinking back to the circumstances and atmosphere of those lonely night-walks. They were not for pleasure. I felt driven to move, driven to escape from a life that the most rosy description would term confining, and so I would run out as soon as everyone was in bed, starting out with rushed, angry, steps that made my ankles ache, reliving whatever ignominy or absurdity I had put up with that day, and walking until my temper cooled and I gradually went slower and slower until I sunk into a dejected plod. Little toads would peer out at me from the edges of the sidewalks, owls cry their shuddering condolences, bats swoop through their erratic night dances. I was blind to the small beauties around me because I felt so hopelessly trapped in a life I was growing to despise more every day.

So, I suppose I can't help but consider my circumstances improved, even though my new life comes with its own limitations and frustrations. Every life I live, every where I go will, I am growing more and more certain as I attain the wisdom of age. So I guess I'd have to say that I prefer having a reason to wake up in the morning and somewhere to go everyday to the small luxury of walking alone at night.

Meat Grinder

After this weekend, I feel like I've been through a meat grinder. A four hour tabling event first thing on Saturday. Extroverting for potential volunteers, for four hours. No lunch and no water provided. Then a trip to the airport, a tango workshop and a milonga in the evening where I completely lost my mojo. Felt like I did crappy with every partner. Shoes sticking on the floor. Paid for green tea that tasted yucky. One of those nights. Today, long meeting (on a Sunday!) where I felt like my authority was undermined on every side, including by punk teenagers who won't participate, but have lots of ideas about how things should be done differently. Looking forward to a long evening of paying respects to my introverted side...and tomorrow, back to work.

S.

Props to Gourmet!

photo credit

I have to give a shout out to Gourmet magazine. I have been subscribing for about a year now, and though years ago I had issues that I would use to simply look at the pictures, since I have started reading the articles, I have been amazed by the quality of the writing. For example, so far in the March issue, I have been treated to a deeply felt exploration of the man behind a local taqueria in Mexico City through family relationships, an incredibly nostalgic (for me) article about hiking the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela (no, I never went hiking in Spain, but it reminded me strongly of time I was backpacking in Ireland) , and what I can only describe as an expose of the outrageous labor practices behind picking winter tomatoes in Florida. I can tell you one thing, although I made a habit of avoiding tomatoes during the winter before, I am now determined to never buy a tomato from December through May. And I have all but decided for certain that I also want to hike the trail to Santiago...sometime soon. I love this magazine. Great recipes, great writing, great pictures. And someday, though they always look like it would take a crap load of time and expense, I am determined to invite guests over and make the entirety of one of their menus, omitting nothing, changing nothing. Just to see what it's like. I feel like it would produce a truly spectacular meal.

Urban Bush Women!

Photos courtesy of Enid Bloch--thanks Enid! Visit her website, it's super!


On Friday night, I witnessed a performance that was so life-changingly fantastic, it derailed my entire expected blog flow. No, seriously, I am so committed to this thing that I actually think ahead and make plans about what I’ll probably post about next, and even sometimes two posts in advance. Well, this was a rare two post-er time, but actually it was a bit foolish of me, because I was planning to attend this performance of the Urban Bush Women dance company for, literally, MONTHS, and I should have known that I would obviously want to post about it an planned accordingly. But, since I didn’t, everything else has come to a screeching halt as I realized from the moment I walked in the theatre that I absolutely HAD to tell you about these amazing women.

Oh, yeah, but what about that dratted and oft-noted fact that I cannot, cannot! seem to speak articulately where dance is concerned. Well, thank the good Lord, there is plenty else to begin with in speaking of this particular performance, and maybe the rest will come in time. First of all it must be said that, for the first time in my 23, almost 24 years, I was at a performance sitting in the VERY FIRST ROW. I actually didn’t believe it when they sent me to hunt for my seat, and had to double check with one of the ushers before I felt worthy to take my place. I was also a little concerned, because you know how in some venues, the actual stage is so high that people in the first row literally can’t see over the stage? Well, this was not the case in this venue, which I love anyway for being a fairly intimate setting, considering the relatively high caliber of the folks who perform there. ANYWAY, it was not that kind of venue and the view was so spectacular. I sat down next to this woman and, still off-kilter from the shock, immediately started a conversation with her about the first row and how amazed I was to be there. Then I proceeded to ask her about her very large looking camera which she informed me was not actually a very large camera, but a camera in a very large apparatus designed to keep it from making noise and disrupting the performance. So we were chatting about her photography and then at intermission she showed me two books she had published of photos of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and then at the end of the evening I gave her my card and she said she would send me some of the photos when she had gone through them! And, since she had showed me some photos during intermission on her camera’s screen, I have every confidence that they are going to be fantastic. Maybe I will frame them…anyway, those are the first two fantastic things that happened.



The performance itself was…incredible. It was divided into two sections, the first performance being a kind of homage to victims of Hurricane Katrina (Enid told me at intermission that the way that the dancers were only lit above waist level signified the water level.) The second was a dance-exploration through excerpts from a woman’s journal, chronicling her experiences in Africa. I loved the grittiness of the first piece, the way that there was no sets, no costumes, the dancers just wore extremely casual street clothes. Even the music was extremely minimalistic, they had a percussionist on stage who would at times be only tapping out a basic rhythm on a single drum. At other times the dancers were moving in complete silence, sometimes in UNISON in complete silence, which blew my mind. I realized that the way they signaled a big change in movement to each other was that a lead dancer would give a sharp exhalation of breath. That was the other thing—the proximity to the dancers and the times of silence made the whole experience so immediate. You could hear their breathing, sometimes in a studied, unison sort of way, but sometimes just the labored breathing of athletes, you could hear the squeak as a dancers toe or knee would slide across the floor. The absolute most fantastic thing about the first piece is that, at the end, three dancers left the stage and came back with white handkerchiefs for themselves and the other dancers and the drum struck up a beat with the cymbals and all the women were dancing and twirling their handkerchiefs and it felt like Mardi Gras, and really drove home the point that there was rebirth, there was unity and there was something to be celebrated.

The second piece had a completely different look, still no scenery, but the outfits that the women wore were much more flowy and almost every outfit strongly incorporated the color red, which, combined with the lights, was so luminous. It just made me very happy, I have been very strongly drawn to the color red lately. Not sure what that means. If I figure it out, I’ll let you know. This dance also had more influence of African dance, as far as I could tell, whereas the first piece was more straight contemporary dance. The dancers provided some of their own accompaniment through chanting and having the majority of the dancers stomp out a rhythm that one or two others would actually dance to. There were also several dance circles, where one woman would dance in the center and they would switch off. That was another thing I really appreciated about this company, was that there were no divas, no stars, it was very communal in everything from the roles women took in the dances to making sure that people had more or less equal time in the spotlight.

The other thing that was absolutely fantastic for me about this performance was that I found it so affirming as a dancer. Lately, I tend to watch performances and divide moves into categories: Things I Can Do, Things I Can’t Do. But one of the wonderful things about this performance was that it was contemporary, so for much of the performance it was watching my kind of dancing. I also think that I have been oppressed by the model of the Western ballerina, stick thin with perfect arches and perfectly toned, but tiny, arms and legs. I loved that these women looked like real women, with hips and thick, muscular thighs and calves, like hey, we do hard stuff, dammit! We can’t do this stuff with little twigs for limbs! I also loved that, being so close, I could see that their foot wobbled back and forth when they were balancing on one leg, just like mine does when I’m balancing, that their leg would start shaking when they held it in the air for awhile just like mine does. It all created this impression that these are real people, no superhuman dynamos, doing impossible feats of terpsichore. All in all, I wanted to run screaming after them as they left the stage: “Wait! Wait! Take me with you! I’m sorry I’m not Black! But I’m still a chick! I’ll do anything, move to New York, live in the cellar, eat bugs, just let me come with you and dance like you dance!!!” I would have, in fact, but I couldn’t find them after the performance. Tricky security measures. Maybe someday… but I think that the whole evening really made me have hope that I could someday, perhaps even now, consider myself a Real Dancer. I have a great many thoughts on what it means to be a Real Dancer and why I generally cannot consider myself to be one, but those are for another time as this post is already absurdly long, and so, I say farewell!

S.

Cool Story

Hey, for anyone interested in liberation for women living in oppressive societies a la anonymous internet radio sites and blogs, this article might intrigue you...

Wearing of the Green

I couldn't let St. Patrick's Day come and go without saying SOMEthing. After all, it is a day that brings together my joy over my Irish heritage with some very very fond memories. That rainy day in London town and the parade/market/performance that took place underneath the Eye. Years of pagan, half naked dances around loaves of Soda Bread with the Dark Tower ladies (holla!). I even remember one wild night of corned beef and cabbage while watching a library copy of Michael Flatley's Lord of the Dance. Wow. I really do love this holiday.

Well, this year's celebrations required significantly more coercion on my part than is typical. I first guilted friends N+M to come with me to the St. Patrick's Day parade downtown. We even let M stand with us, in spite of the fact that he's British. It probably would have caused riots, had anyone discovered the fact, so he was cleverly disguised with a green blazer jacket and a very Irish looking pipe. And, I am proud to say, we stayed for the entire parade, long and fraught with random people as it was, and cheered enthusiastically for every labor union, ancient order, high school band, group of bagpipers and semi-truck filled with girls (and the occasional boy) from every Irish dancing school in Buffalo, each followed by an entourage of about a hundred other be-wigged, curl bouncing little step dancers of lesser status. And I can't tell you how many St. Patricks we saw. Young ones, old ones, bearded ones, some played by little boys wearing long cottony beards attached to their heads with strings. I felt that the Spirit of St. Patrick had truly come to dwell among us, at least for a couple hours.

But then, friends, you must remember that that was merely the Sunday before the great day of days itself. And I am proud to say that, in spite of the inconsiderate intrusion of Bible Study into the festivities, St. Patrick's Day found me at a pub here in Buffalo with N+M and E, drinking meself a Guiness! Actually (cringe) that's only part of the story, which, though it shames me to the very core, I will recount here in the interest of fidelity to fact and transparency here before you, my dear readers. I was there, in the pub, with a Guiness, but I only got about a fourth of the way through my pint before I had to admit before the assembled company that I do not like Guiness. No, it's not just a slight disfavoring, I actually can't stand the stuff so much as to not be able to make it more than a quarter of the way through before selling it to my friends and stealing an untouched Irish coffee from the next table over. That was perhaps my favorite part of the whole evening, these older folks got up and left with a perfectly good Irish coffee on the table, which E valiantly nabbed before it could be cleared away by the waitress, who noticed the nabbing and stopped by our table to complement in the most endearingly outraged tones, "They didn't even touch it! They did not even touch it!" I know, right? Absurdity. There is excellent liquor in this and they let it be! Shameful. And on the feast day of our Blessed St. Patrick! Abhorrent. So after much head shaking and quaffing, and raising glasses to the glory of old Eire, we retired, another beautiful St. Patrick's Day celebration under my belt. I think I must henceforth officially christen N+M and E as my drinking buddies, as they were also the only ones who stuck by me through our New Year's Eve celebrations, in spite of some extremely sweet champagne, and the alarm being set off downstairs by "the wind." Yes, to all three of ye...may the road rise to meet you, may the wind be always at your back, and for next year's party, we'll rent The Quiet Man for sure!