Dancing Against the Fog

Well, now with Mama Gena out of the way - at least for the time being - I can catch you up on other events happening here in Portland (in general) and my life (in particular).

This weekend past, for example.

I'll only consider Friday evening.

There is a gazebo on the Eastern Promenade of the city, overlooking Casco Bay and its islands, Fort Allen Park, it's called. I'm not sure exactly where Fort Allen was - I'm pretty sure it wasn't meant to defend against the British, so that leaves us Natives (I'm Cherokee - we were down in Georgia, it's not our fault).

In evidence - the remains of a redoubt, the bodies of some old 14 pounders, well sealed against possible use. A flagpole.

And a wonderful gazebo, site, in the day, of Chandler's Band concerts on Thursday evenings. The Chandler's Band was sponsored - some say "made up" - by the Ship's Chandler's association, the people who supplied materials for Portland's thriving (this was a century ago) shipping industry.

I remember seeing something called "the Chandler's Band" in several parades here in town when I first arrived here - whether they were actually waterfront workers or just ringers hired to play is beyond me.

Still it's a lovely thing, that gazebo, with a magical view of Fort Gorges, the near islands and the SoPo shore.

Friday, if you can't tell, was slightly cool, cloudy with fog swirling far off down the bay.

My friend Adira, belly dancer and dance teacher extraordinare served as DJ, providing a sophisticated and very danceable mix of tangos, vals and milongas.

I suppose we had around 15 people or so, in various waves and levels of interest. There was a small snack bar set up on one of the railings.

It's a rare fine thing to dance a tango in a gazebo overlooking one of the oldest working harbors in the Eastern United States. Boats go by below, some motoring quickly, leaving a rippling wake slashed across the waters. Others, sailboats pushed by straining propellers, moved more deliberately. All were headed into moorings on shore and off.

The Casco Bay Lines party boat chugged by, faint wisps of rock and roll floating up. We waved to them, they waved back. Something, they could tell, was going on at the prom but their beer goggles weren't giving them the resolution they needed.

A tango has been likened to having a three minute affair with a total stranger, it's very intimate physically and we've all mastered the fine, demanding art of experiencing such delicious closeness, contact and communication - and not losing emotional balance.

It can become a sudden challenge at the most unlikely of times, but mostly we keep our heads - and our hearts.

The party boat chugs back by - more waving, though we are all a little indistinct to each other. Fog is rolling in, the bay is vanishing in a sea of black. I like this moment, it appeals to the Gothic in me, the person who partly lives on Dartmoor and looks for demonic hounds in the mist.

The dancers are moving to keep warm now. I think our movement and breath set up a microclimate in the gazebo, keeping the worst of the chill and fog at an amiable distance.

Finally we have to stop - even on a foggy Friday night we're courting interruption by the police by going much longer than 10 p.m.

I keep hoping we get thrown off - or at least warned by Portland's finest but maybe it's for the best. When the weather is genuinely warm and the sky is clear then I'd stack dancing in the Fort Allen Gazebo with any tango in the world.

TangoMoose.7 - Moose Making Tracks

It's really a damned large city.

You can get lost in it so easily - and find yourself just as easily.

The real yourself. So many of your ways of dealing with people go out the window because there are so many people to deal with, in so many ways.

I think, like most things in life, a city that size forces you to either become a fake person or become the person you really are. Such massive anonymity - coupled with being in such close contact with a few close, good friends - led me to the latter. You're safe to be who you are.

For someone fundamentally healthy (not saying I don't have quirks, mind you ....) once you start removing all the armor protecting your true self it's very hard to put it back.

I suppose I've been moving toward the revelation for a while, it's just really really fun to actually dance to the music you've been hearing inside yourself, music you were finally working up the nerve to share.

And I have been sharing it. That's the most fun of all.

Getting back from my afternoon with dragons and apples took quite a while, a long, rather depressing walk down Fifth Avenue, chronicled in my last post.

I did get a long soak in the tub. I'm not too decadent, just a little mildewy sometimes - a good bath clears that right up.

Union Square was the destination for the evening. There is a milonga there every Sunday during the Summer. This particular Sunday was bright, very warm, a perfect New York Summer evening. It seemed the whole world was out - literally.

So many languages, shops, approaches to life. Usually the presence of strangers can overwhelm me, I sense their thoughts, feelings, I "read" them and the intensity of a being amongst many is more than I can sort out.

The result is a kind of catatonia, what a friend calls "climbing my tree". Very self-concious, me. In time I climb down and return to the human race but sometimes it's a close call.

Not this time. I could read people, generally, and not get flustered. There is nothing mystical in this, I just pick up clues like posture, voice inflection, movement, grammar, things like that - and my brain puts it together so fast I sometimes don't know what's going on except I'm reacting to people on a gut level I have no control over.

Union Square was straight East on 14th, about 8 of the longish latitudinal blocks that take you crosstown. I stopped to buy a couple of black plums inhabiting a fruit stand in an organic grocers. There was no one around to take my money as the crowd surged blithely past. Going inside I saw that the cash registers were mobbed 8 deep with people buying stuff for the week. I managed to sneak the plums into a candle display where they might be found later. Or so I hoped.

They had lots of them so I'm pretty sure I didn't damage the store's bottom line.

The milonga was in full flight as I arrived. The Sun was westering and long, low beams were filtering between the buildings. There were two levels, the bandstand and the plaza before it. Speakers push out a great mix of classic tangos, milongas and vals. It was quite a mixed, animated crowd.

I took up a space on the steps connecting them.

I really knew no one and getting dances was problematic. There is a tradition in tango called the cabaceo - the art of making eye contact before asking someone to dance. It saves embarrassment - and gives women total control of the social situation.

Eventually I was rescued by Dr. N, her daughters and their friends. Like the night before there was a lady in need of tango lessons. Adira and her gentleman friend joined us and it turned into a deliciously fun, warm evening of dance and chat.

Finally the music ended. It always does. If you're prepared for the moment you can use its energy to propel into a new adventure. Or, you can go home and have a bath.

Both were tempting propositions. I opted to go with Dr. N and a friend to the Grammercy Park Hotel, just off the side of Grammercy Park, at the end of Lexington Avenue.

The Park is one of only two private parks in the city, held in trust and owned by the dwellers in the houses that surround it. There are fairly few keys to it not owned by the trust. Six of them belong to the Hotel and now that I think of it I know where I'm going to try to stay, if only for a night. Who knows what kind of magic is in such a special, private place?

We wound up on the Terrace of the Grammercy ( after a a slightly embarrassing search for the elevator - and Dr. N had stayed there before!!). It's actually a rather dark, gloomy hotel, a great contrast to the Ikea-like decor and glass shower walls of the Standard.

Still it had spectacular views of the city.

I had a chance to talk to Dr. N and her friend, M, about relationships and the SFWA. It's all a work in progress and despite my sense of the need for more depth I was gently reminded that I was experiencing the end of at least nine months of work and discussion.

Also, I didn't have a direct connection - if I had been asked "who is your Sister/Goddess here" I'd have had to say "I don't have one". Hnmmm.... that might have actually been interesting.

So afterwards we walked down Broadway at near Midnight on a warm Summer evening, telling stories and looking at the lights. We would up back at the park, empty now, quiet now, lowering dark and low against the bright backdrop of structures behind it.

We said "goodnight" to M, who continued nonchalantly down Broadway to her digs. I walked Dr. N back down 16th to her apartment, chatting about life in the city and how you can get burned out, emotionally and financially ("financially" I could easily see...) but that the energy of so many people living - having lived - in such proximity could really give you a boost....

.... and it has. It has been observed that I have "some new moves" in my dancing. I really don't think so. All I'm doing is paying attention - to others and to myself.

I've recently helped write/transcribe a classical, complex tango for our local band - and my own writing (when I get to it) seems more fluid, more rich.

I'm in prep for a major test on music software for my job at Apple - and, despite its complexity, I'm getting it.

Sometimes certain events - or people, my late friend Eckart comes to mind - can give you an unholy whack of energy to be used to propel your life in a new direction.

Or that energy just comes from inside you, unbidden until you're ready to accept and use it.

Either way, like the roomful of energy from 240 women or a plaza full of dancers or a dragon curling on a stone plinth - you just open your mouth and breathe it in, fill yourself with it, bask in the joy of sharing, giving, taking, making, using ....

.... living.

Then you go home to Maine and try to do something with it.

TangoMoose.6 - A Divine John, A Jonesing Diva

Facebook Gallery is here.

Everyone loves an amiable dragon.

This one lives just outside the central nave door of the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine on Amsterdam Avenue. It's by the loading dock, the top of a set of uncarved stone blocks, unfinished below, this set of fantastic figures above.

Unfinished blocks are all through the Cathedral - once you get an eye for them they pop up everywhere. They are waiting for stonemasons, perhaps yet unborn, waiting to have images of saints, sinners, stories, lessons, angels and grotesques teased out.

I've had a strange connection to CCSJD since I was very young - the author of my favorite book, "A Wrinkle In Time" was the librarian there for years, though, I suspect, "librarian" meant more "writer in residence" than "bookshelf police".

No matter. The last time I was there a giant stoneyard existed on the North side of the Cathedral close, filled with giant blocks of white marble. You could buy a stone and it would be fitted into the tower, you would be given a map to show where your stone was. Very old school way to fund a project.

Old school as in "the 1100's".

I took pics (refer to the gallery above) and sat in the rich echoes of the largest gothic cathedral in the world. People who had no idea of what the symbols carved in stone meant wandered through.

I phoned my dad while sitting on a bench in the Cathedral close, watching kids play a game with bolos made of tennis balls, the point being catching the connecting string on a frame by throwing. These were little kids and their peals of joy would fill the close, echoing off the walls of the church.

There is a remarkable peace to the place, I can see being caught up in it, appreciate having the space to think through what your life was about and what you needed to accomplish in order to better be yourself.

So Sunday was given over to exploring two centers of spiritual life - one in stone, the other in glass.

Specifically the Apple Store on 5th Avenue - ordinarily under a striking glass cube, on Sunday under a stricken scaffold of wood.

The bus ride was crowded. It seemed the entire city was out enjoying the park, the streets, the food, themselves.

The store was an unbelievable madhouse of people. The store has a simple layout, the cube houses a piston-driven elevator. This is surrounded by banks of tables for demonstrating products, setup, training, workshops - just like the store I work in but arranged in a square.

I tried to take space at an unused training station to write but was quickly evicted by a Creative with a client to teach. After introductions we had a quick chat about being in the City and crowded stores - then I got the hell out of Dodge (and I've been to Dodge).

The store vomited me out into a heaving sea of people on Fifth Avenue. The stores there have always been touted as the source of haute couture - today they just seemed like granite copies of stores in Freeport, all concerned with selling the experience of something, rather than the stuff itself.

The Abercromie store had two male models at the door, having their pics taken with stricken twenty-something women, stunned to be embraced by men of a physical perfection they knew they might never touch again if they lived to be ninety. Very strange.

The afternoon ended with me returning to the Standard - Jim C. was headed out to the SFWA after party, I was going to soak in a tub (for probably the last time) and then off to tango in Union Square, the last event in a very eventful weekend.

TangoMoose.5 - Sister/Goddess in Close Embrace

Waiting for the limo to head back to Maine.

Just like every day is the same, this one feels different in the same way.

I wish I could say it better. Like Buckaroo Banzai said, "Wherever it is you go, there you are".

Perhaps it'll come during the writing.

The SFWA men's question section was very informative, a lot of direct questions about "what men want". Discretion precludes specifics (and the non-disclosure agreement was in force, as we were reminded - don't take this as unusual, in a way it was a sort of doctor-client privilege sort of thing).

But I can say that a lot of the thinking seemed a mile wide in love and respect but an inch deep in apprehension. From my point of view most all the problems discussed could be solved - or addressed - if people just really listened. It seemed so silly.

If I love someone - anyone, in any context, really - then I want them to be as much themselves as I can possibly get. If anything gets in the way of them being themselves - even me (which has happened) then the warrior in me comes out. No messes with my friends. No one.

Think of it like a glass of Nestle's Quick - I want as much chocolate in the glass as can be managed. Why would I want someone to be someone else?

So there is my solution to the world's problems - chocolate for the women, milk for the men - it all works out, no?

You walk a lot in this city. A friend of mine who spends time doing some gallery work here specifically mentioned it and it's true. At some point I'm going to do the calculations to figure out how much mileage I've put in but even so, it must be a lot.

The evening was given over to two events, long in the planning - a tango friend who is also a wonderfully personable belly dancer, EH, was performing at a benefit for a medical center for paraplegic kids - both her distinctive and engaging belly dance and a provocatively un-provocative bit of burlesque.

Some of the burlesque on the program - held in the Cellar of the Chelsea Hotel on 23rd Street - were so provocative as to be totally boring. Fun to watch, but a little bland. Not EH.

There was an intermission with dancing, which was fun - I got tagged by the DJ while I was reviewing pics I shot of EH. I was "the guy in the pink shirt who is texting while I'm talking" and he riffed on me. I took a page from the locals and shot him the bird, much to the humor of the room.

He kept riffing on me as the evening progressed, though I did go up and show him the pics of EH and offered to buy him a drink. Pax. What the hell.

There had been a plan in the works for some time to go the the Lafayette Grill for its Saturday Night Milonga. That got suddenly changed by half our group when we went outside, ostensibly to head for the Grill.

The new target was a milonga called "Nocturne" which is held at Dancesport on 35th Street just behind the Empire state building. Apparently it's one of those things that "everyone" goes to.

I was in the company of CN, Jim C and a couple of Goddesses from the weekend, friends of CN who wanted to learn tango - and who wanted to get out of the noise of the Chelsea Cellar.

Wound up teaching an extended beginner lesson to one of the Goddesses (THERE's a sentence I thought I'd never write - add it to the list).

I found Nocturne to be a very self-centered milonga. Everyone seemed so absorbed in showing off clever moves (I'd say a third of those present) that the line of dance, the sort of global social interaction that is part of what makes tango so much fun for me - that was gone.

Which, in such a small dance space, makes for an unpleasant dance. I disliked Nocturne, intensely.

Which is a shame as some of the dancers were great fun to watch.

That led to a cab ride back to 16th. Street and 5th. I walked CN back to the apartment - still guarded by its Russian Doorman and thence back to the Standard.

So Saturday ended with our major obligations to the SFWA and its Sister/Goddesses fulfilled.

Our airport limo will be here shortly and I suppose I'd better close off. Next up, Sunday - a divine John and a Jonesing Diva.

TangoMoose.4 - Powered by Pleasure

There are some who say the School For Womanly Arts (SFWA) is a cult. They say it is unusual, destructive to established relationships and refuses to accept any other points of view.

By these criteria the Notre Dame Fighting Irish Booster Club is a cult. Ask any football widow.

Notice there are no Scrapbooking Widowers groups for men.

I'm writing this at the Borders at Madison Square Garden across the street from the Pennsylvania Hotel. There will be a men's question/answer session in an hour with the ladies asking us questions just as the men asked yesterday evening.

I won't go too deeply into the specifics of last evening. Courtesy demands discretion. Also I signed a confidentiality/media release - no photos or videos, no statements that would identify anyone in the room. So I can refer to Jim C and CN because you already know who they are - but the identity of lady in the Nurse costume has to stay undisclosed.

They were kind enough to let me video and take pics my friend's tango that opened the show - the choreographer, also a friend, got stranded in Portland due to the same thunderstorms that forced us out of the cab and made Jim forget his shoes.

The gist of the evening was to finalize the students' study and to give the relevant males (and others) in their lives a chance to ask questions about what they had learned and how it impacted daily life.

As far as I can tell the dominant priority of the SFWA is living with pleasure. That we all have needs and the first amongst equals is the need to be heard, respected and loved - starting with how we use those verbs in reference to ourselves.

That someone with a healthy personal relationship with themselves tends toward the same with others - either by building them or seeking them out. That is an expression of pleasure.

This last, I think, is why so many patriarchal voices are raised against the SFWA because this sense of health precludes women being beaten down - and it deeply, deeply acknowledges women's natures - especially the sexual and sensuous part of their personalities.

No, no reason patriarchal voices would be raised, not at all.

And that, if you'll connect the dots, is why we signed releases before we got in the door ...

... and why this is about as specific about the evening as I'm going to get here.

I will say that Jim C. and CN performed brilliantly - oh, we did get ahold of the limo service and the shoes were returned - just in time. As the crowd broke up and the stage was just sitting there (after Jim C. and CN took posed tango pics) someone put on "Reflejo de Luna" and Jim led a lady up to the stage to dance.

Not to be outdone and noticing the sound person's assistant was following the dancing closely I asked her if she'd dance. The reply of "I don't know how" was brushed off as it deserved and she made a fair nice job of it. Then as we were leaving the stage (platform) Jim and I both got tapped and there we were again.

Afterwards Jim went back to hotel and CN, her daughters, their paramours and a couple of friends went for a very classy burger at a place called 5 Ninth. Jim went to St. John the Divine for the Solstice concert - at 4:30 a.m. and I got home and crashed out. I remember him going out but rolled over and gave it a miss.

So I've had a great tango lesson at Triangulo on 21st. Street. More on the tango angle later as that part of the trip is getting ready to begin.

Eighteen stories above me the SFWA is getting ready to meet with us - the men started it by carrying Mama Gena in to the stage then disappearing for an hour. It was a little "Queer Eye" for the moment but kind of loopy fun. I'm going back over and have no idea - in a life singularly free of directional ideas - no idea of what the hell is going to happen next.

I love it.

TangoMoose.3 - Where's My Damn Fez?

So they Hallowee'n shop was out of fez.

Fezs.

Fezzes. I think that's the one. Or plural.

Back in the Apple store on 14th. Charging the phone (done). Pictures edited and uploaded (done).

So now some quick notes and then off to Triangulo for a private tango lesson.

The Standard Hotel is anything but "standard". Its European, minimalist design is very clean, very easy to use. Jim C., after our great switch, are sharing a large bed. He talks in his sleep, in several languages, I thrash. We've done a good job of demarcating the bed so each of us gets at least a reasonable amount of sleep.

I think this hotel was designed for pairs of men that might be a bit more personally involved with each other than Jim and I.

The bed butts up against the wall of the shower, which has no doors and no curtains - the wall itself is glass, the shower has a generous tub, built for two.

I could put this to use - I did take a very luxurious bath this morning, which is rare as I don't often find tubs large enough to fit me.

So we're making it work.

There was a lot of on/off rain yesterday. When we decamped for the Mama Gena Men's night the priority was to preserve CN's hair - which, frankly, looked wonderful. We jumped out in front of the Pennsylvania Hotel, very quickly, so quickly Jim C left his shoes in the car.

So right now I'm off to walk to Trinagulo to take a private tango lesson - and I want to think more about how I'm going to share the whole Mama Gena Men's Night Experience with you.

Give me a few hours.

TangoMoose.2 - Still No Zeppelin Ride

Team TangoMoose arrived in good order... and definitely is not in Maine anymore.

I've read that you can walk off a plane and the sheer physicality of a place can hit you like a sledge - you become viscerally aware that you're in a different location.

Same here - Jim C. is most aware of it. The pressure of voices is greater - I have to shield myself more to not follow conversations (though I got good fast). The limo ride into CN's apartment also gave us proof - both the constipation of the traffic crossing the bridges and the lack of constipation of a man relieving himself (number 2, no less) right on the curb. At least both people and dogs are curbed here.

No, not in Maine.

Couldn't reach my camera - and yes, the thought did cross my mind. Sometimes untended baggage is not a bad thing.

The apartment was very spare - smaller than mine at home, actually - but cozy. Jim C. agreed to change out a couple of light fixtures in the ceiling so we went out to a local hardware store (thank you, Map App) to get the necessary.

There was a Russian Doorman - and there the intrigue started. There is a lady who lives there who is in charge of maintaining the good order of the building and she is very sensitive when rooms are "informally sublet" even for a weekend.

So we all had to pile in and out of the place so fast that the Russian Doorman couldn't tell if CN was "with" me - or Jim C. - or Both. At all costs he couldn't get the impression that Jim C. and I were "with" each other or the "good order Police" would rumble the game.

On the way I noticed a bistro, Italian - the Chelsea Ristorante. We had dinner - some of the best bolognese sauce I've had in a long time - and Jim C. returned to change the chandelier - a one-person job - and I found a Starbucks to check my email.

CN began to rethink the complexity of the plan - also the Russian Doorman would not be on duty all weekend and each entry/exit of the place was a chance for the whole wicked scheme to fall apart. Fun but risky.

So we switched. Jim C. and I are sharing a bed - a large bed - at the Standard hotel (more in the next post) and CN took the apartment. I bought a huge bouquet of flowers to brighten the place and took my camera up to the penthouse roof - the 11th floor of the building.

Technically it was open only to residents but no one seemed to be checking ID's so I got some lovely pics. Gallery is here.

The move happened at 8 - had we turned down one block earlier we might have walked right into this Apple store but we came down 13th. Noticed a barber shop and I think I'll have a shave there - the ladies are spending most of the rest of the day getting ready for this "event' (I found an iron and ironing board and set to work this morning) so it behooves me to get a decent shave.

So here I am at an Apple store in New York, getting ready to chase down a fez. I'm intensely curious to find out what's going to happen next ...