Here, Masquerading as There.

I can't believe I'm writing a post based on my experience of a burger.

It can be stated - on moderately good authority - that Americans eat cheaper food that is worse for you. This is in opposition to Europeans who spend almost 10 times the percentage we do and buy less, more often.

Which shows that fresh food, while more expensive, is much better for you in the long run - their obesity rate is a fraction of ours.

Being diabetic - you didn't know? - I have to pay (fairly) close attention to what I eat, and when. Most of my meals are planned - or at least strikingly predictable.  They have to be because I don't really have time to hit the food court every day and even if I did I can't afford the money.

Controllable with exercise and moderate drugs my condition can be considered a proud expression of my Native heritage.  We are so prone to Type 2 Adult Onset diabetes that I'd feel I was betraying my heritage as a man of the Cherokee Tribe if I didn't have the disease.

Breakfast and lunch are very, very consistent.  Dinner, however, can be a problem, one that I'm generally slow to work out.  The day of work that doesn't end with a crockpot full of stew (or other expectant dinner)  can be a bit of a mess.

So saying I got home from work after visiting a friend and chatting over mugs of tea (very under-rated) thing, tea is). There wasn't time to fix dinner - for logistical/temporal reasons - so I wound up at Three Dollar Dewey's, a local beer and popcorn emporium.

The cup of chowder was welcome but my eyes were bigger than my tummy and I ordered a Greek burger - lamb patties, yogurt-spiced sauce and an extra pickle (Mom always said I should have a green vegetable at every meal.

Since it was lamb - ground lamb, at that - I should have ordered it well-done but I foolishly had it medium and I think it was spiritually still hanging around.

I remember thinking at the time "you don't really need this" - "the soup should hold you over, don't get the sandwich" - but I proceeded to turn my tummy upside down (it seems to have been too great a coincidence to be an accident).

So now I'm finally settling down with a good book. The burger may have gone in like a lamb but it's sticking around like a lion.

My attitudes toward food have to become convictions - and then be adhered to with courage because they are so. It's not enough for taking a moderately healthy approach to food be a duty, it has to be something akin to programmed as something that is a part of your life - so that if you're not doing something it feels wrong and you correct it.

To go back to an earlier post your approach to dealing with the negative feelings - the voice that guides you away from your true North - that voice is simply an old, self destructive program, one that can be co-opted to lead to a new, more sane place.

 We can act above what we think we are condemned to do.

The Song of a Stone

Spring is, well, springing .... despite my best efforts to deny it.

It's very pretty, the leaves and trees are starting to bud - I took a very close look at willow buds on my walk this evening - still, even at this moment of transition, of the world in satori, the bones of Earth are being covered in green sinew and something of the raw power of the land is camouflaged and hidden

It's easier to be aware of the Earth in Winter, you can see it better. It has a very slow, deep, patient  voice - you have to slow your brain down to the speed of a rock.

It can be done, your mind perceives time and change happening at a very different rate - it can be done.

I hear leaves and trees as rapid patterns, like the song of a thrush - lovely, flutelike but full of small pieces of information that you have to allow to flow and then put together - rather like Lego blocks.

Since childhood the sound of waves has entranced me - that's the reason I love living here in Portland. It was a great shock in college when friends told me they heard waves as all sounding the same. I discovered while quite young that each wave has a unique sound, same as individual snowflakes having a unique crystal structure.  If you sit by the side of the ocean - which I don't do nearly as often as I want to - you can understand their voice, hear their songs.

This getting lost in sound happens pretty easily to me - often at a tango practica I will hardly dance, just lost in the sound from the stereo in combination with the movement of the dancers. Over the vision of movement - and the movement of sound - my own imagination will take me over and I get lost - or, more exactly "find myself" in the sound.

Other sounds and patterns impose themselves on top of what my senses are telling me and my imagination, a sense of sound and time, takes me over.  It's a different world than that experienced by the people sitting right next to me.

This can really freak out people who don't know me.  I'm surprised I don't find myself drooling.

As I get older I discover that my capacity to relate to people has grown.  So has the danger of my being overwhelmed by the presence, thoughts and feelings of the people around me.

I'm not a misanthrope - I love people very much, so much that I'm paralyzed by my sensitivity - same as with music and movement. Too sensitive in an almost psychic way.

With preparation you can be ready for it -but if I'm tired or cranky or have low blood sugar my defenses will be down and people will freak me out in a way music and movement don't.

A roomful of people can sometimes feel like being buried in an avalanche of sensation.

I suspect this is why I get along so well with rocks.

Tuesday, 11:00 p.m.

"Our Revels, Now Not Ended...."

Okay. So I took a liberty that I wouldn't take if I was actually performing "Tempest".

"Our revels now are ended.  These our actors, 
As I fortold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air ...."

I should actually get on stage and perform this, I think I'm just the right age to give Prospero a good run. There was a chance recently and I didn't get organized enough in time to try it.

My revels are ended. My 56th birthday passed with working on Wednesday, an impromptu dessert and sushi dinner, then a tango practica.

Thursday was a late start, a tango lesson, walking a dog, climbing a mountain and cuddling a three-year old with a boo boo.  A nap by the road, a tango class and a short, tossing night.

And here I am.  Back to normal. A run to Trader Joe's, a last dessert and then a return to the regimen of  Persian cucumbers, hummus, muffins, almonds, fruit smoothies and apples for the forseeable future....

.... and yet, somehow "normal" isn't the same as it was before these events.

There seems to be more chocolate in my glass of milk - somehow the flavor of life has suddenly ratcheted up.

We live our lives in our bodies and I seem to be much more present in mine. So if my physical presence is more, well, present, then the more psychological/emotional part may be connecting better as well.

I'm not really sure if people can fundamentally change, but I very sure that they can learn new ways of being. If there is a voice inside that sends me East when my true self points North, then I can learn to continue around the compass to point back true to North again.

My friends, from tango partners to professional colleagues to three-year-olds with boo boos - all of them are both signposts and destinations. I see my progress on my journey in their faces and thoughts as I pass - and they are also welcome hostels of grace, offering the traveler refreshment, information and the occasional tour of a beauty spot.

So I suspect the trip will continue, a moveable, constant birthday party, like the steps in a well-done tango. Each movement is blended into the one before it. Where you are serves as the rooted source of the next step's energy.

Now I have to work on music.The piece below needs a remix and new ones crowd my poor brain.

Oxygen Debt

I never thought I'd ever be a dancer.

I've always wanted to dance.

There was a school that the rich - or seemingly rich - kids I went to elementary school with, the ones who headed South on Cincinnati Street after school as I headed North - called Skelly's, I think - went to for social dance lessons. I'm sure they were the miserable affairs you can imagine, boys bowing to girls all sitting along a mirrored wall while someone makes them waddle through the basic box step.

At least, I hope it was that way.

We did square dancing in school, this was Oklahoma, of course. Partly history, partly Phys Ed.

My eldest sister was in a dance routine in high school, part of the legendary Daze shows produced by students to an Equity level. More on those another time, but I do remember the music: Henry Mancini's "Pink Panther" theme. I sang myself to sleep that night with the opening bass lick and the unforgettable sax tune.

Years later I interviewed Mancini and he thought it was cool. I was so proud I could die.

I tried to tap dance on the porch of our house and my mother, not given to sophisticated English formulations said "you are just a dancy boy". I loved my Mom very much ....

My biggest exposure to real dance happened because I seriously dated a gen-u-wine New York dancer - a finalist for the original role of Cassie in "A Chorus Line" and a student of modern dance pioneer Charles Wideman.

Her dad - my mentor in becoming a published composer - wrote musicals for off-off Broadway, as well as shows detailing church history for use as "chancel" pieces (which is how I knew him). She was his resident choreographer and she was really good.

Oddly she was also noted for having two of the top ten legs in New York City, according to the Daily News, who sponsored the contest - 7th and 9th place, respectively .....

Anyway, I was taught basics of ballet (a fond dream), modern (fall and recovery, very Wideman-esque), jazz (for show work) and tap - purely for the joy of making the sound. Jazz tap.

So now that experience can be called on to serve me as I allow myself the joy of letting my body speak through the movement of Tango. Up until now I never really believed I could do this. I've always been unable to voice - even accept - my physicality and trying to speak from it was like yelling inside a dark, empty warehouse.

All I could manage was an insane jealousy of those who were more comfortable with themselves, who moved effortlessly, were lithe and flexible and very handsome or beautiful. A profound feeling of "I can't".

"I can't ..." can be a perfectly reasonable evaluation of the state of affairs if it's tied to "... because I don't know how to yet".

When it's tied to " ... because I'm not allowed" then it's that horrid voice that always seems to send me East.

The irony that I've spent most of my life helping others do what they didn't know - or think - they could do .... well, that's not lost on me now.

I've danced before, in concerts, in shows, sometimes just spontaneous hoofing - but this is different.

Taking classes leaves me speechless, I'm a sponge and sponges aren't noted for repartee. I watch and it all just makes sense. That doesn't mean it comes easily, it's just that my body seems to hear me - or I'm hearing it, just the way music can take over my conscious mind and render me motionless. Tango blends the voice I've always had as a composer with the voice of my body, which is just now clearing its throat.

I can hear my body and that's the strangest thing, it's like a light's gone on in that old darkened warehouse and I can suddenly see all of the wonderful things that have always been there.

I'm not letting my fear of mistakes stop me (not much), it's like having Tourette's of the feet, where I just can't get it out fast enough and it's all garbled. Now that I've accepted that I can dance then it gets even harder than the pain and frustration of when I believed I couldn't.

I'm fortunate to have friends I can share dance with whose personalities make me feel safe to be foolish, brave and explorative ( if that's even a word). It's like my writing - I'm not sure what the hell is going on, but something is and I can't wait to see where it leads me next.

Stipendium Gaudium Vitae Est

"The wages of Joy are Life".

I was in 4th grade or so when CBS aired the Richard Burton/Elizabeth Taylor version of Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus", directed by Burton and Neville Coghill. It was the first "Shakespearean" film I remember seeing, though we'd memorized "The Seven Ages of Man" in Mrs. Beall's Speech class.

The tag line for Marlowe was "Stipendium peccati mors est" - "the wages of sin are death". It was the first Latin I'd ever really paid attention to - both for its strangeness and for the theme it presented in the film.

The idea of death being the result of sinful behavior - defined by other people except oneself, of course - that habit took a while to instill - was very close to how my family related to life. There was always lots of fear and guilt to go around.

Still, life finds a way. I think we can always accept its constant invitation to dance if our fingers aren't jammed too far into our ears. If we can understand the words and accept our worthiness to dance then it can happen at anytime.

In my case, Madeline L'Engle's book "A Wrinkle In Time", suggested to me by my second-older sister, kept that voice familiar to me until I could accept it.

I'm glad the child that read that book is still very much within me - caught in the beauty of both light and dark, hoping for one, accepting the other, believing in love as a real bridge between the two - and between people.

I watched a new dancer who joined us at practica tonight. Adira worked with her and then I got nodded to "take her in hand" and dance. This is a task the "experienced" dancers undertake to give new people a sense of accomplishment so they'll come back. After I'd taken her through 3 or 4 songs we sat down and another fellow came by - she said she wasn't sure if she should continue and was experiencing a burst of "Catholic Guilt".

My response was "Absolvo te", "you are forgiven". Studying all those Mass forms in undergrad school paid off, I suppose. The thought "looks like she's having a good time" called up my pidgin Latin and I thought how an inhalation of Joy can lead to an exhalation of Life.

This all takes a lot of work - but some things are more fun than fun, if you get my drift.

Do you?

Native Seder

Nu na da ul tsun yi - the place where they cried.

So, why is this night different from any other?

Well, some of my tango friends had a milonga, a party, out in New Gloucester. It was a very nice time but I'm very tired and looking forward to a day off tomorrow where I can enjoy the day, go for a long walk and write some music.

So I came in, calling ahead to put a printer exchange into action with my friend Adira.

She had spent the evening at a friend's Seder and thus could not be at the milonga. We met for a cup of tea (her) and an Italian soda (me) at Boda, the local Thai place.

Since my life has always been a big intercultural festival I asked her to tell me about it and she kindly shared her evening - as I did with the milonga.

It was a little odd, she said, as she - a gentile - seemed to know more about the story of Passover than her hosts. Or, more precisely, had a better overview - the facts were gathered from everyone's experience, rather like the pot luck dinner at the milonga, and everyone feasted.

My observation was that we Cherokees had gone through an exodus ourselves - one where we could point to actual locations where people had suffered and died.

In the year 1838, for various reasons, mostly due to the greed of White people and a complete writing off of both our rights and our cultural integrity, my tribe was moved, in several waves, from their ancestral land in Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee to what is now Oklahoma.

15,000 people left on the march - 4,000 died.

Four. Thousand.

It was especially hard for the last wave, the holdouts. Rounded up by soldiers and local militia, most of whom just wanted to move them out to make way for white settlers, the last wave traveled a road already stripped of supplies by earlier travelers - and were charged gouging prices for food and ferry transport. Weakness led to disease and death.

Oddly, the term now used -"Trail of Tears" - seems to apply more to those who watched the march - my people walked stoically and showed no emotion.

I suppose there is a similarity between this and the Hebrew Exodus. Still, the Exodus started because the first born of the Egyptians died, allowing the Hebrews to go - in our case, we were the ones who both left and died.

The tribal flag of my nation, the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma (actually it's one tribe now, the Eastern holdouts have been re-integrated) has a lot of symbolism in it - but you'll notice a very obvious black star, seven pointed, in the corner.

This star was added in remembrance of those who died because of this removal - what today we'd call "ethnic cleansing". Inconvenient people removed.

Job done.

When my father presented his great-granddaughter - my grand-niece - to the elders of the Tulsa Indian Mission (Methodist), our old family church, he did so in a basket hand-woven by my mother. I wish I had a photo of it, it's a magnificent, perfect example of the basketer's art.

More importantly an elder told my father that he was the great-grandchild of those who had survived the removal - and now he was presenting his great-grandchild for honoring and naming.

The circle was closed. Our people have survived to become the largest tribe in the United States.

Perhaps we should celebrate a seder of our own, a remembrance that there is a place we came from, a place where we went and a place where we are.

Perhaps everyone has a similar set of circumstances, a leaving, forced or not, that ultimately ends and is recovered from. And you grow and create and come full circle, like my tribe has.

I like to think we can. The Cherokee removal can be physically traced today, we can see where swamps were frozen, look at Mantle Rock, where we huddled in the rain waiting for the ferry man to get all the white people out of the way and then charge five times the normal rate for us to pass.

And our survival can be seen too, as is that of everyone who has gone from a place to a place.

So this night is perhaps more wondrous than we first suspected. And tomorrow - today - is Easter.

The Sad Clowns

Full moon night, the ring of stone is silver

Rather than its normal glow of green.

The brick-laid sidewalk leads me through the city while

Ancient stories play inside my ear.

And in the graveyard, silent and impassive

I meet my friends from childhood once again.

Their faces pallid as if bleached in moonbeams,

Lips bright red and eyes as black as coal.

My friends, the Sad Clowns, have been with me always,

They come each time my life is frayed and torn,

with nameless games and dark expressive dumbshow,

Silent music, tricks that have no name.

Their taloned fingers reach inside my very heart

and tear out every horror from my soul.

They hold them up and show me in the moonlight,

The things I never thought that I would know.

The horror of that moment always passes,

A time of horror thus brought to an end.

They melt away like shadows in the moonlight

The Sad Clowns - who have always been my friends.

The Sad Clowns come from the dark part of me. They are the parts of me that can scare people, the part that dwells on hurt, evil, darkness, depression - the shadows formed by the light from "the better angels of our nature".

You cannot have light without shadows - if you think you're doing yourself a favor by surrounding yourself only with positive, shiny-happy people then you're fooling yourself.

My best friend, who passed away last year once told me a proverb from his home country of Germany: Eine Ende mit Schreck ist viel besser dan schreck ohne ende.

"An ending with terror is much better than terror without an end."

And the job of the Sad Clowns is to force me to see where the sadness and tension was in my life. No substitute for a good therapist but good helpers anyway.

Some version of this story has been with me since I was in 4th grade, for various reasons, in various incarnation.

Someday I'll write a short song cycle about it - someday.

Positions

Bradbury Mountain, in Pownal, due West of Freeport.

My last day of vacation saw me follow my interior compass North, looking for pine cones and small branches to fill tall glass flower containers given to me by a colleague.

I love having luminaries in the window seat - their light is easier to live with and think to. The branches didn't work but piles of colored stones and pine cones, along with fairy lights, fill the vases which are glistering with warm, rich light.

I spoke to my Father while seated on the rock. He's fine, I'm going to fly back to OK to visit him in a month.

The whole plan "had" to be a certain way, I had to walk the mountain first, sit and call Dad, stand on the edge while my "guts" churned deep inside my abdomen, fear, a sudden feeling that I'd get too close and try to leap off the edge with the specific purpose of flying.

A message to a Facebook friend was answered while I was still sitting - very good reception for a granite outcropping with the honorific of "Mountain" when "hill" seemed more to the point.

"What do you see?" my friend asked. She knew about trees and sky - she'd lived in that very neighborhood.

So, what did I see?

I saw the bones of the land, the solid shafts of the trees, stones embedded in the leaves from last year, the rich, soft beginning of new soil.

I love this time of year, of feeling the raw shape and power of the land, it's strength and presence both lying dormant through the false Spring we had this year.

The sounds, especially as I neared the crest of stone that beetles over the woods surrounding the hill. If I took a stick and started scraping I'd hit the stone very quickly.

As you walk your steps boom in the deep mulch layer under what little growth there is, they boom like a hollow drum, like there are hidden rooms under the ground, a palace of stone, perhaps.

There are birds singing, rich piping against the soughing chords of wind in evergreen boughs, a rushing, rising, falling progression of chords, a background that gives even more power to the birdsong.

Underfoot is the smell of mould, wet, moist earth, rich decay - some whiff of pine needles which I cannot place. A Peloton of people running in a flight up the hill, water bottles strapped to their hands, talk about investments drifting back as I return to my car and more shopping for my luminaries.

The morning is cool but exertion warms me, a sit on a flat rock at the summit, basking in clear sunshine, thinking no thoughts but trying very hard to just listen, to be one with the place.

So there is sound, there is light, there is tension inside and beauty outside. The stone waits for my contemplation, my questions and it waits from me to calm down enough to hear it speak.

And a stone will talk to you if you let it, patient and slow, secure of its ground.

Stillness leads to awareness, inner and outer.

And then I descend the mountain, ready for a new day.