The World is a Circle

Well, I seem to have found something else to enjoy doing.

It's not like working at the Orchard, writing tangos, dancing tangos, relating to my friends is too much.

Now I have to find room to add hula hooping.

Took a workshop - two hours - Saturday, with Jennie Carr, an instructor my friend Adira asked down. I had to miss the first workshop because of work and managed to get a Jim-sized hoop out of it.

This was a hooping hoot.

As usual whenever I walk into such a situation I was pathetically over-dressed. I was also the only male.

One of my tango friends present made the comment that "it's nice to have some male energy here". I (kind of) appreciate it but I think all I had to contribute was sweat.

It's funny - practically all the other participants (did I mention they were all female) had yoga pants or comfortable workout clothes. I'd bet that if I looked in the back seats of their cars I'd find rubber yoga mats, probably in handmade cases with shoulder straps.

It's at moments - moments only, mind you - that I feel the tremendous gap between so many of my friends and myself, a gap defined by how comfortable they are in their bodies and how hatefully I look at mine. I understand the reasons and causes, sink into the feelings until that understanding - and acceptance - come into my heart and then freakin' get back to having fun.

Sometimes, though, it's a heavy lift.

I had come to the class by way of the Oaks, where the strange, humorous synchronicity of Portland presented me with another example of itself. There by the strawberry vendors, above the fountain, was a team of folks teaching kids to hoop - and some adults were learning as well.

I'm told there is a group of hoopers on Fridays in the Rose Garden. If I get off work in time I might grab my hoop and head down - because having fun is more fun than being scared.

Who knew?

Oh - just for fun ...

Ouzo 2.0

I don't know if you've ever been in a play.

I have been fortunate over the years to do a goodly number of plays by Shakespeare. When I was a child it was required that we recite poems by the Bard, most memorably "the Seven Ages of Man" from "As You Like It".

It made quite an impression. I kept returning to Shakespeare over the years, both as an actor, definitely as a composer and as a (gentle)man - Sonnet 116 ("Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments") has served me well on a couple of occasions....

Still, as an actor - not a professionally trained, Equity-level actor, but as a competent amateur I am aware of the idea of doing "a clean show". We have the same concept in drum and bugle corps as well - hitting every mark, note, move, line, accent and emotion - then clearly making them come alive for the audience.

Today I had much the same experience at the Orchard. Several lessons were tossed to me, some activations had to be talked out with service reps - now I consider it the day was actually quite complex.

Still, it went well. There were no drops, no fracks, no corpse-ing, no going up, no falling down. It was a clean day.

Which made going to this year's Greek Food Festival even more interesting.

The weather for the last week has been a morose study in watercolor - rain, clammy clouds and wind. The damp finally broke this evening and a lovely sunset - an even lovelier twilight - claimed the sky.

After getting home and checking email I donned a classy vest, grabbed my camera and set out. It's a deliciously temperate evening, the threat of fog only being found in the generous pouring of ouzo into plastic, iced tumblers.

A taste of loukamathes, spannikopita and rice - persuaded down with a generous glass of crystal ouzo (at least until the ice chilled and turned it milky white - these were my reward for having such a great day.

The crowd was breaking into dancing - the wonderful, pulsing odd time signatures of Greek, Eastern Mediterranean music. I'd first become aware of it when on tour of Romania when I was just out of high school and it still catches my heart and possesses my feet.

Rich, weaving, pulsing circles of people, young, old, men, women - all caught up in the graceful and primal steps of the dances.

I sat and watched. The energy was palpable and old spirits of joy and community walked between the tables, danced in the circles.

Perhaps I was ready to see them, feel them - a rich feeling of comfort, grace, happiness, has been with me since work ended. Tomorrow is another day, I know, but tonight ...?

... tonight I'm where I should be.

A Pond FIlled With Odd Ducks

It's been very rainy for the last week or so. Summer in Maine can be very, very lovely and the lack of it is starting to tell on people around here, people who otherwise can handle the worst kind of Winter oppression.

However, the ducks in Deering Oaks pond are happy.

We've been screamingly - literally, in a couple of cases - busy at the Orchard. The new iPhone 3G(s) - which sounds rather like a tax code section now that I think of it - launched last Friday and starting about week ago the state of Maine began to become actively cognizant of the existence of the store.

This meant that we had progressively larger crowds as Friday's launch approached - and I heard the phrase "I didn't know you were here, I just walked by and saw the store" became less and less apparent.

Friday was doable because of the addition of two very affable security guards that let us keep the crowd down to a level we could handle. Basically if you weren't getting a phone or a CPU you didn't get in, but if you did you got someone assigned personally to you.

The guards went away on Saturday and since then it's been a freefall test of our professionalism.

I admit it - it's been fun. Exhausting, but fun.

It's also been a confirmation of the rightness leaving public school teaching. Despite the frustration of making foolish mistakes in activating phones I'm struck over and over again with just how sad - really, existentially sad - the experience of teaching in school made me.

A year has gone by - I look back at my posts - very early in my blogging output - and it went from this to this - and the latter is very close to who I am.

I know that I don't fit in in many ways - socially, financially, emotionally - and I'm continually surprised (if one can be that way) by the friends I have who have the same experience of life. We all fit together by the fact we don't fit together.

I live in a pond full of very odd ducks.

I like it.

No I love it.

A Walk Between Raindrops

I figured that I had to do something with all this tango music I've written and this little essay is as good as anything else and better than some.

We'll see ...

A Civilized Savage

When I was a child the "Museum of the Five Civilized Tribes" opened in Muskogee, OK. My Father's side of the family are all mostly "Okies from Muskogee".

"... A place where even squares can have a ball".

This was drummed into my poor skull - the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickashaws and the Seminoles, all five were the Five Civilized Tribes.

Whether this meant we either had good table manners or adopted slave-holding like da White Folks - well, jury's out.

Sadly, my money is on the latter.

It didn't help of course - we were all packed up in the middle of winter and frog marched to Oklahoma. All except the Seminoles, who high-tailed it into the Everglades and have never signed a peace treaty with the U.S. even to this day.

Good for them.

Still, this meant we have a standard to live up to and I'm trying to do my part by having a coffee and mixed-berry cobbler at David's in Monument Square.

It's a lovely warm night, I could have worn shorts but that's not really the style for David's.

It was supposed to be an Irish Coffee - which their bartender tried to fake by pouring Glenfiddich into a glass with the house Columbian brew. The coffee is actually pretty good but just having half-and-half on the side isn't an Irish Coffee. I think I did write a post about the worst Irish Coffee in Portland, at the Empire Dine and Dance - the best is at the Bar of Chocolate down on Wharf Street in the Old Port - but you couldn't pay me enough to go down there on a Friday night like tonight.

So, it was sitting grandly in the Square watching an interesting parade of people pass by.

This is Gay Pride weekend and a lot of unmixed couples were parading through the Square by Our Lady of Victories. The band "They Might Be Giants" is playing at the Port City Music Hall, there's a palaver outside my windows in the dooryard, fueled by cheap beer and good friends.

I have to be at work tomorrow at 8 - I hope they don't get rowdy.

This is the first time in several years I've missed the Gay Pride Parade - I love the favors they throw from the crowd and there's always a great party in Deering Oaks afterwards.

So with the needs of tribal honor met I'm going to listen to Countdown and thence to bed.

Apres Moi, le Deluge

There is no particular meaning to this pic. I took it the other day when biking around the city - and I've not had time to do it since.

Actually it's rather a rainy evening at the of a more than rather rainy day. I woke up with a funny tune/harmony running in my head and staggered to the computer to write it down - this, even before my morning coffee, which is saying something.

And now the darn thing is pretty much finished.

Orchestrated (roughly) and ready to edit. It has a very plaintive quality.

I've told my friends in TML that most all of my pieces are autobiographical in nature - either the titles or the music - both, most of the time - have some kind of deep connection to me. I suppose I could take time to really be clever and write clever detached music, but that takes time and I'm afraid I'm too impatient these days.

Obviously not all this stuff gets played - I think they've played maybe three of them and I'm well into the twenties by now. Not all of them are really good enough to be played - they may not make structural sense a lot of the time, or they'd just be boring to dance to. But as my friend Hank Beebe says, you have to have thousands of pole-vaults before you're allowed to compete - even if you can jump higher than anyone else there's more to it than just muscular (or musical) cleverness.

So I just write and try to get better with each one. Hopefully they're getting better as I go.

Hopefully I'm getting better as I go.

GingerGlass

A bit cooler than one might like and the music here in JavaNet is a bit louder than one would like (especially if one is trying to edit a brand new tango) but all in all I think it's rather a pretty day.

As pretty as one might like it to be.

This new piece just kind of erupted into my head as I was listening to last night's Rachel Maddow show. I wanted to write something that was more direct, that would lay its rhythm out right from the first bar.

For once I actually started with crafting the melody rather than searching for patterns that sustained a general mood - or pattern of moods.

Patterns that make patterns of moods. I like that.

Anyway, I'm nothing if not flexible. It came together in about an hour. I don't think I'm going to try for a huge artistic statement - just for a little dance tune.

So, with the basic outlines done I'm here at JavaNet, having an Italian Cream Soda with more Gingerbread syrup in it than is probably good for me. And a hot dog from the guy in Monument Square.

A hot dog with kraut - you need to have some kind of vegetable with lunch.

A Litre of Kitty Litter

So, it really has been a busy stretch of time.

Taking a couple of days for writing and various other methods of rethinking thing has been very worthwhile.  

One of those methods involved redoing some of the bits and pieces of the apartment that aren't often dealt with.  This includes getting rid of kitty litter boxes.

The City of Portland provides, for a nominal fee, big blue recycling tubbies that are set out for pickup every Thursday. I rather like the idea of recycling as much of my trash as possible, rather than just adding to a landfill.

Sadly though we have pickup, we don't always have putout so taking 30 minutes to pack all the litter and kitty food boxes has been a good exercise.

Now I have to get rid of an old T.V set - my first color one - and a DVD player.  Seems kind of odd to wax nostalgic over a T.V. set but this one has kept me company for a long time.

The DVD player?  Not so much.

So out they go.

At some point.

Sweet Rides, Candles and Long, Long Teeth

And so, without any further ado I give you Summer of 2009.

We popped out into this with the most shocking of transitions.  On Memorial Day, Zoe Sarnacki, a young lady who lived just around the corner from me - directly across from the W's - was murdered - decapitated, stabbed, necrophilized and then her body set afire.

The young man suspected was caught shortly thereafter.

"Shocking" doesn't come anywhere near describing how this felt and I'll have more to say about it soon.  Two nights ago, Monday, there was a candlelight vigil to mark her loss.  Very intense.  Very healing.

But that's how it started, like it or not.

Since then - only a week ago - I've been working pretty much every day for the last 12 days at the Orchard.  This has been a lot of fun and very useful - career and knowledge-wise.

Still, taking a couple of days off is a good idea.  I have a new tango to orchestrate (still have to resolve an accordion problem) but for this moment I'm at my usual Wednesday post at Mousse, chillin' and a little chill as it's just a little cool here in the shade.

I dropped my annual pledge at the Museum - not anywhere near as large as suggested but a very sincere donation nonetheless.

The bike pictured above was across the street.  It looked brand new - "cherry" is the word the kids use today, I think - and it was fun to play with the camera and experiment with shots.

The Market is in full swing today.   People are out and about - the great Cubano-Afro drummer Micheal Wingfield biked by, playing hooky from domesticity as I was, looking at the crowds and checking out the scene.

And, of course, there is a man making balloon animals (as well as the usual jazz band and chalumeau clarinetist).

I like it.  There is the usual mix of people, children in strollers, schoolkids on field trips (since a lot of districts can't send kids to Boston they're substituting Portland).

And then there are my two new friends, Gina and Matteux (long "U").

I always notice long legs in black hose - even if they're on both partners in a straight couple - sue me - but these two, walking across the square, inured to the gawks of less enlightened shoppers, caught my eye when they suddenly raced across the bricks to the man making balloon hats, barking with delighted laughs.

THAT was cool.

So when they walked by my station on the plaza of Mousse I asked them to stop and let me snap their picks.

You can't tell - probably shouldn't have taken Gina's suggestion to stand in the Sun - but Matteux has very, very sharp canines.

God, I love this town.

So here we are again.  For the first time in four dozen years I don't have an official Summer vacation.  I can't say, right now, that I miss it.  Perhaps if I wasn't doing such interesting work or if I didn't know such interesting people I might not be so content.

But I don't seem to miss it.

And I am content.

From the hot dog man to the friends of poor Zoe, for good or ill I'm a part of this community.

"Shakespeare In the Park" will be firing up in the next day or so.  Fenix Theatre is carrying on the tradition set more than a decade ago - and all of Portland will come rolling up.

Meanwhile we'll keep meeting, dancing, singing, thinking, crying and living together, connected and blended into each other's lives.

Sometimes that thought - a connected sense of feeling,  feeling a sense of connection - scares the screaming fantods out of me but sometimes that can't be helped.

We can only do or be what we are given to do or be.  The rest is revealed as the game is played out.