Jim Blog - JimAlberty.com

Dancing Against the Fog

2011-07-11T20:24:00.007-04:00

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

2011-07-04T11:36:00.009-04:00

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

2011-06-20T13:22:00.008-04:00

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

2011-06-20T10:52:00.006-04:00

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

2011-06-18T14:52:00.006-04:00

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?

2011-06-18T10:58:00.005-04:00

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

2011-06-17T11:00:00.007-04:00

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 ...

Operation TangoMoose.1

2011-06-17T03:10:00.005-04:00

Team TangoMoose takes to the sky

Facebook Gallery is here.

Our flight left on time - Jim C, Chris and I had lot’s of time to sit in the Jetport’s Shipyard brewpub, grab lunch and chat. Our talk was wide-ranging; personalities (of course), tango, politics and old T.V shows.

The destination is LaGuardia Airport, the occasion is the Men’s Night and Graduation weekend for Mama Gena’s School of (or is it “for”?) the Womanly Arts.

It’s a pretty earthy approach to practical feminist action that concentrates on community building, self-actualization (and knowledge) and a decided focus on sensuality and recovery of a woman’s real identity and value.

I’m 100% behind this - I’m also still not quite sure how “Men’s Night” fits into all of this except to intuit (with my Native American intuition - my “male intuition” doesn’t seem to cover this) that Mama Gena wants her “Sister-Goddesses” to mix it up with males (and other significants) in the most direct way possible….

…. and in this case “direct” means Argentine Tango.

Apparently we’re going to dance as direct partners. Argentine Tango is improvised - a leader provides the general direction and the follower goes there - but in her own time and with her own style, which the leader (usually a guy) has to follow and adapt to, or he doesn’t get any dances during the course of the evening.

One of the things I love most about Tango is the direct communication you have to develop with your partner - you have to pay attention and hear how she likes to dance, where and when she likes to dance, seriously - you have to listen.

So along with other delights of travel to America’s largest urban area I’m going to go meet some new friends (hopefully friends) and listen to them.

Maybe hear myself better too.

Losses and Gains and Cats

2011-04-05T21:03:00.005-04:00

Looked him in the eye as the sedative took effect. Kept repeating “Good kitty. You’re such a good kitty”.

We lose stuff - people, youth, friends, pets, careers, identities - all the time

I always promise at these moments that I will never take anything that I love for granted again. Never lie to myself that pets won’t get kidney disease, parents won’t have sudden heart attacks and prostate cancer. Never think that I can treat the thoughts and needs of my friends with indifference forever.

Never think that not saying what you feel is an acceptable way to live.

His eyes looked directly into mine, the way he always did when I left for work each day, looking with a cat’s certainty that I would return because “how could he not return to such a wonderful animal as me?”

I made that promise at the moments when I lost Eckart, after my mother, after leaving Litchfield after being, in effect, fired for incompetence as a teacher - promised each time, as if self-delusion was inoculation against the guilt of a job of loving badly done, inoculation against the guilt of shortcuts in action, passion, of care.

The supervising vet, at other times a very gruff, demanding person, was surprisingly kind. Perhaps my being wracked by loss and guilt made him seem gentler by comparison.

“Once he’s out the actual drug will work very fast. He won’t be suffering much longer.”

When I was a child my science teacher - the amazing Mrs. Heilmann - said that “when she was a girl” the worst thing you could say about someone was “he things the world owes him a living”. As if paychecks grew on trees and someone was supposed to pick them for him.

Not a great support of the Great Society, Mrs. Heilmann.

Over and over again - “you’re a good kitty. Such a good cat. I love you. I love you. Good kitty. Good kitty.” His eyes never wavered - or closed.

I stack my hope against my self-knowledge.

I hope I never think the world owes me love. I know that sometimes I take the people and things I love for granted, as if it’s something due to me just because I’m using the available oxygen.

It’s not guaranteed that we will be loved. It’s something we all need - to receive and to give. But it is not guaranteed.

Plants leave the seed knowing they must have rain, not knowing they will get it. But still they leave the seed.

So I looked into his eyes as they went dark, truly dark.

Finally now I hope that in that cat’s mind, that cat’s heart, inside that miserably sick, pain-wracked cat’s body he felt a cat’s certainty that of course he was loved because I had come home for him.

And that now I could be certain that I was loved in a cat’s own way ....

...even if he was the one who was now leaving.

Thank you to Sebastian P. Goodkitty - the late Lord High Kitty of Congress Street.

Larger Flakes.

2011-03-21T21:18:00.005-04:00

It's black night out now - I can see large flakes of snow falling in the peach streetlights below.

Mournful fog horns.

There is a pickup truck, its running lights glowing in the snow. A large man in a heavy coat is down by the docks, he lights a cigarette, drags on it for a few moments and tosses it into the water at his feet.

I've been resting here for the past 4 days, since Friday evening. There has been a run-in with a seal, over-priced pub food, the discovery of a 'fridge full of champagne and frozen cookie dough and a fair amount of sleep and introspection.

I wish I could say I am coming out of this a transformed person - unless you think that being more yourself is something of a transformation.

I've actually not talked all that much these last few days. Went to Portsmouth with friends for a tango practica, sat with a carpenter/boat captain pal in his rebuilt sail-loft of a house, drinking coffee and talking about the challenges of a being a new tango person - "new' being anyone not born and raised in Buenos Aires.

Through the windows that face my bed I can see lights moving through darkness, around the island docks in the middle of the harbor. It's motoring toward the dock with the pickup truck. The large man tosses what must be his fourth cigarette into the water and moves to the back of the truck. Looks like rope coming out, a line or something.

I think I've stayed here long enough. I feel rested, like my zealous, over-filled soul has used the time to listen quietly, patiently, to the gently varying sound of the waves on the shore. Like the snowflakes each wave has its own sound, its own pattern.

It should probably now become part of my routine to find time to sit by the ocean, wherever I am on the coast of Maine, to sit, listen and calm my spirit, tune my ear to hear the sound each wave makes, just once and then forever gone.

Unique and irreplaceable. And then gone.

The boat is at the dock. A tall man exits the wheelhouse, waves to the man on the dock, tosses him a line. The boat is home safe.

The snow keeps falling.

Fall forward, Spring Back - Feed a cold, starve a cold

2011-03-13T23:19:00.006-04:00

So now we've launched our 2nd Generation magical computer device. I've been so excited I've not been getting sleep - working out my nerves by writing a fairly challenging new tango.

I like this new piece. I tend to like all of my pieces, frankly - but this one really seems to say what's on my mind, the joy and the tension, the excitement and contemplation that always fight for supremacy in my spirit.

I'm taking some time off next week - I really don't think in terms of vacations and free time - ordinarily, anyway.

There's a lovely bed/breakfast overlooking Boothbay Harbour, about 45 miles north up Route One. During "The Season" it's quite a tourist haven; my digs for four nights would have cost a good bit North of $1,500 - I'm getting them for about $500, including full breakfast.

And I'm a big breakfast guy.

People at the Orchard who have worked full-time from the opening (I've been full time for just over a year) seem to take huge vacations - it was pointed out to me that 100 hours of vacation is more than two weeks, rather than just over 4 days (96+ hours or so). I just don't think that way.

So, before "The Season" starts, while stores are being painted, docks being repaired and fishermen doing actual work, I'm going to stop and just watch the tide change, probably singing "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay" - or, more realistically, thinking about what I have to do to get my music to sound the way I really hear it.

If you really believe in what you do, that it can do some good, you have to act. I suppose I am, that everything I've done in my life has led to this direction, to the moment I'm sitting in now, for good or ill.

Let's see what happens, shall we?

One Fog Bank and Suddenly It’s Spring

2011-03-06T23:29:00.002-05:00

The last 24 hours have seen the ruination of winter.

Had an isobar moved 50 miles toward the shore the rain pounding down outside would have passed through an arctic cold front and piled up as snow.

But it’s coming down as water, the air is in the forties and fog is drifting across the streets. Large drops are dissolving snowbanks that used to tower up to second-story windows.

My standards of meteorological neatness are quite high - if we can’t have lovely banks of puffy (easy to shovel) snow surrounding us then it’s just as well to have done with it.

Raindrops strike the brick sidewalk outside the glass doors beside my seat. The intensity waxes and wanes, cells are moving by above the city, the tap runs from closed to open and then back to closed.

I’m working on a new tango. It’s at a stage where I can take a step back to see how it feels as a unit. Having a foggy, rainy, slightly clammy night to stalk through helps clear my mind.

A beer and the excellent sauteéd Brussels sprouts make a difference too.

I suppose I’m ready for the season to change. Time to shed a layer of skin (going to the gym will help that too) and see what patterns I’m showing this year.

Strange Days, Stranger Nights

2011-02-01T21:03:00.003-05:00

Taking a moment to have a drink and catch up with this blog. We were hit with what would last week have been a serious storm - tonight it's only the precursor to a really, REALLY big storm.

I'm glad to say that I've finished my first new piece since Eckart died. It's a bit of a mash up - but it works well and I rather like it. The orchestration is in the works - but it's fun.

Tomorrow - or later tonight - the REAL storm will hit and we're going to decide if we open late or not. Either way we're going to do it. I love it.

Another reminder of the loss of my friend - besides talking through my fears I would be constantly pestered about my dreams. He was a strong proponent of dream theory; his training as a logotherapist gave him all sorts of interpretive tools to help people use their dreams to delve further into the center of their selves.

So here is the dream from two nights ago.

I remember being invited to Thanksgiving/Christmas dinner at the New England saltbox of a family that were friends of mine. Several musician friends were adult children of the family, the parents were my mentors in theatre and publishing music.

The "kids" had an old boat on the grounds to play in - I remember looking out the window at sunset - and at everyone having fun playing "boat". I helped set the table, opened the wine, made myself useful instead of joining my friends outside. The music from "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory", the Bricusse/Newley version, which is the reason I decided to commit to being a composer, was playing in the background.

I remember being polite and totally detached from the family feeling. Very typical. The Wizard of Oz was playing as well - I remember walking through Woodford's Parks back home and pretending to be in the movies as I walked through the woods and gardens, desperate to keep the magic I was feeling in my head intact so I could leave the park and deal with my life.

My guitarist friend has asked me to help him unload his truck into a downstairs entrance of a building near the old fire station (Station 5) on Boston Ave., where I learned to play pool when I was in First grade.

There was a long electric keyboard being unloaded into the back room space of a school, run by an evangelical church - my guitarist friend was part of the worship band but was something of a "four corner", hired to anchor the band. I set the piano up and crept to listen at the doors of the classrooms, at how disorganized and thoughtless their music lessons were. The rooms were dusty, barely lit.

I exited through the office, the secretaries mortified that I was there - apparently I was a known quantity - or at least my theology was.

It was a sunny Summer day, and I looked up to see all my friends, the accordion player, her sister, the bass player, the violinist, the guitarist, the mentors, all of them in a Sikorski helicopter, turning arabesques in the sky over my head.

They all clearly smiled and cheered at me, waving like they really cared.

And I remember thinking that I had to decide that either they were making fun of me or just being kind and loving. That answering that question was the most important thing in the universe - and that just knowing that decision faced me was enough to make me smile.

And THAT, my dear readers, is why I miss Eckart so much - he would be able to help me figure it out for myself. I suppose I'll have to.

How strange.

Despite the Magic Sometimes the Monsters Come Anyway

2011-01-19T22:46:00.003-05:00

So, let's talk about Clarke's Law, little boys and the monsters that drag you away.

Clarke's Law is a law of cultural inequality and it explains a lot of history. It states that "any technology sufficiently advanced will look like magic to less-advanced observer".

This is how Cortez and Pizzaro were able to defeat civilizations outnumbering their soldiers by millions to one. If you think you're dealing with gods and magic then you've put yourself at a disadvantage that may not be recoverable.

That idea of magic is in my life today. Since losing Eckart I've prepared for the moment when his son will ask why his father smoked while in the knowledge it would hurt him - and what does that mean about how his father felt about those around him?

It will be a slightly magical answer - I won't know it, won't understand it.

It is slightly bad magic - the mystery of why he smoked (and we all have things like that in our lives - more on mine in a moment) is part of a bad magic that took him away.

It is countered by good magic - the love and connection that we all shared - still share, though our experience of Eckart is different now - is something we don't understand and can't explain.

So I call it Magic. Like all good stories there is good and bad and sometimes people can learn to harness it and use it in both ways. It's a choice. That's not magic - I hope it's not. It's a choice.

Sometimes my own bad magic takes me over. I get sudden, overwhelming panic attacks sometimes, especially when I'm dancing with friends. With strangers, no problem (mostly I'm nervous about perceived wardrobe malfunctions).

Most of the time I just accept that that's what's going on in my heart and head, I go for a walk, cry it out, sit and breathe or just stand at look at the stars and it passes.

Most of my friends understand and accept it, give me space and still love me. Some people I know try to take advantage of it - I just watch them bluster and don't expect them to be there in any real way.

And often I'd go to chat with Eckart about it. Sometimes for sympathy, mostly just to acknowledge that I'm wired that way and it's the price, I think, for my creativity.

But tonight the bad magic came. I realized, as I sat in my apartment, just up from Maine Ballroom dance, where I'd just left after a record fast 90 second appearance, I realized that he wasn't there to talk there anymore.

That's a different magic than just losing him, a real blow. It was baking a loaf of bread and having no place to set it to cool, no one to share it with.

So I took a breath and headed back to dance with my friends. Good magic.

I think I'm ready if that young boy wants to talk about his dad now. We are all mysteries in some ways - we don't know what's going on and since we don't have explanations we have to depend on magic in certain ways.

In many others we're very clear and engaged in the science of our lives.

But sometimes it all comes down to magic.

Blizzard Watch/Snow Day

2011-01-12T19:50:00.005-05:00

Hello.

Can anyone here me?

Hello.

Oh - there you are.

... and tonight I'm at Geno's - two energetic young ladies, strippers from Portland's home-grown burlesque scene; J.R. himself, on the phone giving out booking info to a band from Boston; myself, getting out of the apartment to see the effects of the storm on my beloved little town.

And it is quite a storm. I awoke this morning and got to the Orchard in good order only to have it shut down at Noon. Since then I've been relaxing and chilling out (strangely) - should be writing music but just too scattered.

That's been the pattern. If you've been following me on Facebook you know that my best friend Eckart passed away suddenly of a heart attack just before Thanksgiving.

Since then I feel I've been off balance in some ways, more connected in others.

It feels like I'm in some kind of artistic limbo, it's become very hard to see any one particular project to completion, at least projects that don't have specific deadlines.

At the same time my enjoyment of my work in the Orchard has gotten more and more intense. I really like working there.

I'm part of a community - actually part of several communities.

Work has friends, new ones and old ones, people I've seen and worked with every day for almost two and a half years. I've never known a group of people this well before, it's very strange. I know personal things, professional things, have given and taken correction and comment and not let my natural feelings of immediate threat take me over.

My connections to the tango community have grown - well, as much as I ever manage to grow in a social group. I still don't get invited to parties and still can wander off into my own deep, almost autistic place when watching dancers. It freaks people out but it's worth it to experience such deep joy in listening, writing and dancing.

And my relationships with Eckart's family have grown.

I have people to talk to and, more importantly, people to listen to.

If all this was just watching what went along and not communicating in two directions then it would be unbearable.

I suppose I need to sit down and apply myself to get music written - I also need to think about where all of it is going, because I know what I'm writing is going in some direction - but what that direction is is totally a mystery.

I like mysteries and am OK with not knowing the final outcome of the things I do.

You get a present.

Is it more fun to look at the pretty wrapping, run the taste of anticipation over your tongue over and over?

Do you like seizing the box, shaking it, pulling the ribbons, ripping the paper?

Is it more about looking at the gift, trying it on?

Or do you get off on writing the thank-you notes?

Or do you do all of then?

Return to the Land Of Autumn

2010-10-31T12:25:00.001-04:00

I love taking the train, especially in New England and most especially in Autumn.

I become a voyeur of Nature. The trees gently discard their leaves which fall to the ground with a silky whisper of promise and rich, evocative feelings.

Winter is coming. Bare of leafy constraints the outline of the land is there to take in and there is no denial of either fault or beauty - or the rich melding of both.

So as we race through the bunched suburbs North of Boston the trees alternatively crowd and release the train; a frayed gold curtain opens and closes.

Under every tree, along each curbside, around every building Nature has taken it's sable brush to outline each in gold.

In time, I know, this trim will vanish, covered in snow or digested into the soil as a painter does who covers a perfectly good oil painting in white in order to begin again, hoping for a better result.

Unlike I, who blanks a score that isn't working for a new start that has no gaurentee of success, Nature knows that what she does is perfect now - and that what she does next will be the same.

In my life I have no such gaurentee - so I try, very hard, to love the process of living, to bring myself to laugh, even when I am most misunderstood or face my greatest loss.

Even in my moment of death, when my leaves finally fall and leave the beauty or faults of my life bare - even then I hope I will laugh as well as mourn, feeling the full measure of joy and sorrow, the same way I struggle to feel them both now.

I love Autumn.

-- Post From My iPad

A Road I've travelled before

2010-10-29T17:04:00.001-04:00

Traveling by train, from Portland to Washington.

I'm going to the Rally To Restore Sanity, tomorrow, in DC. There isplenty I could say about the politics of the moment and, at some point, I'll do just that

But, right at the moment, my mind is taken with the journey, watching the late Autumn trees of New England, seeing the show they've put on for a thousand, thousand years.

I love travelling by train, especially on this trip. Typing on my iPad, listening to Pandora radio on my iPhone (my Piazzola channel, which, for some joyous reason, is playing McCoy Tyner ...)

The Sun sets, the train is full, almost everyone heading to a Celtics game ocurring directly over the train station at the Boston Garden.

The landscape changes to an urban quilt, inlaid with trees, all new, all grown in the last hundred years. Few of the giants from a century or more are present, I am looking at the gentrification of the remains of a third Industrial Revolution.

Look with an inquisitive eye at the stonework of bridges and embankments .... you see where old paralell tracks lay when commuter trains carried the commercial lifeblood of Boston.

I suppose it still does, but these are fingertip capillaries compared to the femoral pulse of earlier days.

The light has changed. We are now running paralell to the Charles, making our approach to North Station. Rich, late afternoon light against the elevated highways of Boston.

Time for the next stage.

-- Post From My iPad

Location:Main St,Wilmington,United States

More Than I Deserve

2010-08-19T21:16:00.001-04:00

Very often no good deed goes unpunished. This is a rule I've seen at work in all sorts of contexts - though, strangely, not at the Orchard.

With that said, I'm always kind of tickled when I'm proven a liar.

So now, at twilight at the end of a fairly busy day I'm pleased to be enjoying a glass of Chianti, courtesy of the owner of Enzo, the pizza/wine bar that is the scene of so many of the blog posts I've written over the last few months.

The Sun is just getting done with setting - people wander by on Congress Street in couples, stopping to look in and watch me as I look out.

Recursive observation.

I helped the owner with a new device today and am pleased to report that I figured out a fairly esoteric mail problem for him.

So it was interesting to stop by and chat about their continuing router problem. Hopefully I helped and the result, for good or ill, is that I got a piece of pizza, salad, San Pellegrino water and the Chianti for free.

Sometimes just being a part of the mix - as opposed to observing from my usual catalytic point of view - is a lot of fun and worth the effort it takes.

Sometimes.

-- Post From My iPad

Transition States and Activation Energy

2010-08-18T23:13:00.001-04:00

I helped someone set up a blog today - it was really fun to see that person see their work - even only a few words and a blurry pic shot with the iSight camera on board the iMac.

Like several people I know I spend a lot of time as a catalyst, allowing events and actions to happen but not being changed myself.

Well, maybe not totally - you can't stand around happy people too long without having your soul expanded in some way.

Strangely, the opposite is not always true - hanging around sad people won't always shrink your spirit - our natural drive is to be happy in some way and we'll find a way to do it.

I think that's why there were survivors of the Jonestown Massacre.

There are times when my sadness gets to be so great that if I had a gun and thought I could stand the noise I'd blow my brains out. But since guns are generally a very noisy proposition and I don't have any brains anyway I usually just bull my way through to the other side.

Besides which catalysts are an important part of the world and fulfill themselves by being the cause but not being a part of.

I guess that's just how it is.

-- Post From My iPad

Location:Congress St,Portland,United States

It Takes a Lot of Brass

2010-08-15T00:24:00.002-04:00

Celebratory mood - just watched, live online, the annnouncing of scores at the Drum Corps International World Championships, from Lucas Oil Stadium in Indiannapolis. My old corps, the Blue Devils of Concord, California won their 14th world title with a convinving score of 98.90.

So here I am at Boda, having a real drink (and some peanuts) to celebrate.

From far back in my school career, high school in the 70's, actually, drum corps has been one of my measures of excellence in the performing arts.

Not in terms of content - I love to listen to a good jazz quartet (or a tango one), a symphony, a string quartet playing one of the Bartoks, modern dance by Wideman or Graham - any creative endeavor that leaves the soulnjust a little (or a lot) bigger than before.

But drum corps?

Like Cirque du Soleil (my other exemplar) it uses sound and movement to connect with the audience at a gut level, a breatheless "Oh My GOD" evocation of surprise, emotion and joy.

My biggest moment came at the end of my finals performance in August of 1977 (there's a PBS closeup of me to prove it). We finished the last note of "Rocky" - this WAS 1977, after all - and my horn came down, my eyes snapped up to see almost 40,000 people jump up to applaud.

Actually, they were screaming their fool heads off.

... and that rush, that sense of pride and connection - or affect - was what I wanted my students to feel in my public school teaching - that kind of performance and drive.

Christ, no wonder I got fired.

So tonight is a strange night, a kind of musical-magical demarcator that marks the line between Summer and Autumn. A cool, moist wind is blowing down Congress Street. I feel the end of one adventure, the start of another, rebirth by means of a quiet death.

When I was Equipment Manager during the 80's this was the day I packed everything up, checked in uniforms and horns, flags and drums, secured and locked the truck for the last time, handed my keys over to Mike Moxley, our manager, and got dropped at the airport to fly East to Maine, while the busses, now full of just kids wanting to get home to work or college or just a soft bed and home-cooked food, they all headed West.

And so this strange magic returns to my life again thanks to a short broadcast on a website. I'm connected and I'm seperated and I'm a very, very proud and lucky person tonight.

Perhaps every night.

-- Post From My iPad

Location:State St,Portland,United States

Dancing With Lawrence the Eagle

2010-08-08T22:31:00.001-04:00

Spent most of my afternoon at the Gray Animal Refuge Pow Wow - Honor the Animals.

Haven't been out to a pow wow in well over a year. My ribbon shirt and belt, which is most all the regalia I wear, were still on their hangers from the move to my current apartment, my dance staff still leaning on the wall behind the bathroom door.

The tech staff had a meeting at the Orchard today, mostly policy updates and best practices. I learned a lot. Oh, and donuts too.

So I headed up directly after, a 30-minute or so drive.

Unlike other pow wows I've been to this one did not let dancers in for free. It was being held in the animal park and so admission was controlled by the staff. I got the impression that a lot of events were held there and that we were just part of a continuing marketing stream rather than a unique happening.

I'll have to go back when it's just a park; I'm sure it's a really great facility - there just was not time to enjoy it for it's own merits.

There were three drums in the arbor, one local, another from Northern Maine and the third from out of state. I immediately started running into friends I'd not seen in a year and felt welcome immediately.

I never really learned fancy dancing when I was living back home - mostly I'm what's known as a men's straight dancer, tall with a dignified step, an elder by bearing, and now, by years.

Or so I thought - seems I was the only really middle-aged man in the Grand Entrance. All the others were much older.

So I wonder where all the young bucks were. Imteresting.

Our most interesting participant was the resident Bald Eagle, one Lawrence, by name.

I'd only seen pictures. Today I got a chance to see an eagle up close and very, VERY personal as I was standing in the entryway when he was brought in.

Instructions were specific. We stayed still and did not move, especially dancers with bustles and large feathered tops since those could be mistaken for small animals.

There have been incidents of dancers being mistaken for small animals and the bird, eagle-eyed though he was, had an aspect that made you think he was thinking how you would go with ketchup.

A very large bird, a top-of-the-food-chain raptor, a descendant of velociraptor, a killing machine who could perch on the end of my outstretched arm and easily, gracefully take my nose cleanly off my face in one lightening lunge.

For those sensitive to such things it was clear we were NOT at the top of the food chain.

For those not so sensitive, Lawrence was just something to photograph, a thing that was there to be observed and delighted over, respected even - but something not part of the immediate world.

Watching people watch the world, not as active participants but behind emotional glass, looking at it, snapping pics and then going on their way back to their own insulated pocket universe - it was maddening

I'm surprised at the vehemance of my reaction, but it's a very real thing.

For example, you should not take pics during the first three dances of a pow wow - the Grand Entrance, the Flag Song and the Veteran's Honor Song. These are considered real ceremonies and not just excuses to show off the singing talent of the local high school junior All-State soprano.

Still, today despite numerous announcements, there were still people taking pics as we went around. I had to walk up to the rope and tell them - we were past asking - to not take them.

I hate to admit how satisfying it was to do it. But it was satisfying.

Respect. Connection. Not nessecarily in that order.

-- Post From My iPad

Tango de Nuestro Adios

2010-08-03T22:45:00.001-04:00

I have no words for "goodbye".

There is no way to admit

That you no longer will

Be part of me.

Just by you

Being you

I will be more myself.

Just to keep you

In my heart

When you're a continent away

Will shake the snowy globe

Of memory.

The old dance of magic,

Of joy,

And love,

Will call me to the music,

Spin my tired soul across the floor,

School me, once again,

In listening with my soul unfettered,

Free to sing and dance

The music others often hear better than I,

The lovely, graceful song of my own heart.

-- Post From My iPad

Just What the Doctor Ordered

2010-07-30T23:41:00.002-04:00

Sitting in the sidewalk part of Boda, just down from my apartment, just across from the statue of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, in the Square that bears his name.

An Italian cream soda ... Thai roasted peanuts ... all to the dulcet accompaniment of drunken lunatics in the park across the street at the very feet of Henry's statue.

I'm playing hooky from working on orchestrating the new tango. The piece makes a huge amount of sense, it has a drama and logic throughout that I've been looking for for a long time.

I'm very proud of it - though I suppose I should not be surprised that it's taking so much energy to accomplish.

Another cause for celebration is my arrival as a "triageur" (my word, I've no idea if it really exists in French) for small .mp3 music players at the Orchard. People book appointments and I'm starting to work with them to diagnose, replace or repair them. The music players, that is.

I thought I would hate it - turns out I very much underestimated the experience, and my capacity to understand and accomplish it. It's really a lot of fun.

Of course, right now we're talking about music players - later on this is going to graduate to people's phones, the high-tech flagships of the Orchard - and their contacts, calendars and other personal info. I've seen first-hand how people's carelessness and sheer bone-headed technological stupidity can cause so much trouble.

My God, this cream soda is scrummy!!

The peanuts rock too.

Today's biggest job was helping a person set up (one of several) business email accounts on an iPad - the bane of our explanatory careers, since private services are notoriously finicky - it took an hour, I had to try it on a house computer and, ultimately, my own iPad (with a manager's permission) ...

.... and damn me if I didn't get it to work!

I know it's a small thing, but so many of the things I try to do - lose weight, dance more effectively, write more passionately, live more constructively - all take so long to bear fruit.

It means a lot to bash at something full bore for an hour or more, at the drop of a hat, almost, and have it come out right.

So now I'll go home and sleep the sleep of the just.

Just grateful to be alive.

-- Post From My iPad

Location:Congress St,Portland,United States

Just off the boat

2010-07-18T00:20:00.002-04:00

Another Saturday night on the water after another Saturday afternoon in the Orchard ...

... oh, and with a short nap and break in between.

I have several pices in my head, all crowding up for attention, crying "Pick me! Pick me!". The original plan for waking up from the nap was to start blocking out new music - well, actuall I would have been grateful just to get some rough thoughts down.

Strangely I couldn't hear any one thought clearly because they were all so be-damned noisy. I knew I could work them out in time - I was ennervated ( I love that word) from the heat.

(For rxample, it was 80° when I walked to the ferry terminal at 9:10 - it's 78º now, two hours later).

The night was clear on the water. The "moonlight cruise" goes from Portland to Long Island and thence to both sides of Great Diamond. The stars gave themselves up, slowly, teasingly, as my eyes grew used to the dark.

At Diamond Cove the last dinner/wedding party crowds - and I do mean crowds - took over the front of the boat, bringing their own bottles of wine and their own air of obnoxious alcoholic good cheer.

The vinous bonhomie forced me to the very stern of the bridge to watch the wake boil up from underfoot.

During this I was joined (at a discreet distance) by a woman armed with a practical backpack and a hoodie. After a few minutes of silent regard we struck up a coversation.

Turns out she used to be a middle school music teacher too. She'd left because she couldn't be the kind of music teacher - hell, musician - that she really was while working in public schools. Too many requests for Christmas concerts that were really sing-alongs.

We compared notes and authenticated each other's view of reality. It was nice.

How very strange to leave in one cloud of confusion and return with a sense of certainty about what one is really about.

Not so much a voyage of discovery as a voyage of confirmation.

How avante garde!

-- Post From My iPad

Strike!

2010-07-14T13:43:00.005-04:00

MobileMe gallery is here.

Well. The last time I went bowling, a good decade.5 ago, I tore up my rotator cuff in my right shoulder and carried that tension for almost 10 years (or a decade.0).

Of course, dating a dedicated angry dancer goddess didn't help with the tension level either ....

Still, I do enjoy the watching the physics of the game - in much the same way I like to watch curling in the Olympics (which, of course, is the only time you ever see it).

Out at the Farmer's Market today. The morning started off rainy and I've been meaning to continue my practice of sleeping on my days off, sleeping whenever my body said "sleep, sleep NOW!"

.... and it might actually have played out that way had I not seen a small flyer on the cheese monger's shelf, a flyer advertising the opening of Bayside Bowl, Portland's latest venture into community building and seer-sucker shirts.

Noon was the advertised time. The Time/Temperature building sign read 12:02 when I locked my bike up - and the postman joined me in knocking on the door. No answer. Ben Franklin left on his rounds, I walked around to try the back of the building.

Nothing.

It was 12:12 before I thought to pull the door again, which opened and let me into the tomb-quiet interior.

If you look at the gallery (linked here) you can see it's a very open, expansive place, very much a part of the new approach such places take these days. It's being pegged as a major part of the recovery of the Bayside area - especially since Maine Health bailed out on their new headquarters building.

It's now slightly after 2:15 - in these two hours this place has suddenly started jumping. games are being played on 5 of the 12 lanes, there are a lot of suits in the band area (they had a small ceremony acknowledging the Alfond money that helped get it all started), good Afro=pop music is on the stereo.

For myself, my single game was fun. I scored .... some .... points and quit before my arm began to feel any strain. Got two strikes, two gutter balls - so I guess I can call this even.

It is taking a risk, putting such a high-profile enterprise into what is admittedly a sketchy part of the town. Chatting with a younger friend confirmed some of the issues: it's just slightly too far to drive to, walking (at least back to 645 Congress) at 1 in the morning might be even more risky (we did have one flat-out pedestrian assault-murder downtown in Monument Square a month or so ago, very shocking).

Still, it's good to have faith that things can evolve into new directions, even sketchy neighborhoods.

I'll have to come back (when I've slept more) and see what it's like - and I actually did fairly well while bowling.

Who knew?

Taking the Starlight Ferry

2010-07-03T23:55:00.003-04:00

MobileMe gallery is here,

You can either have special, "perfect" nights once in a blue moon - some people, only once in a lifetime - or you can live your life so that almost every evening can be perfect, at least in some way.

I suppose it can be safely stated that having practically every night be some kind of perfect can devalue the experiences that make them perfect ... I disagree.

One can have a greater perspective that allows a clear distinction of the relative value of how precious certain things can be.

Some people, indeed, most of the folks I know, either through the Orchard or tango, seem to see things that way - like most everyone. This is one of the things that make me love my job and tango so very much.

Joy and wonder never seem to be taken for granted. I'm very lucky to have such friends and acquaintances.

Which means, I think, that we all seem to have reservoirs of darksness within us, a counterweight of sadness that bouys up the reality of joy. There is nothing maudlin or depressive about this, it's just the way the universe works.

I'm writing this at the Wine Bar, having just got back from a quiet, lovely ferry trip out to Peaks Island. Fairly quiet on the way out we were joined for the return trip by what I think was a wedding party, boisterous, over- dressed and talkative.

I see the contrast between quiet and robust voices, darkness between the lights of the docks, the diesel smell of the boat engines and the rich velvet of the star- specked sky.

The night was perfect. If you play your cards right then every night can be something like this. I prefer to see things more this way than being "realistic" - if we really can choose our reality then I choose this one.
-- Post From My iPad

Where ever it is you go, there you are ...

2010-07-03T21:51:00.000-04:00

One of my friends tells me I am "cursed with vision".

Not "visions".

Vision.

I have always - seemed to always - have faced the world as one of Pearl Buck's creative souls - "A human creature born abnormally, inhumanely sensitive" - do a search and look it up, if you're a new friend of mine I'll have inflicted it on you already ...

... anyway ...

... what this means, in the practical sense, is that any new idea comes to me in intense, dizzying clarity ... my intuition "sees" to the end of anything, whether a musical idea or a process for solving a problem.

This leads to one of the greastest professional dangers - and satisfactions - of my job at the Orchard.

Sometimes people come to me with problems during their training sessions, problems that I can see a solution and structure for, see it immediately.

My pride comes in setting my own process aside and focussing all my energy on helping my client find their own solution and structure - if I point out the dots then they can connect them in their own way.

Give someone a thought and they think for a minute - show them how to think and they'll never be stupid again.

Well, in theory, anyway.

So, for my own poor self, I have to accept where I am, going from there to the destination I see so clearly ...

.... Wherever that turns out to be, of course ...

-- Post From My iPad

Only Slightly Uphill

2010-06-22T21:48:00.001-04:00

We're in the final stages of prep for the new communication device. I'm also in the process of finishing a new birthday tango. Once it's been presented I can't wait to post the recording.

The work I'm doing with Logic Pro is paying off. Instruments are becoming more balanced and the sound of the mix is more focussed.

So much so that I'm coming to realize just how badly - or, more accurately, how much more room for expression I left - I played in the parts.

Something like that.

There's a lot of drama in this piece - for the first time I think it has a real balance of drama, danceability and musicianship. It's a question of getting to a point where "what" I write is overshadowing "how" I write.

Which means, amongst other things, that there's a much greater chance that any false move will throw the damned thing off, rather like a fly landing on the end of a tightrope walker's pole - just enough to throw the whole thing into the drink.

The higher you reach the easier a small thing can mess you up.

Frankly, I love it.

-- Post From My iPad

Many waters cannot drown love

2010-06-18T21:36:00.003-04:00

Fortunately there are still a lot of mysteries in my life - most of them concern the reasons for my own behaviour in situations that other adults navigate through like ducks on a pond.

From my own poor point of view most of them come from my innate limitations in seeing and understanding what is directly in front of my nose.

Case in point - we are really not supposed to use our personal tech on the floor of the Orchard unless specifically authorized to do so. I admit to being called out on it twice already so I promised the Store - by promising myself - that I would not do so again unless a real need arose...

... And that happened today.

A client asked for a trainer that either knew how to use sign language or had very clear handwriting - she was profoundly deaf and had very little intelligable speech.

But ye gods and little fishes did she have a wonderful smile in that grey-haired head.

I know, amongst many things I know I should know, that I should know how to sign. One of my colleagues - currently on vacation, of course - is also profoundly deaf; an interpeter is hired for him during storewide meetings and other functions.

But he wasn't there today and I was on my own.

Or, actually, I wasn't. It may be a truism but it really does take two to make a conversation and my client was willing to put up with my limitations in order to learn her computer.

Well, it takes two and one should have an iPad with Dragon Dictation loaded on it.

I was able to show her what to do by gesture, dictate the instructions into the iPad, email it to myself and then print it out so we could then write clarifications on it.

Strangely her handwriting was almost as bad as mine.

Still, we managed it. She learned the tasks she needed and, more importantly, learned why it worked the way it did, which meant she could then advance her work at home.

I suppose I tried to vocalize during the first ten minutes. After that, with the exception of doing the dictation I was silent for almost 40 minutes.

We parted with a warm handshake. I didn't use my voice until I got Back Of House.

Suddenly the intensity of concentration broke and tears came. Not in a choking flood, which is how I usually release intense emotion but in a quiet mistiness, a sense of overflowing feeling.

Now that I think of it I sometimes get the same feeling when dancing tango or when listening to a new piece of music I've written.

Connecting with people is important and, at least for me, is as natural a part of my life as swimming is for a fish - it's just a natural part of my environment ...

... except, of course, when it's not, and I am barely human.

But that is another tale for another evening.

-- Post From My iPad

no aumente el puente - baje el río

2010-06-17T22:32:00.002-04:00

...and there we are, done with another birthday piece. I'm not quite ready to release it, it's not done yet.

The piano sketch seems to go over really well with people whose ears I trust - I just wonder if I have the skill to make it work when scored for our little orchestra.

Each member brings a rich, unique personality to the group, musically and personally. The group itself has a delightful sound. I'm just not sure that they are the right color for the piece.

This is rather a strange place in which to find myself - and I am looking for myself in the middle of all this.

You see, over the last couple of years I made it a point to put a sort of filter on my musical imagination, to try to hear sounds in my head as expressed by our little group. Suddenly, for whatever reason, that does not seem to be the case and it's very surprising.

So NOW what do I do?

Do I leave it in pure digital form, maybe bring out the richness of the lines, give up trying to make it sound like real instruments and just let it fly?

Do I try to solve the inner voice issues and voicing challenges and prep it for our little group?

Or do I take both roads and create two versions? I'd like to present the thing, share it with our community - or at least those who care enough to listen - correction, who care enough about ME to listen?

No, not really - if I did this to really impress people I'd have given it up years ago. Far easier to make up a fake Nobel prize for Literature - and more effective.

Looks like two versions.

Damn.

-- Post From My iPad

Fuck 'em If They Can't Take A Joke

2010-06-15T23:26:00.001-04:00

No point in trying to catch up with every event and feeling since my last post. A lot has happened.

A lot is always happening

Big event - the annual Old Port Festival. Last year I had to work, this year my strange little schedule made it possible to attend.

Our quarterly meeting and my willingness to help open the store kept me from being a part of the parade. I tended to slide in late anyway, pick a loose-fitting pair of trousers from the can and a beat-up drum then beat the daylights out of it infront of hundreds of people which seemed like thousands.

There was an al-fresco cafe set up in frnot of the Regency Hotel, the old Armory. I liked the burger, though the service was very slow.

A big crowd ... People everywhere you turned. Usually I can depend on my cloak of indifferent invisibility to observe people.

Sadly I also indulged in my annual bag of kettle corn, which meant I wasn't really thinking straight.

There was one booth by Bard coffee, crowned with a huge sign asking "what kind of person are you...good or bad? Take a simple quiz to find out".

I admit I wanted to ignore it and spend my energy watching the Top 40 stage and critiquing the performer but the ancient lure of a theological argument woke up brain synapses dormant since my undergrad days.

So I chatted up the two young men.

The questions?

1 - have you ever told a lie, no matter how small?

2 - what do you call someone who tells a lie?

3 - have you ever stolen something, no matter how small?

4 - what do you call someone who steals something?

So now that you have admitted to being a liar and a thief you are asked to consider what happens to such folks and if you are prepared to be judged.

Since I was under the influence of kettlecorn I admit I missed the obvious comeback: If I am a father whose child is starving and I steal a loaf of bread, saving my child and fully taking the fall, then what am I now?

It all comes down to context. The larger your ability to see the inter-connected picture then the more good you can do. I think pushing the limits of who and how we are makes us more useful, a greater blessing to the world.

And it hit me that this was the face of pure evil in the world.

This willingness, this need to have things be purely black abd white, the desire to have the entire world be reduced to one neck so it could be slit ... whether for theological reasons or to support an abusive relationship ... this denial of the fundamental inter-connectedness of us all, what an former girlfriend and I called the "right game" (which she played incomparably well) ...

... all of it is a source of blisteringly destructive action.

After I had said goodbye I walked by the Vietnamese American assiciation of Maine, doing a Dragon Dance in the street.

It was giggling, delerious fun.

People would run up to the front of the dragon, holding out food and jumping back as it snapped it up.

.... and it struck me, forcefully, in the middle of my dodging the dragon and trying not to trip over a child who was shrieking with delight, that if my very-earnest friends got their way than all of this would be wiped from the earth, as surely as the Taliban blew the statue of Bhuddha to flinders.

...I heard them in the voices answering me when I was working a phone bank for the Gay Marriage referendum.

...I heard them in the voice of a waitress refusing to serve me a slice of the apple pie on the shelf of a truckstop cafe in Montanna in the middle of a Blue Devils performance tour.

As Thomas Jefferson said "I have sworn upon the altar of Almighty God eternal vigilence against every form of tyranny over the mind of Man".

So now what do I do?

What CAN I do except try to be the best person I know how to be and try tolisten and love everyone around me .... Even the one who try to trap me in a web of questions.

I think it will take more than a web of pointless words to catch a truly honest dragon.

-- Post From My iPad

Creative afterglow

2010-06-02T23:22:00.006-04:00

Well, I've finished another piece. A birthday piece for my friend Adira who is a talented and expressive dancer. This is the first independant piece (the score for Inuk does not count) that I've written in quite a while. Usually I have to take the needs of my local musicians into account. This seems a lot easier to think about and much harder to execute.

Adira seemed to like it a lot. I hope it gives her something to work with in terms of dancing.

Now there's another birthday coming up soon and I have to get organized to sit down and get to work.

Went for a long walk after taking Adira to dinner to listen to the piece (thank-you iPad). We had a lot of rain this afternoon, so I'm told. People would come into the Orchard from different locations in various levels of dampness.

Some had encountered no rain at all. Others were recounting tales of blistering, though short, downpours. We could track the storn cells on our computers but the day was so busy we kind of lost track.

As usual there were a dozen accurate stories. We just took them where they were.

-- Post From My iPad

Life In The Time Of 2/4

2010-06-02T23:22:00.005-04:00

Danger. Sugar crash.

I'm diabetic and have to worry a lot about balancing my activities with my blood sugar. Most of the time It's too high, so having moments, like now , when I am shaky and unfocussed (well, more than usual) is a bit of a challenge.

I should leave int he typing werroes to show how inacurate I am until the sugars derom the pizza and glass of wine I've ordered kick in to smooth out my relationship wipth relaity. Someday I'm going to, under controlled conditions, ride this out tot the very edge og passing out, may e beyond it, just to see ehatit's like.

It's a funny weakness, a kimd of craving shakiness inmy physical core. My fingers tremble, I spill olive oil from my pizza on my nice white trousers (damn!).

I've started working on a mew birthday piece for another friend. It seems like a new style for me, more "song" than the usual sympgonic approach I take. I like it but am kind of stuck for a rwxt for my firend (who is a remarkable singer ) to use.

I had one by Garcia Lorca but it just does not fit.

Not sure if it's going to be a tango or not. It will work like one, hopefully danceable.

Now working on a bottle of San Pellegrino - I feel secure enough ( and my typing seems to have improved enough) so that I can worry about hydrating rather than passing out.

OK - one of my colleagues from the Orchard walked ina nd we're going to talk politics. More fun.

-- Post From My iPad

Seventy-Five degrees in the shade an hour into the full moon

2010-05-25T22:32:00.002-04:00

Well, actually it's not a full moon but it might as well be, the streets are so active and mad.

This is the first really warm evening we've had this Spring. I don't know quite what to do. There is a new piece waiting on my computer, waiting for me to thin it out and restructure the second section ...

... no, strike that. There is a second section waiting to be written. As usual I've got too many ideas to work with, the road has too many forks, twists and turns in it.

In it's own way this not a bad state of affairs. It only becomes a problem when you think that any piece works best when the seams don't show - maybe on a nicely worn pair of silk stockings, but not much else.

It's a new kind of piece for me and a good challenge.

Maybe if I play my cards right I'll actually manage to meet it.

-- Post From My iPad

Not sure What To Call This

2010-05-18T23:18:00.002-04:00

Tuesday - something of a Friday for any normal person, though I must admit I gave up any pretense of being a normal person some time ago.

So now I'll talk about roller derby.

Saturday was an expressive evening, starting with mayhem and finishing with Deering's Oaks and quiet contemplation.

... oh, and lasgana.

Maine Roller Derby has two teams - the Port Authority and the Calamity Janes, the latter being on the court Saturday. Its members are athletic, aggressive women of all sizes and conditions. I had one friend on the team last year, a person doing her psychiatric residency at McGeachy Hall at Maine Medical - she was a graceful tango dancer and a formidable blocker on the Janes.

I can draw a shaky line between this group and the burlesque revival in town. You have to accept them on their own terms, which is rather fun.

So here they were in their skates and temporary tats, the team giving a lot of promotional consideration to the Hallowed Ground Tattoo Parlor.

The Expo, home to the Portland Red Claws semi-pro basketball team, was filled with a raring, roaring crowd; families, yuppies, moon-eyed poets, everyone shouting, cheering and stomping for "their girls".

Come to think of it their were a lot of pre-teen girls watching and screeeeaaammming their heads off.

God, it was magnificent.

The game was flat-track roller derby, contested inside an oval marked in tape on the wooden Expo floor.

Each team had five blockers, one jammer wearing a star on her helmet. The two sets of blockers started as a pack, the jammers following two seconds later.

Jammers had to skate through the entire pack. The one who got through first controlled the jam, having to then lap the entire pack again. After that she got one point for each member of the opposing team she passed. Followed by a mass of eagle-eyed judges she kept passing until two minutes elapsed.

And that, sports fans, was that.

Blockers impede the opposing jammer, help their own. It can get a little hectic, it can get a little personal. Pretty much any kind of limited mayhem is tolerated, except anything that might cause a push in the back. There were a lot of falls, some spectacular, but none face-first into the floor, which could have been potentially deadly.

Medical support was standing by. Fortunately it wasn't needed.

A sin bin was against the wall. That WAS needed.

There was a wonderful energy in the joint. The team members all had amazing personas, bad-girl identities stolen in whole cloth from a 50's women's prison movie. They seemed to be letting their hair down by putting it up in their helmets.

Perhaps it was an act - guys can act badass and you believe them and they seem like jerks.

Women can pull it off, you just accept that their personalities can encompass both behaviors.

Or, maybe more accurately my view of women can allow it. No, on second thought I think I'd do better to give them full credit for it - I'm happy to stand and watch the whole thing, my jaw hanging slacker than the udder of a Guernsey cow.

... and then go walk in the park and look at the light.

Sue me.

-- Post From My iPad

I Walked Out Into the Deepening Twilight

2010-05-17T22:26:00.002-04:00

I walked out into the deepening twilight, amazed at the Spring warmth. The buildings around me were tall boxes etched into a deep blue sky, as if wrapped in dark, rich velvet, gently lined with the faintest wash of fading rose.

The sidewalk was mine. Far ahead a panhandler was leaning against my apartment house, far enough past the door to pose no threat to my solitary presence. As always I was alone with my thoughts, wrapped in my own velvet cloak, woven of loneliness, satisfaction, curiosity and passion ...

**************************************

I walked out into the deepening twilight then stopped short - when did that new sandwich shop open? Look, there's a crowd of folks in shorts, looks like a damned running club, all loud voices and baseball caps.

I bet they've been feeding on grass for a year.

The shop windows pour light onto the street, its doors pour people.

Shouts of "woo!", "yo" and "cell me" - that bizarre little pinky/thumb waggy motion by the ear.

The crowd breaks up with the easy joviality born of common sweat and satisfaction of common achievement. I wonder why I don't run more, moving more briskly down the street away from the noise ...

**************************************

I walked out into the deepening twilight and had to dance. No idea where the music was coming from, if it was even really hitting my eardrums or was all mental.

Maybe if you leaned up against my skull really closely you could pick it up and join in ....

**************************************

I walked out into the deepening twilight, saw the sky, slowed my steps.

There is a little patio just before my apartment house; it's bound, chest high, by a fence of wrought-iron pickets, remarkable work.

I stopped to lean on it, to look at the sky, at the final act of the end of the day. In my head I knew there was music to be written, photos to upload, laundry to wash, studying to do.

The grace of quiet, the flow of action; contemplation and participation - the balance seems to come more naturally these days. Perhaps I am getting the hang of living a life based not on how hurt or sad I am but on how well I fit into the world around me.

**************************************

Twilight is the moment celebrating light and dark moving in paralell, dancing together. You only really know something is balanced by watching it move, first one side then the other, giving and taking until the next change comes.

Now I have work to do.

-- Post From My iPad

The Best Bits of Fredrick Law Olmstead

2010-05-16T00:00:00.002-04:00

Busy day.

Early to work, home to add cheese to the "chicken whatever" in the crockpot, off to roller derby (and THAT'S a whole post right there ...), visiting the W's and getting tossed a piece of homemade lasagna, then home to continue working on E's Pecha Kucha project ... finally came to some kind of "resolution" (which is very different from being "finished") ....

...and I guess I should not complain. I can remember times that were much less demanding and much more upsetting.

So here I am at Enzo on a Saturday night, which I swore I would avoid ... the best distraction can also serve as the best inspiration.

We are definitely in the arms of a charming stretch of Spring weather. The walk up from the Expo took through Deering Oaks - or Deering's Oaks, to use the traditional posessive, which no one does, except me, of course.

The light in the park, just after twilight, with rich clouds piled in the sky and people walking dogs - and each other - made for an easy change from the excitement and energy of the Roller Derby to the introspection of the evening.

At some point I'm going to start a new piece but I'm not sure what it's going to be like. It's time I began to move out of the strictures that writing for TML imposes ... and how that's going to work is somewhat beyond me.

I have always loved the light through early leaves. There is something magical and reachable about it, like a song I can just sense but not quite hear. Walking through the park, even one with a major street running through it, connects me with the parks and neighborhoods of my childhood, my late-night ramblings to the Rose Garden and its quiet, ethereal beauty.

The Hidden Garden.

Again, it's the space that exists in the transitions, going from place to place, time to time or season to season. An energy that grows from growth.

... or that comes from a glass and a half of wine.

So there. Perhaps Fredrick Law Olmstead had that in mind when he designed the park.

Whatever it is, it seems to work.

-- Post From My iPad

Your Pecha Kucha is Showing

2010-05-11T23:12:00.001-04:00

...Or, "What Have I Gone And Done Now?!"

A twenty-first century still life - iPad, beer,candle and a slice of really good pizza. Ambulance roars by in one direction - fire engine in the other.

My friend E met me at Boda to share a pot of tea and talk about the upcoming Pecha Kucha, or "creative conversation" and her part in it.

You see our dear mutual friend Charles has arranged a showing of the documentary "Si Sos Brujo" at One Longfellow Square. The films tells the story of the recovery of knowledge of the great classical performance style of tango, rather like Preservation Hall gives the great old jazzers a place to share the classic old style of New Orleans Jazz.

Well, E is hosting the upcoming Pecha Kucha and since they had an open slot she filled it with what, in effect, will be a six minute commercial for the showing.

....and what, you ask, is my part in this? Well, my job is to mine both my collection of pics and the actual DVD of the movie to find evocative images that will help E tell both the story of our little tango community and flack for the flick.

At some point - and this is E's idea - I should do a presentation of my music, particularly the tango slide shows that I put together using Keynote. Personally I can't see how they would fit into the format these things usually follow - but it wouldn't be the first time I couldn't see an obvious path to personal expression.

Oh boy - another slice of pizza - cauliflower and mushroom. Wow - right out of the oven. Maybe adding some peppers will help cool it down.

Maybe not.

The presentation of the movie will end with a Skype video conversation with the head of the tango schoolin the film and his wife, who is the film maker, both in Buenos Aires.

And I have to tech it. This gets more and more entertaining every day.

So here we go again, being useful behind the scenes.

-- Post From My iPad

Two Kinds Of Light

2010-05-06T23:14:00.002-04:00

I have to write about two kinds of light.

Two kinds of day. Two places to be.

The birthday tango is finally done. The parts are edited and links sent to the players. I like the piece and maybe it's a reflection of my own striking inadequacies as a dancer but I like it.

It's been said, by people whose opinions I've been entirely foolish to respect, that all my taste is in my mouth. It's a fair cop.

Still, if I have spend my life in a prison cell decorated entirely with wallpaper of my own device then at least it's a pattern I can live with.

Yesterday and today have been dramatic - both in themselves and between each other.

The Farmer's Market, walking along the bay, looking in the Old Port shops for a new shoulder bag - all were a study in the clarity and warmth of Spring in New England.

I spent the late afternoon at my friend EH's house. A couple years ago I helped Precocious Daughter #2 record a Father's Day greeting on my laptop, arranging it in GarageBand.

So answering a complex and puzzling phone message from this 8-year-old wonder led me over with my recording equipment. We set up in the front yard, top of the steps, where she recorded a new message for Mother's Day.

The brightness of the day - and the company - made it a very special time.

Also, that evening I got to see my friend Torrey's movie, "Fumble". More on that later but for now, it was really good.

Which leads us to today's strange day. Rain-splashed, I got in my car to head to work, for a day that was both basic and very full of interest and humor.

So getting out of work to the accompaniment of a bright burst of sunlight, much like yesterday's, was a joy.

Met a friend for sushi. In the hour it took to get to The King Of the Roll the sky cloaked itself in grey, trimmed in black; wind erupted to hurl leaves down the gutters.

The older gambrels across the street from my new digs were etched against the sky, lights in the windows glowing feeble and lonely.

I liked it.

I liked both of these days, they spoke to both sides of who I am.

Perfectly satisfied, fed and enthralled with either light and warmth or shadow and coolness - I am most engaged by the transition from one to the other.

So, for now I will stop and wait to see what I'm given to work with next.

-- Post From My iPad

Circles Surrounding the Square

2010-05-05T10:29:00.002-04:00

Having a cup of coffee at Mousse, on the Square. It's warm, what my British friends would cal "deliciously warm" - call it "upper 60's".

The Farmer's Market has returned to the Square - it started up again on May Day down in the Oaks; today is the first Wednesday for it.

Mostly flowers and small bags of green spices. No real food yet, most is trucked in, but at least there's a start.

Sitting here - they only got the outside chairs deployed just now, I think it's a little too cool in the shade, but I'd be willing to take the chance - I can watch people come out of buildings, out of the parking garage, come by, stop, look at the assembled vendors then smile - secretly or all over the Square.

Ladies in floppy hats, men in khaki pants and blue shirts. A day nursery goes by, all the children linked by a long rope full of looped handholds. People look at the blooming hangers of fuschia and red flowers ( don't ask ME what the damned things are called - if it has colors it's a flower ...) and drink in the colors like water to people parched in the desert.

Cinco de Mayo - don't even get me started on that.

So it's a nice day out. Sometimes just looking at it - accompanied by a cup of strong coffee - is enough.

-- Post From My iPad

Location:Monument Square,Portland,United States

My Town Has A Library That Changes Color

2010-05-04T21:16:00.001-04:00

It has been a long, involved, not really average day.

I should be editing my birthday tango, gearing up for the next piece. I wish I could write about all the extraordinary people I work with - it's not really professional, and, frankly, there are just too damned many of them.

Even the people I see every day seem to blossom on occasion: they tell a joke or answer a question - I have a lot of questions - or just have an interesting way of peeling an orange.

So here, at the end, I'm finishing up this post, having walked back from Bard Coffee, stopping at Enzo to chat and generally enjoying a world full of interesting people.

So there is the redone façade of the Portland Library, glowing bright in Monument square. Very lovely, very dramatic and aliteral beacon of literacy in the center of the town.

-- Post From My iPad

Not All Places Are In Pieces

2010-05-03T22:12:00.002-04:00

My first dessert of the season in Monument Square, at David's.

I think my waiter - who called me "dear" when I was signing in - is disappointed that I'm not ordering a more expansive dinner - but I'm on rather a budget (who's not, these days?) so coffee and a dessert it is.

Almost 7:30 and still almost 70º out. People are out and about in the Square. Some folks, with a guitar, are grouped on the Monument base, a pretty girl in a flowered dress sits pensively, on the side.

The cheesecake is rich, lemon-laced. The kind of dessert that seems light in flavor and texture - but can overwhelm your mouth if the wrong sized bite is taken.

The sunset paints the sides of the buildings. The white stucco of the library glows, a leftover coal of the day's fire.

I have a tango to edit - the birthday piece. It's ready to go, I've left it fallow for a few days, not even listened to the test performance file. It's rather like this cheesecake: too much of a bite will confuse you.

So I should go to see my Shakespeare friends - instead I'm off to Geno's to watch a really bad movie and listen to people make fun of it.

The cracker that cleanses the palate of my brain from the table of rich dishes that was "Inuk and the Sun".

Goodness. THERE'S a thought!

-- Post From My iPad

The One Who Can Be Many Places At Once

2010-04-30T12:25:00.001-04:00

....which for those of you with a particularly genre-centric mindset is another term for the Kwisatz Haderach.

Hope I cleared THAT up.

Writing from above the Market House - using the two-fingered technique that seems to work best for me.

It is dramatically different than the last time I was here - then Monument square was draped in snowy blankets - now it's bright, sunny, almost warm (if you ignore the sea breeze).

Last week I drove to Wells to visit an Indian store on route One. It's been there for what seems like generations,filled with that strange, evocative air that old stores full of strange objects can generate.

I was buying gifts - mostly $1 arrowheads and other trinkets - for the Inook cast. The day was bright, sunny, somewhat cool. On the way down I noticed a railroad viaduct over a stream, on the right while southbound.

Made a note which I acted on by stopping to walk along the railroad track on my way back north.

Not sure which rail line it is - don't know of a passenger line (the only one being the Downeaster - and that runs through Old Orchard) in the area.

Still, I've been a sucker for trains and trainyards since childhood - blame my Uncle Louis Benge, who was a brakeman on the old Midland Valley line back home. It was fun to walk up to the big steel bridge, then along a right-of-way that had obviously once been a two-bed line and now only served one line, accompanied by snowmobiles.

The actual stone-arched viaduct was almost invisible from the tracks. I had to spot it by looking at the stream. My first thought was to film it from the safety of the tracks (assuming no trains came blasting through).

Looking at it closer - the flinty ballast of the trails, the thick granite chips that supported the built-up right-of-way - made me decide to gingerly pick my way down the slope to the stream.

It was a rewarding risk.

I suppose that now, a week later, the sprouting greenery, the soggy runoff plain it covered, all would be closer to an impassable mess, full of trippings and feet plunging into mud, ankle deep.

But a week ago we were just that much closer to the slumber of Winter and the growth had not awakened enough to impede me - much.

The water was moderately deep, moderately swift. There were trees fallen, either by weight of snow or movement of earth, into the water.

Don't get me wrong. I'm very glad the days are warmer and I need to work on my tan as much as anyone else - well, kinda anyway ....

But I do miss the way you see the bones of the land when they're laid bare by Winter. There's an austere beauty to it that is appealing. That and the anticipation of change.

So I got out safely, unscratched, one brand-new sneaker not so branded anymore. There are all sorts of little urban faux wildernesses all around here and I love them.

-- Post From My iPad

The First, Last New England Boiled Dinner in Portland

2010-04-26T19:53:00.001-04:00

I don't spend as much money eating out, as much as I spend time. Having lived in this graceful city by the sea for more than half my life - which is a daunting proposition right there - I've got a good handle how to get the maximum amount of social interaction for the smallest amount of money.

This means, basically, that I spend less money on expensive booze (saving it up for my occasional single-malt scotch) than I do on regular beers or glasses of wine.

The occasional slice of pizza. It's all good.

I like to watch people talk. I like to listen to them move. It's a huge amount of fun to sit in a crowded room and try to follow half-a-dozen conversations at once.

There's a line in the stage version of "Amadeus" where the precocious genius Mozart floors his hidden nemesis Salieri with a description of the unbelievably complex, yet coherant first act finale of "La Nozze de Figaro" that says "I'll bet that's how God hears the world".

God can handle the world. I've got my brainfull with a dozen people. Still, I love it.

Down on Marginal Way, by Interstate 95, is a wonderful relic of a lost age of community interaction, the "Miss Portland Diner". It's a genuine Worcester Diner, dating from 1949 and it's been a fixture in that part of town for over 60 years. Check them out at www.missportlanddiner.com.

It works out that last night, after visiting with friends, I wound up taking an impromptu dinner there. It was their first Sunday evening being open and I had the whole place to myself for almost half an hour.

It was also the last hurrah for the season of the New England Boiled Dinner.

I'd actually never had one before - came close on several occasions but never seemed to manage it (rather like my record with getting married, come to think of it).

Since there was no WiFi in the place - and I'm not that sure the experience could be improved if it had it - I was left with my camera to entertain me. That and "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" on my iPad reader.

It was a good meal, filling and very healthy. I would call it comfort food if I'd grown up eating it instead of chili.

Still I felt happy to sit in such a wonderful old space, full of dark wood and polished chrome. The food was equally colorful.

So, all told, it was a quiet, tasty way to end a weekend that actually was full of miracles, from the opening of "Inuk" to sitting with a friend's year-old daughter in my lap on a bright Sunday afternoon.

Perhaps that's how God hears the world.

-- Post From My iPad

Location:Congress St,Portland,United States

Tickets To Elysium

2010-04-25T22:45:00.001-04:00

It's a quiet Sunday night after a hectic weekend.

Friday night saw the opening "Inuk and the Sun" at USM.

The show was very theatrical - and went pretty much as I thought it would. The visual component was very strong but I was stunned to hear - or not hear - some of the music cues I'd written. Especially the seals. Apparently the background tracks were thought to be too thick. I spent my time before bed on Friday re-scoring them .... All to no avail.

I should have gone to the dress and could have gotten them teched into the show - but even though the music for the Northern Lights is very, very NewAge and over-produced the show is locked.

Which, ultimately, is my own fault. I should have taken more time - but that is the price of being so busy and not planning better for the execution of the show.

Still, all told it's ultimately a real success. Sometimes you don't get everything you want - and forget that when things work it can be magic.

I smuged the set and the cast before the opening - so I gave them my blessing and can't take it back.

Saturday was a long, long day.

SNAP workshop at 9 - my call was 8:30. Four kids, three specialists. Good odds. Then I worked till 7:30. Which made for a long work day.

And then I attended Atomic Trash's burlesque show with a Naturopath friend. Nice to have a friend willing to accompany one to see strippers.

We managed to make to the intermission. The show has really bumped up in presentation, both in showmanship and brio. I liked it, the sheer (pardon the expression) fun of it.

Oh, the naked ladies were nice too.

So today I've been relaxing, spending a lot of time re-working my birthday tango for TML - if I get the thing organized it's going to be a really good little piece. As it is it works well.

I'm writing this at Enzo, listening to people talk at the bar, watching people stop into the adjoining, attached pizza shop - Otto - walking out with wedges of crunchy, cheesy goodness.

Maybe, at the end of the day, that's all this weekend needed to be. A lot of hard work and goodness at the finish.

For which I am very, very grateful.

-- Post From My iPad

With Bright Shining Faces

2010-04-22T23:33:00.002-04:00

I could get to like this thing.

Working at the Orchard means you have to keep up with the latest and greatest ... Especially if you're going to teach it to folks, justifying the investment of their hard-earned money.

Probably should not have gotten this thing (I'm typing on it now) ... The iPad, I mean. It was what I call a "planned impulse". Still it seems to be working out and it does make blogging a little easier.

"Inuk" is now running on its own ... I went to the final tech two nights ago and was astounded at how intense and theatrical the show is. A good 70% of the music has been revised - or deleted - for pretty good reasons, most of them structural, some of them performance-based.

I'm playing hooky from the final dress - hiding out at Enzo with a roomful of people - barely inside my tolerance level but doable if I stay focussed on writing.

If you take the show on its own terms it's astoundingly theatrical and moving. If you don't then you will get lost in the details of the show and only see what is in front of you and not what is in your heart.

It's an important distinction and one that will make or break your experience of anything more complex than something like "Three's Company".

So I am intensely interested in how the audience reacts. If the kids in the show understand and believe - or even just believe without understanding - then it will be a sight to see.

I'll let you know how it all turns out.

-- Post From My iPad

The Next Cover For the Cookie Jar

2010-04-19T22:02:00.003-04:00

Truth be told I do have my share of strange habits. Most of them serve some kind of purpose.

My best friend, EH, tells me that obsessions often grow out of some kind of protective behavior, behavior that protects one from a desperately unpleasant truth.

If one is foolish enough to expect 100% - and works hard, earning 90%, well, that can seem like failure. You try for 105% and achieve 95 - still failure.

It's like the tortoise and Achilles - no matter how hard you try you can never catch up. The only way out is to totally reject everything you believed in that forced you into this absurd race in the first place ...

... or ...

... you compensate by doing little things that you CAN get right - like checking the windows every night - or arranging the dishes just SO or lacing your shoes a certain way....

... And suddenly what started as a little habit loses its connection to compensation and takes on a horrid life of it's own.

Thus is birthed the common, or, garden variety, obsession.

So, somewhere between Heaven and Las Vegas lies a street and I'm crossing it.

As a child I was well trained to respect the cops, help little old ladies and be a gentleman when I could.

Because of this it's really hard for me to do simple acts of defiance, like crossing the street against the "wait" light - even in the middle of the night.

I stride up the the lights, mostly at the corner of High and Congress, arguably the busiest one in town, set my balance and tap the "walk" button with my toe, usually on the left.

Like my post on the joy of observation I love to see the looks on people's faces as they try to process it all.

People pass me by, some with a look of vague malevolence, or a facial shrug that practically screams "Asshole!!" because I'm dumb enough to actually care that the "walk" signs are there for a reason and we should obey them, as good citizens.

I think the word "obey" has kind of left our collective conciousness - that doing something purely because one is TOLD to do it is as alien as buggy whips and lager beer in buckets.

At the same time it's kind of cool to wait as cars turn by you. A pedestrian following the signs kinds of throws off the flow of traffic, it disrupts the flow by going with it.

The payoff comes when the light turns to "walk" - and it does so for all four lanes of traffic. I can stride across like I own the street, because, for those 15 seconds, I really do own it.

I can stride, hop, funky-chicken my way across, be totally myself and there's not a single damned thing anyone can do or say about it.

For those15 seconds I'm a late-middle aged Native-American frakkin' GOD and there not a Goddam thing anyone can do about it.

It works out just right, because, frankly, I'd hate to be a God for any longer than 15 seconds - just thinking about the amount of email you'd have to answer freaks me out.

I mean, you could only answer, say, what, 95% of it?

...and THEN where would you be?

-- Post From My iPad

Location:Congress St,Portland,United States

My My My My My Boogie Shoes....

2010-04-17T18:49:00.001-04:00

So. Tomorrow is my 54th birthday. By God I've earned it.

I wish I could say portentious things but I've just got too damned much to worry - no, think - about.

Inuk is going really well. Still some last-minute fixies to do, had to re- write another song - again. As we approach this week's opening it's starting to look more and more like a show.

I like it.

A lot of the action of the play is driven by the needs of the human characters. The often throw themselves on the mercy of the divine ones.

This idea of "mercy" is either lost on these kids or, more likely, is so far outside their direct emotional experience that it's almost impossible for them to operate from it.

When driving me across the scrubs of Southeastern Oklahoma once, on the way to grad school in Louisiana, my dad pointed out a road, that arrowed West from the main highway.

He told me that there was an Indian School about 20 miles down the road and that he had been consigned to it after his parent's divorce.

Still the need to be with his father (my grampa Sam) was so great that he jumped the fence of the school and walked the 20 miles to get the state highway that would lead the 70 miles north to Tulsa/Sand Springs where his Father - seperated from his wife - lived.

He pointed out the road - which seemed like it led straight to Nowhere's armpit over the horizon - and said that when he stood there a farmer came by in his truck and "had mercy on him", giving him a ride up North so dad could be with his Dad.

As I think about it I cannot escape a profound feeling of respect, of understanding fierce need and depth of feeling that would drive an eight year old boy to undertake such a perilous risk.

I also have a lot more respect for the potential of eight year olds as well.

So often I have been defined by the extraordinary grace and strength of my Mon - that I forget where so much of my strength and power of affect come from.

No point in not loving if the opportunity presents itself.

Happy birthday, indeed.

-- Post From My iPad

Location:Congress St,Portland,United States

The Very Many Spring Day

2010-04-11T22:21:00.000-04:00

Sadly I don't have the pics to prove it but the major activity of the day has been to march in an Afro/Cuban Pagan Springtime parade down Congress Street, up Munjoy Hill, appreciatively behind a phalanx of writhingly dancing women, led by a man in dressed in an African fertility costume covered in straw.

It was striking enough to chase the Evangelical Methodist churchfolk back inside their church as they strolled out during our passby.

I took a lot of shots. Sadly, as noted above none of them actually were taken as I'd left the damned card on my desk.

Trust me - it was a blast.

It was fun - and both the types closest to my heart.

The joy of participation:

I told a friend earlier in an email that I tend to find myself participating in a lot of things like this. I love performing and being part of an ensemble. The intensity of listening and following - or leading, on occasion - really clears out my soul, connects me with other folks.

And the joy of observation:

The rest of the day was a shower and a nap - followed by a late afternoon trip across the river to take pics at Bug Light.

I take a lot of pleasure when watching two streams come together. That's the place where the prettiest waves happen. It's where things are created, like Venus rising from the foam of the sea.

So it was a fun afternoon, a "good stretch of the legs" to quote John Ford (late of Portland himself).

I hope we did him proud.

-- Post From My iPad

Location:Congress St,Portland,United States

The Best I've Ever Had and Then Some

2010-04-11T00:06:00.004-04:00

Not quite sure where this post is going to go.

Saturday night in fabulous Portland.

I'm back at Boda, the new Thai place down from my apartment. It's a warm(ish) evening out and I'm just about done in. Didn't sleep well, though, now that I think of it, I know I spent most of it asleep.

I started at the Orchard later than usual and took time to sit out front and edit pics from last week's iPad launch. The day took off and was an interesting mix of lessons, study, dead time and general hanging out.

We were very busy but we still seemed to have time to chat, smile and tell knock-knock jokes.

So now I'm having a Rosemary Manhattan and asparagus spears wrapped in bacon.

I think this is the first bacon or bacon-like food I've had in quite some time. I don't really cook eggs and sausage and rice scrambles for breakfast in my new apartment. The cuisine in my previous place caused my pots to be so dirty that the first time I boiled water for tea in the new place the fire alarm went off.

While I was trying to make tea. A fire alarm.

So, properly shamed, I find that I eat less fatty meat, fix a lot of crock-pot wonders, tuck into a lot of fruit.

Tomorrow is a day off. With the laundry done I'm torn between going upstate to visit friends and just sleeping the whole day away. Probably some combination of the two.

Enzo and a Thought

2010-04-08T23:00:00.005-04:00

Taking time to give time away.

It's been noted that Thursday is my Friday. I cannot tell you how relieved I am to have reached it.

The Orchard has been something more than a souk and less than a madhouse. I've been very busy teaching and studying, learning the in and outs of various electronic devices. I've enjoyed it.

The end of my shift has usually meant jumping into my car and racing to USM for Inuk rehearsal.

No. Jumping into the car and racing to McDonald's - then racing to USM.

We're into the final stages of settling the show. Tonight I am playing hooky (or taking a sanity evening) from a "Lion's Den" for it. It's a designer's run-through. I should be there to see how the music is working but I'm just too tired.

I hope I never lose the sense of amazement and joy when I hear my music performed; hear it with other people making it their own. It's such a fun thing to share...

...no, "fun" doesn't even begin to describe the feeling. It's something between tears and ecstasy. I've always felt it, all of my life, for even the simplest things.

For someone so selfish I really like to share.

So, here I am next to Otto Pizza, in a charming little wine bar called Enzo - whether or not it's related to the founder of Ferrari I have no idea.

It's a bijou little place; white tile with dark wood accents, brass sheeting backs the shelves and lines the space between the doors and the ceiling. I'm not really one for wine but this place seems just low-key enough to be interesting.

I can also see that it can become miserably crowded and hip at certain other time...

Took some pics on my peregrination about the town - with luck I'll sleep the night through and have a full and wonderful day tomorrow....

Some things really are worth planning for.

Special Correspondent to the War of the Roses

2010-04-05T22:51:00.002-04:00

OK - this is going to look a little odd at first, but I think it's going to work out all right

I'm typing this on the virtual keyboard of my new iPad. The feel and process are a little new and I may yet find myself moving over to Word Press, which has an app custom built for the iPad but so far I've managed to get it tondo pretty much everything I've wanted it to do.

I may yet wind up switching over to WordPress, which has a custom-built app for the iPad. We shall see.

Meanwhile life goes on.

Tonight being the First Monday of the month I had my twin arts experiences - Naked Shakespeare and the Geek Chorus at Geno's.

The Wine Bar hosted the Bard's group. Tonight was the second annual Shakespearean smack down in which the group split in two and presented dual performances of the same selections. One team was in red - York - and one in white. That would be Lancaster.

After each pairing the crowd voted by holding the appropriately colored - or coloured - sign. Needless to say ( but I'll say it - it was perfect mayhem.

After that the Geek Chorus at Geno's Rock Bar was almost an anticlimax.

Almost.

Excepting that they chose an amazing film called "The Pink Angels" which was about the exploits of a gay gang of bikers. The film was from the very late 70's - the bikers were timeless.

Don't say my life is a rut - pardon the expression...

Walking in Advance of the Landing

2010-04-02T11:57:00.002-04:00

I've tried to avoid Starbucks but they're so conVENient and the coffee is so GOOD - even though I'm just drinking a Pellegrino as I write ...

It's a bright, bright sunny day here - I'm going for a walk in a few minutes with EH and his extraordinary son TA, probably out to the beach again. Somehow I think this one will have a significantly different feel than the cold, austere and somewhat drearily beautiful one I had a couple of weeks ago.

TA is an amazing kid - he's dodged a genetic bullet, 23rd chromosome syndrome - with only minor effects, the most striking of which is his size - he's noticeably smaller than his cousins born during the same month (which is another saga altogether). He is very bright, very loving, with merry blue eyes, blonde hair and glasses - two years before I got my first pair - amazing!

Think of Charles Wallace in "A Wrinkle In Time" - that kind of child. Come to think of it, Madeline L'Engle stayed at their house (in what is now the living room with its blue-glass chandelier) whenever she stayed with TA's great-grandmother (which is another saga altogether).

Still very tired from the week's work - both at the Orchard and for Inuk - good grief, I almost called iNuk ...

Pretty much all the music is written - still have to see the dream sequence to figure out the underscore, as well as the shark attack, which is more of an underscare - and set the actual opening.

Though the kids sound great - especially the Seals - I still have no idea what this actual sound of this show is going to be - it's the weirdest thing. How authentic do I make it, given the very limited resources I have - well, the kids are unlimited, the budget is not.

Still, I like what I've written - or what I've written with the kids, because I sat down with each of them as I revised it to make it fit their voices and their parts of the story - they came up with some nice suggestions.

Meanwhile, comma, tomorrow is iPad release day and the energy has been building in the Orchard for weeks. I can't wait.

So today, being a First Friday, I'm going to enjoy this - maybe go out and buy a pair of bright green boat shoes to wear tomorrow.

The other thing will be to take time to really enjoy what's going on around me.

Oops - the alarm just went off on my phone - have to go walk.

A Reasonable Amount of Mayhem

2010-03-25T19:46:00.004-04:00

I have this habit of walking into a lion's den dressed in a suit made of chicken wings.

Tonight, comma, I'm at Bard Coffee. I was hoping to do this entry on the incredible waterfalls I saw yesterday in Yarmouth. It turns out that Bard closes every 4th Thursday for a barista smackdown - a latte' decoration contest.

So, with the room filling with an avuncular (if highly caffeinated) crowd - and on sufferance of the manager, who loves Macs and hangs out a lot at the Orchard - I'm sitting here listening to another room full of chatty people and intensely hip music.

The table next to me is occupied by a proud father and what seems to be a 5-year old daughter, said young lady being entered in the contest.

The idea is like a poetry slam with foam - they're going to be handed cups of steamed milk and coffee then given a few seconds to draw a decoration in it.

I remember seeing my first anthem appear online (the publisher has since gone under) and I was able to download it at the late, lamented JavaNet. One of my Multi-Age colleagues had a summer job working there and she decorated my mocha Java with a staff and treble clef.

So it's quite an art. It's also fun to see a community of folks sit and like each other so much.

Oh - the judges are being called out and I think this little party is about to get started.

The owner informs me that this is a free pour of steamed milk into espresso - no implements allowed - pure skill.

I don't think anything actually gets consumed at these things - well, at least, not coffee ...

The Valid Magnificent and the Miracle of Peristaltis

2010-03-19T19:29:00.007-04:00

Facebook gallery is here

Well, it had to happen sooner or later. My candle has been burning rather brightly of late and at some point my wick was going to get trimmed.

(Oh dear, that's not the best image, is it? - oh well, I'm sick...)

Friday has been my most consistent day off lately. Usually my day at the Orchard ends early on Thursday and I can either go to a show or relax at home or sit and write. Yesterday I could feel a strange heaviness all through the end of the day and wasn't looking forward to that night's "Inuk" rehearsal.

Which is sad; I like working with the kids, it's a safe, non-comittal look into a life I chose not to enter - that of a full-scale academic.

I was also afraid as I was scheduled to work until 10:30 - the Seals have had their music redone and the blocking is dictating some different approaches to starting/stopping the tunes - in short, a long, long day.

Got to USM 90 minutes early and lay down in the theatre under the lip of the stage, trying to rest. It's a strange feeling, thinking you have to rest to get through an evening - rather like plugging in an iPhone that's almost dead and hoping half-an-hour of charging will get you through two hours of life.

So I studiously tried to blank out my mind and just let my body recover.

What I now know - 24 hours later - is that I've got some kind of flu. It's been going through all of us at the Orchard. I got home and could feel the "furnace" turn on inside my stomach, the strange feeling that part of my body was speeding up, like my breathing suddenly got heavier even though I wasn't running but simply sitting in a chair.

What is the flu, anyway? What is my body doing?

I can hear food gurgling through my intestine - if I had time I'd hook a mike up and track it, it's a fascinating sound.

The more I think about it - fighting the urge to cheat and look it up on Wikipedia - the more I wonder. If it was a broken bone or a gunshot wound then cause/effect and treatment would be easier.

But having the flu? I'm not so sure.

I just feel lousy, sore and off-balance. Staying medicated and hydrated - Gatorade, no less - I usually drink it only when I'm sick, so it doesn't seem a big part of my life - I'm generally healthy.

There's no trauma i can point to except the exhaustion that comes from staying up late to write or practice on top of a job that's more of a game than place of employment.

Therefore, once I finally out of the house today, around 5, I was grateful when EH suggested we have lunch and go for a walk at Kettle Cove. I wanted to get back home and to bed, I'd only dropped by while getting some butter. But, EH was gently insistent so I went.

These pics are the result, so I guess it wasn't a total loss. I still have to think about tomorrow but I've spent just enough time to be prepared - now I'm going back to sleep while trying to quaff as much Gatorade as possible, rebuilding my fluid levels and settling the horde rampaging in my stomach.

A Burst of Uncharacteristic Gravity

2010-03-17T18:58:00.003-04:00

A spot of tea - and photography.

At Bard Coffee on St. Patrick's Day. I suppose I should be out drinking - heavily - but the late afternoon and twilight have been so pretty that I've been seduced into taking my camera and going to wander around downtown.

I saw the stumble-through of the second act of Inuk last night. This gives me a chance to see the final moves and transitions in the show - well, the current final positions.

So tonight, when I'm done with my cup of tea and done with this blog post I'm going to hi myself up and over the hill to my apartment. I also want to do some tango at the practica and if that's going to happen I have to bustle.

The pictures are here. Embed them as you will.

I'm seeing a lot of police cars belting by the street, in both directions. I hope no one has gotten in trouble.

Up In the Air with One Foot on the Ground

2010-03-12T11:54:00.005-05:00

Some folks have jobs that are even more interesting than mine.

Getting a donut and a lemon-water at the Portland Market House, about 2 minutes before Noon. A day off.

The apartment vacuumed, the cat fed, laundry sorted, the coat picked up at the tailor's, reservations made for "Cinderella" at the CMTM and I've picked out what I'm going to work on while the laundry is running.

Rehearsal for Inuk was cut short by a power blackout on the USM campus. I was down in the director's office in the basement of the theatre building when the lights blanked and the emergency lights perked on.

The Sea Monster and I continued to work on his phrasing - he's got a nice voice but the balance of rhythm to shape of the text needs some work - when the production assistant (you've got to love academic productions - they can generally find people to do everything, and to spare - big time Equity shows can do the same - it's the store-front and regional houses where all the hats are worn by the same people) popped in the door to tell us that the evening was being bagged for safety reasons.

I can't say I was bitterly disappointed - it had been rather a long day and no let up. Went home and did the two earlier posts to this.

Still, it looks like we've got pretty much all of the show covered now - major rewrites are done, the Raven has to have a new structure for the opening chant but most of it looks like it will work.

Don't have a show yet, but things are starting to head in the right direction.

Now I have to head off to an afternoon of accomplishment and perhaps, finally, some time to sit down at the keyboard and explore some new ideas.

The Nexus of Desire and DIsposition

2010-03-10T23:12:00.010-05:00

The end of another full, interesting day.

Catching up with another blog post, having a small Scotch before bed. Tomorrow will begin the same as today; I'm at the Orchard for an 8 a.m. lesson and thence out to Gorham for an Inuk rehearsal.

Friday will be a day off. Life maintenance.

I love my job. I'm fortunate that it fulfills my desire to connect with people, pays the rent and supports my eventual retirement.

It also has its odd little rewards. The other teachers have gotten small gifts from folks they've worked with - handmade donuts, brownies, a box of barbecue dry rubs, instantly shared out with everyone.

I got a DVD of Biblical Prophecy and Endtimes Scriptures.

I'm told there were some good recipes on it, though.

Just like Pearl Buck's famous creative person quote implies, I'm too sensitive not to draw sad comparisons of my personal worth with that of my colleagues, measured in grams of carbohydrate and milligrams of sugar.

Well, that all changed today. A gentleman I've worked with who hails from Lewiston gave me my own genuine whoopie pie from the Italian Bakery down behind Lewiston H.S., where I spent two pointless but entertaining years teaching Band and music.

Photo above. It's the only record that remains, once I've tossed the wrapper.

Earlier tonight I had a chance to celebrate by winding myself up with tango. Our regular Wednesday practica gave me a chance to just focus on movement, music and my body. I love the sense of pure movement, non verbal, focussed on balance and drive, expression and presence.

My French professor friend, Prof. L, is shown at the NorthStar on Monday, taking a second by the piano which we never use.

Tango is coming to mean a lot to me. I'm coming 'round to letting myself take a lot more chances in my life than formerly. About time I caught up with myself.

I have a tango friend who is working on her doctorate in Philosophy at MIT - she's a Kiwi and a richly expressive dancer, very assured in her technique and willing to be a little mad when prompted to be so by a Native American Tanguero.

We got to talking about writing and she brought up her dissertation. I've been reading a copy, for two reasons:

1 - to see what she's thinking about as I almost majored in philosophy right at the beginning of my academic career and 2 - to look for a way to write a tango about it.

I was kind of joking when I made the offer - I think this Kiwi was calling my bluff when she sent it (I did ask and say "pretty please").

That said, her work is on the nature of conflicting desires and how they reflect conflicting behavioural dispositions. That if we desire things that conflict (good coffee and a good night's rest - notice I'm drinking good Scotch right now - McClellan's...) that there may be parts of our psyches that conflict with each other.

At first blush I'd say that if such conflicts are a natural part of our makeups then are they really conflicts? This whole line of thought can lead to some fascinating areas.

Talk about desire and you are very easily into the emotional vocabulary of tango. I can easily imagine - but cannot yet enunciate - a scenario where this dialogue of desire and disposition can play out - and therefore come up with a piece of music that will express it.

This is how I like to think about my feelings.

This is how my feelings grow from what I think.

I know I have to be careful not to be swamped. But I also have to be careful let myself - heart and mind and everything in between - have full space to live and grow.

Not a bad day.

The Long Sunny Day in Midwinter

2010-03-08T13:41:00.007-05:00

Actually I didn't realized until just this moment how suggestive this picture is - but those of you who know how fuzzled I can be before I have coffee in the morning will forgive me for taking this shot and then thinking about it.

I was out for breakfast, met a friend (dancer/costumer BG) and had a nice chat about artistic politics in Portland.

Artemesia started off as a printer's that served tea, became a stationer's that served bagels and has now become a bistro that serves brunch. The creamers are distinctive and the coffee is quite strong.

It's a very enjoyable place that I don't get to all that much. A long walk to escort BG back so she could get to a dance rehearsal and I managed to visit my German friend - or specifically his family. A lot of kids and a cup of yogurt.

After that I should have sat down and written music but the day was just too seductively warm and bright out.

This took me on a long, interesting peregrination all over western Cumberland County.

The first stop was the Fore River Sanctuary of the Audobon Society. It's behind a corner of car dealerships and run along the site of a canal that was hand-dug by enterprising Mainers back at the turn of the 19th Century.

They basically connected the timber area around Naples and Bridgeton with the seaport of Portland. Now it's all overgrown but you can still see signs of it in the land around exit 48 and on the far side of Westbrook.

The most striking feature, on this side of the railroad, anyway, is the waterfalls and wetlands. Over the years this kind of urban jungle has been trailed and bridged; if you have the time or enough dry socks you can see some lovely sights, all surrounded by houses and car dealerships.

I took time to stop at the waterfalls.

It was a very bright, oddly warm day. I love Winter, I love the quality of being able to see the bones of the land around me. There is no leafy distractions, no flowers or birds to confuse me.

The world is very apparent, very present to me.

It's not that I don't like trees and leaves and flowers and birds - it's just that to me each season is just long enough.

Which makes the odd warmth of this Winter very disturbing to me. Many of my friends are telling me how much they love "Spring" and I'm suspicious enough of any good fortune to think that Spring needs to be earned a little bit. We need - or maybe "deserve" is a better word - to struggle a little bit.

Not too hard, but enough to appreciate it. I know that everyone has their own level of positive struggle, I know that I'm only speaking for myself. (Thank goodness).

Still, I'd like to have a little bit more snow and am slightly nervous for the world that said snow is not present.

I suppose this is why the front-yard scene in Westbrook, a snowless sleigh tableaux overlooking the Presumpscot River, caught my eye.

On the way to look at a burying ground - I love old New England burying grounds - it popped into view and shocked me. I had to stop and get a picture so I can look at it in August and think how rich my life has become.

My friend E., along with her Mom were trying to sell a condo held by E's dad, who passed away a year or so ago. It was the work of a moment to drop by, on the other side of the Presumpscot. Her newborn nephew was also in residence, his cries filling the space his grandfather used to call home. I get along well with kids and we had a nice time, chatting and catching up.

By this time the light was starting to turn noticeably warmer so I headed on further West to North Windham, and Babb's Bridge, a still used, still sound specimen of the classic New England covered bridge.

I'm not exactly sure when the Bridge was built. There is a school of thought - or more "activity" - come to think of it, E is a good example of it - a school of thought that moves to follow thoughts with actions that bring out more knowledge, that connects in an active, manipulative way with the world around it.

I know now that I can act that way too, that sometimes my curiosity take me over and drives me to all sorts of strange pastimes.

But most of the time I am content to just sit and look, to be there and experience it. I suppose this is where a lot of my artistic POV comes from and if people find me pleasant at all I'm sure that's the reason.

For whatever reason I love to see things, to stand there and let my eyes take them in. It seems a waste, I know to just feel all this stuff and let it fade to dust when I die. Maybe, with no immediate heirs and not a great likelihood of siring any, that is why I try to use what I feel to create music.

The day ended at Gilsland Farm in Falmouth, the other sanctuary run by the Audabon Society. Sadly the pic does not seem to want to load so I'll link to my Facebook gallery - you can see the pics here.

All told it was a rich and eventful day - small bites of great richness, events of no great moment but very great meaning. I'm glad I had it.

The Street Seemed Very Clean At First

2010-02-28T00:51:00.002-05:00

SO, the day after snow and soup found the streets to be very, very clean. It was surprising to go to bed one moment with the wind crying outside my windows and wake up the next with a clear, bright Maine morning sneaking into my apartment.

It was funny to see the Porta-Potty in this pic, there, on the left - it was on its side the night before, chasing me across this lot, driven by the wind gusts, siding on the water.

I've envisioned my death from several causes, varying in degrees of rationality or creativity. I can safely say w/out fear of contradiction that "death by Porta Potty" was not one of them

And so now, a day later - actually, two days if you go by the calendar and the clock - I'm thinking about the scene in the streets just now, tonight - walking over to "Grace", the new restaurant built out of the shell of the Chestnut Street church.

There was magic breaking loose, 11:30 at night and a damp snow was falling. It's supposed to alternate wind/snow, clear/rain. Hard to tell - I sspect we'll just go with whatever we get.

Stil, it's hard on the trashcans.

Bee-yoo-tiful Soooouup ....!

2010-02-25T23:28:00.002-05:00

Waiting for some restorative Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup.

Socks are soaked, jeans passable but will trade shortly for a fluffy bathrobe.

An amazing evening - temps in the 40's but gusts up to 65 mph ....

Got in several minutes ago from a rehearsal for "Inuk and the Sun" - teaching music, creating new parts of the score after chatting with actors who have been revolved to new roles.

Took the long way back from Gorham, the home of the University of Southern Maine, coming through the back end of Westbrook, along the edge of the Presumpscott River. I didn't actually cross the bridge but I rolled my window down for one face-blasting moment ... and could hear it roaring from two blocks away.

The soup is perking away nicely and I'll let it simmer down just for a few moments more.

The day has been busy, work strangely busy at first and then quite quiet (for us, anyway) for most of the day, picking up as I finished up to leave for Gorham. Had to go have copies made at Staples.

The Inuk score is taking shape now - starting to think about how we're going to support the singers. It won't be a "piano and five" type of show - I think we're going to be banging on the set and pounding drums and shaking chickens to create the sound world we want. There is a kind of no-holds-barred attitude I find quite fun.

As I came down into Portland I was stunned to see a bright purple flash light up half the sky. It was in the forested Woodfords area and I drove past blocks of houses that were quite dark. I'd bet that a transformer blew because of the wind.

There were large, large branches down in Deering Oaks. I had to forgo my usual scenic shortcut and back out of the park. Wound up parking directly in front of my old digs on Deering Street. The wind felt like 65 MPH.

So now the soup is ready and I want to sit and listen to the roar of the wind between the buildings. It's fascinating to hear, dramatic to watch.

Almost the hour of the wolf. Don't know if I could handle a wet wolf at my door.

But if it's really cold, it would be welcome anyway.

Basement Laundry Studios

2010-02-24T22:19:00.003-05:00

It has been quite a busy day.

I'm writing this while waiting for "Countdown" to download and prep.

It's a rainy night out, cold, windy, not very pleasant. People are hurrying along on Congress Street below.

Tango practica was a little sparse but still a good place to work on technique. My partners have given me feedback on the work I did with my tango teacher, JR. It seems to have taken and I think, once I've got in better integrated, it will make me an even more expressive dancer.

The time between work and tango was spent doing laundry and trying to record vocal tracks for "Inuk and the Sun". Since the laundry is in the basement - and the basement has such thick walls I packed my laptop, a mike stand, pro condenser mike and headphones downstairs to try to record the "Seals" first song so the singers could have a reference recording.

This building was build as a hotel - an hotel? - around the turn of the last century and the foundation walls are very thick. No vibration from the street.

So I set up outside the laundry. Plugged the power block into the fire alarm and propped myself up against the wall, put on my phones, got up, put the towels in the dryer and then started recording music.

It's actually turned out quite well. The major sound glitch was the fact that the elevator would go off and the Elevator Control Room was just over there. So there was a click - more like a thud - of relays and the elevator would roar from floor to floor.

There was no way to avoid sound contamination. So I suppose the whir of the elevator motors will serve to suggest the surrusus of the waves ( did I spell that right?). At least I got the damned thing done - still have a bunch of songs to conceptualize - then the final arrangements have to be created as the stage action is developed.

It's a fun process. I just didn't think it would play out while the towels were drying and people were trying to make their way by me - gingerly, but gamely.

OK - I admit I kind of like it.

Sue me.

The Lord High Kitty of Congress Street

2010-02-23T11:48:00.003-05:00

You see, I have this cat.

I've mentioned him before, Sebastian is his name. He came to me as a furred consolation when a relationship - the only time I've tried to live with someone who wasn't myself - didn't work out.

I suppose I should have known better - as many of my close (if that's really applicable to me) friends can attest I often have quite a problematic time living with myself as it is - much less another human being.

But this extraordinary cat seems able to tolerate me.

There is a counter-melody in my first published anthem that he generated by walking on the keys of my old PC88 - it took a little fettling but the piece sold so I guess he's pulling his weight. His share of the kitty litter comes out of the royalties.

I pay for my own part of the litter we use.

He has adapted quite well to the new digs. The pad you see in the pic is a special electrostatic (so says the pack) one that attracts dander and loose hair. It seems to work and he took to it with surprising ease.

It's a much smaller place that my old one and I try to let him wander in the hallway when I can. He prowls the hall, not scratching because he has a big chair at home to scratch up (I consider removing a cat's claws a form of abuse).

A lot of the time - especially at night - he roosts on his pad in the windowsill, watching the traffic, the people and the birds go by. I think if the window could be opened - and it can't - the lucky passersby below would look up and see a blur of black flying out of the window to crash onto hapless seagulls flying harmlessly down Congress Street, thence to thud onto the street and wander off in a daze, while in the distance, by the elevator back to the fifth floor you'd see a black streak and hear a cackle of high-pitched meows ....

Banzai Kitty. Just to mess with the seagull's heads.

Or at least that's what I imagine he's imagining. Hard to tell with some cats.

"Feed me" is pretty clear. He's a very vocal feline. Good one for a composer to have. I remember him barking at squirrels through the window when we lived down by Deering's Oaks.

Didn't know he was bi-lingual - damned smart cat.

So it does a misanthrope like myself good to sit and try to imagine what's going on in another creature's head. So many imaginings we have of the interior lives of others is just a projected reflection of what's going on inside of ours.

The saving grace is the ability to know that what we are seeing is a reflection - not a reality. It's fortunate I can know the difference. It sometimes takes me a while to admit it but I was raised with too much respect and desire for Truth to ignore it successfully for very long.

I learn so much from other people.

And from cats.

Loco Locavores

2010-02-21T22:09:00.006-05:00

I met BG, my dancer friend who builds costumes designed for ease of removal, downtown and we headed over to the latest sign of the apocalypse, the Portland Indoor Market.

It's taken a while for all the permits to come through. Why there were any issues is beyond me, but there it was, opening on Saturday, yesterday.

Basically it was the old Choi Institute of Self-defense, a location on Free Street across from the Civic Center.

I'd had a friend who'd taken Thai Boxing lessons there - she missed it when it closed late last Summer. I'd remembered it as an interesting window to walk by while walking on one of Portland's less interesting streets. Lot's of feet flying around, shouts muffled by the thick glass on the street.

Now it was full of tables covered with all sorts of winter produce.

Lot's of carrots, parsnips, free-range meat, cabbages, jars of jam.

Oh, and there was a box of tomatoes. And a goodly number of potatoes.

These last were problematic for BG. She really enjoys potatoes (one of the few dancers I've ever met who has any kind of relationship at all with starchy foods - most avoid them like the plague) and still was conserving a batch given her by her sister some time ago.

In fact, so long ago that she was worried they might not be worth using - hence the fatal attraction of the bags of fingerlings and other tuber-types populating the darker reaches of the room.

The two pounds of beef I purchased are now transformed through the magic of crock-pottery into a rich chili, carrying it's own heat in the fridge. Also have some beets.

Between us BG and I ran into a small phalanx of friends and acquaintances. A lot of time was spent chatting, watching the box of tomatoes empty out.

I must say it was fun, and I'm very glad we'd arrived when we did. As I noted you could watch the really good stuff go away within minutes.

We managed to escape after about 30 minutes, making our way over to Mousse for brekker , my usual Wednesday hangout when the Market is outdoors.

My schedule is such these days that I don't really get to fix a complexicated breakfast - often some fastidiously engineered oatmeal does the trick. Besides which the smoke detector in my new apartment is so sensitive that it's almost impossible to cook my old breakfast of sausage, eggs and rice with out being beeped out. Resetting the damned thing has always led to overcooked eggs - so I've reverted to oatmeal, which has yet to set it off.

So breakfast at Mousse was nice.

By the time we'd returned the piles of local produce were gone, picked clean by locavores. I'm not sure what this means and I admit to mixed feelings about it. A sizeable crowd was still milling about, asking questions and taking notes.

I don't know why I can't give others the credit for dropping by to get some fresh food - though Hannaford's and Shaw's actually have better stuff for less. Maybe it's just the contrived cleverness of it all. Now that everyone knows you have to get there for the limited pickings right at 10 a.m. I suspect it will become much more successful and much less pleasant.

We shall see.

The view from five stories up

2010-02-20T00:22:00.004-05:00

Friday night.

Actually, Saturday morning.

Thirty degrees outside. Shredded clouds tease the eye with glimpses of crystal stars - odd for being in the middle of a town.

Nestled in the window seat. Fresh, cool air flows in through an inch-wide opening, traffic sounds, the occasional voice from below, raised in celebration of a Friday night.

Actually, Saturday morning.

A mug of green tea marks the end of an eventful and routine day. I had interesting lessons to teach to interesting people - and no one came to my workshop on Parental Controls. Shared a pizza with a friend, obliged by her dog to scratch his muzzle while trying to watch Keith and Rachel.

I see people walking by on the sidewalk across the street, collars pulled up against the wind that blows between the buildings. I smell snow in the air but the weather forecast calls for continued clear skies.

There should be more snow on the ground, we should feel more immediate drama from Nature at this time of year. One week of clear weather doesn't make a climate - but it does seem odd to have it be so enjoyable - well, relatively so, anyway.

During the day I am high enough to watch seagulls fly by below me - I watch them from an overhead viewpoint, soaring between these buildings. Fascinating.

I do not plan on dreams - but perhaps tonight they will come. Perhaps this is one now.

So, what the hell WAS I doing last night?

2010-02-15T18:54:00.012-05:00

It all started with the picture on the left.

No, 'lemme 'splain ...

All I was doing was coming home from helping a friend out in the early part of the evening. Sometimes a crisis or issue arises and you just get up and go.

So, with all that settled and a plate of cookies in my pocket - courtesy of a friend's two year old - and my car parked in the garage I was headed home to continue the seeming-endless job of unpacking and editing my poor life.

This took my by Geno's - my favorite brick and beer rock-and-roll bar. Big Bob the Bouncer was smoking by a sandwich board - "Love On the Run - A Valentine's Burlesque".

There is a lively - if rather basic - scene of "burlesque nouveaux" here in Little Paris By Casco Bay. I've been to some small productions held in various garages and on various street corners around the town - the Gothic sideshow and Excuse-Me Sir-cus are also attached - if not by the hip, then with lashings of imagination.

I admit it - I like looking at women who enjoy being naked - and, frankly, at anyone, male or female, who flat out knows that everyone is having a good time.

If someone does not like being naked it shows - pardon the expression.

Big Bob is persuasive - that's probably why he went into bouncing in the first place.

I bounced on in - and was aghast at how large the crowd was already. More importantly, no seats were free at the bar. Fortunately I found a free wooden barstool under the jukebox (the "iMusic" box, god help us...) and pulled it up.

The show was obnoxious and loud. Mostly the plot - with fewer threads than most of the girl's costumes - concerned two madams on the run from the law. This was conveyed through vignettes, mostly based on country (no pun intended - Shakespearean or otherwise) songs that served as motivations for the girls to get their kit off.

It was in the middle of all this madness that I was accosted by an old friend - BG - a dancer who had taught with me back in the early days in Cumberland. She's an accomplished modern dancer and a whiz with special-needs kids. She also helped glue-gun roses to one of the costumes and I know she did a great job doing it because those roses stayed on the costume when it hit the floor of the stage.

And it hit damned hard, too.

So it went. Since her friend was dancing in the "finale" - which was a thinly veiled (get it?) rip-off (get it?) of the cornfield (really get it?) joke-fest from the old "Hee Haw" show we had to stay for the evening.

I admit that what I could see from my vantage point by the bar - and behind the crowd - was hard to make out, except for one song - to the tune of "Dueling Banjos" - that started right ON the bar - which is when I took the pic above.

It made for a great, if tiring, evening and I'm actually glad I stayed to watch.

It was also fun to catch up with BG - she's a talkative, likeable person in a very difficult professional educational field. When the show was done I offered to walk her back across the entire West End to her flat as it was after 1:15 in the morning and not only was it the gentlemanly thing to do it was fun to see what that end of town was like so late in the evening.

Once BG was safely indoors I could turn my full attention to the incredible sound of the West End late in the night - after 1:30. It's not quiet, not in the least. As your hearing attunes you can hear motors going by on the freeway that borders Deering's Oaks. The longer you listen the more your ears adjust, the way eyes adjust to the dark.

Motors become cars and trucks, then station wagons, sports cars, 18-wheelers and bread trucks. Amazing.

I crossed the playground of the school where my friend W. teaches - swings gently, if disturbingly, twisted in the slight breeze. A tree caught the light behind the iron fence.

Lights plainly showing a bulkhead lying slightly ajar. Brightly lit but still a reminder of how late, how alone you are - anything - ANYthing could come out of that crooked bulkhead door.

AnyTHING.

It can reliably be said that I always see things this way - it's the effect of having read so much H.P, Lovecraft as an adolescent.

The temperature was bearable. Keeping at a brisk pace helped, I wrapped my pashmina tighter about me, pulled my hat down closer over my overworked head.

At the end of one stretch was a Cumberland Farms store, gas tanks pumping away, people inside buying large cases of beer in advance of the bar shut-down coming in a very few minutes - and all the stores would stop selling as well too.

Finally I turned the corner at the Cumby's and there was Longfellow Square, glowing bright orange and red in the distance.

I think they're starting to take the lights down now. The artist is of the opinion that such displays should be both public and temporary - we enjoy them for a season and then they go away.

Other art, other installations take their place, but this - this is a One Time Only deal, something that only exists for the one who are lucky enough to see it.

And so it went last night.

I feel lucky to have run into a Scotch, a stage full of (eventually) naked ladies, an old friend, good conversation, zany theatrics, naked ladies (did I already mention them) and all topped of with a walk both sinister and lovely.

I say "sinister" though there really was no more risk that we ever take when walking at such a time and in such place. But also sinister because you could imagine - or even actually feel - the age of the city around you, age that had nothing to do with the bricks, mortar and Mansard roofs of the houses.

No, there was a magic out that night. What it was I think I'll go mad over, if I ever totally see it.

It was all very lovely and very strange at the same time

The lights in Longfellow Square are part of it. I know the were not part of the experience of the City but there it is, called in to being as if by single sorcery, one person setting the trees alight to entertain the statue of Mr. Longfellow.

I suspect the statue gets up to talk at some times.

I wish I could be there to see. I cannot seem to stop the train, no matter how fast I try.

Maybe if I don't think about it - or go at it sideways - I might get it across.

We shall see.

Under't to Above't while in't

2010-02-09T21:22:00.005-05:00

Well.

Well, well, well.

Welcome to my new abode.

Five stories above Congress Street, a rent check for $50 more but saving $70 in the process.

I think Sebastian is completely sold on being the Lord High Kitty of Congress Street, surveying the passing multitudes, free from the distractions of mice or excessive cigarette smoke.

We're now ensconced here at 645 Congress Street. This building started life as a hotel, fell into disuse and was, most recently, used by the University of Southern Maine as an intown dormitory.

From all reports (some of them from my colleagues at the Orchard) this place was pathetically thrashed - fist holes in the walls, butt prints on the ceilings. It wasn't that students (well, most students) wouldn't tear-ass around in any dorm - it was that the University just didn't seem to care all that much, refusing to put the resources into the space to make it worth respecting.

Sadly,I think some things come too easily.

Still, my dear friend E. has been pointing this place out to me throughout its construction. She's been consulting with the builders and owners about how to make it attractive for contemporary intown folks - strange to think that includes me.

The building has one apartment reserved as a meeting/community room - it can also be rented as a guest-room extempore' - if one has company, it can be rented.

E. also insisted on a large bike room, very secure but accessible to the street by electronic key card.

Moving in - most of moving in - was accomplished in three trips. I have to thank my friends the W's, who live just around the corner. They - along with E.H's huge pickup truck - made it easy.

I think I was much better packed this time than the last - there was much less of a panicked air to the process. The last time I had to get rid of 27 trash bags of useless things, dropped off all over the peninsula in the middle of a raging snowstorm.

This time a lot of things went to Goodwill, some to the recycling bins - much neater. The remainder took place over the next 5 days, smooth as catgut.

So now I've actually had a couple of mornings where I could sit in the window seat, a cup of coffee in my hand, Sebastian in my lap, watching the light change on Peak's Island, the traffic build on Congress Street.

Now that WiFi is up it's going to be really perfect.

My first loads of laundry are finishing up - I still don't know where I'm going to put it all now that it's not crammed into trash bags for the quick trip around the corner from my old place.

Still, it's a nice problem to have - and now that I actually have two whole days off in a row - a row! - I might be able to get things done and online.

So now I have a full-time job at the Orchard, a new place where I actually save money while writing a bigger check and a score to write for a play.

Not a bad place to start in the middle of.

Something in the Wind

2010-01-06T18:29:00.004-05:00

This picture is already irrelevant.

The tree is gone. Our Lady of VIctories now graces an irregular pyramid of snow. Fairy lights adorn the trees in Monument Square.

Up here in the Market House I'm drinking a SanPellegrino Pear Nectar and munching cashews.

We are in Winter for fair now. Several aggressive snowstorms, several cold nights of blistering ocean winds have all begun to toughen up the city.

There have been nights of late where I've walked downtown - for many reasons, most having to do with being outside to feel the bite of Nature after having been warm and comfortable in the Orchard all day.

There is a chance I will move to new diggings, just around the corner on Doctor's Row. Originally a Best Western Downtown Inn, then vacant, then a dorm for USM - now developed into surprisingly nice apartments.

If it goes well I may actually be saving money by moving to a brand new apartment. My criteria have always been based on feelings of what kind of work, what kind of music or ideas I could create.

The inspiration of space.

I don't think I'll ever own a house. Maybe a condo but who knows? My life has moved in such odd directions - or maybe irresponsible directions - that it's impossible to define.

So I'll continue. I think this year maybe something very different in my life. It's what's been coming for a while. Just what, I'm not sure - but definitely something. new.

Barner at the PMH

2009-12-16T11:25:00.004-05:00

MobileMe gallery is here.

I am resolved - which is really rather easy, except for the part where you have to admit to yourself you've let yourself down - to post more often here.

The current location is Market House Coffee, on the floor above the Portland Market House and above the shop of my favorite cheesemonger (and tall, leggy, lovely redheaded entrepreneur) K. Horton.

Both floors are under her stewardship. She had a stall in the late, lamented Public Market. I can see the Market's shell from where I sit, straight down Preble Street. It's being redone as offices for a phone banking company that makes calls for collection agencies - at least recessions favor some industries.

Still, my friend W.'s architecture firm got the redesign contract, so it's not all bad.

The room here on the second floor of the Market House is bright and warm; large windows on both ends of the room let rich light shine on the exposed brickwork.

The far wall from the couch I'm currently draped over has a triptych by my colleague from the Orchard - James Barner, by name.

He's a blond, bearded man, strong of build and possessed of a wiry intelligence. An engaging observational mind drives his unique humor - I think he'd be a formidable creator of risqué French knock-knock jokes.

I do know he makes interesting art - my eye keeps wandering across the room to look at the faces he's chosen.

Any art that makes you take time to be engaged is worth supporting - damned shame, then, that I can't afford to buy any of it.

Oh well - it's enough to know the possibilities are there.

Waiting for the Download to Finish

2009-12-11T22:34:00.003-05:00

It seems my vaunted RoadRunner internet access slows down, dramatically slows down, after 5 p.m. so while I'm waiting for Countdown With Keith Olbermann to download I thought I'd post some general randomness during the wait.

**********

The Polar Express is up and running.

MobileMe Gallery is here.

I'm supposed to be helping out as an actor but getting to practices while trying to meet all my obligations at the Orchard has not gone well - in fact, it's not gone at all.

I did get down there to shoot pics of the first weekend - they actually came out quite nicely.

I remember watching the Summer Children's Theatre put on by the Tulsa Arts Council, back when I was in Fifth and Sixth Grade - it was "the Wonderful Village of Vim" and I still remember the "Dancing Dragon" song ("You've got to love that dancing dragon, till you reach the top...").

I also remember the pain of wanting to be on stage so much, wanting to be a part of all those cute (very, obnoxiously cute and pretty) kids - I think all of them came from the Soc schools in Tulsa ("Sosh", long "O" - if you've ever read "The Outsiders" you know what I'm talking about - set in Tulsa, no less). I followed the show as its portable stage went from park to park, biking into areas I didn't even knew existed, just to see it.

Today such a child might well get dragged up on stage - I'm pretty sure Reba Short, our Artistic Director, would see to it - back in the Sixties a Native American kid, even a starstruck one, was a non-person.

Now, I help run a theatre and a Children's Museum. What goes around comes around.

***********

There is a team of people, police mostly, who do nothing but check the streets on cold nights like tonight - it's 23º out - and get homeless people into the shelters. It's not all that bitterly cold but those nights are on the way. I saw them outside my window tonight, over in Bosnia, trying to talk a ragged man into the back of a cop car, trying to get him out of the cold.

It's very dark out and the wind is fast and cutting. I hope they talked him into it.

***********

Looks like the download is finished. Part of me wants to hear what the latest outrage is, part wants to go our for a walk in the bitter cold. Part wants to just go to bed. Tomorrow I'm working from 1 to 10 p.m. and it should be a hoot - more and more it becomes "all hands on deck" as the Holiday Season rumbles gamely on.

Strange to be a part of it.

Two slices of pizza, a hot dog

2009-11-26T12:46:00.005-05:00

This is what I'm thankful for:

There has been a new homeless person, a woman, wrapped in layers of plastic and often seen leaning up against news boxes belonging to the new daily free newspaper in town.

Portland does not have a large, visible population of homeless people.

At least, not so you can see.

There are the usual suspects, mostly men called the “Park Street Social Club” by a local television station. I’ve seen them over the years, getting a little more shaky, a little grayer, dirtier - and then noted their absence. It’s a rotation of need and despair that you sometimes see - and sometimes gloss over too easily.

But women, for physical and social reasons, are rare.

So she has appeared on Congress Street. She’s part of the scene now, someone easy to see, easy to notice and therefore easy to ignore.

An extra slice of pizza fell into my hands the other night. Otto Pizza, a new addition to the line of small eateries on Congress Street, was closing when I dropped by on my way home from the Old Port. They are a simple business, selling good pizza at reasonable prices, staying open at convenient hours for those of us out and about.

I’ve gotten to know the owner - he has a MacBook Pro, 17” and doesn’t know how to use it. I can’t give him lessons (well, maybe if he paid me in pizza. Maybe.) but I did set him up with resources at the store he could use.

So coming in just as they closed got me a second, free piece of pizza - hot off the oven, crispy and well-made.

And there she was, sitting just across the street, in a maddeningly convenient place on my path back home.

So, the second piece just went to her. I had no use for a piece of pizza that came into my hands by accident.

Same thing for a hot dog. I’ve posted pictures of the Monument Square hot dog stand and it’s affable owner, John. He’s friendly and supportive on sunny days, making basic, quality dogs.

He’s even a more welcome sight on gray days like today.

So last week I broke my own rules and bought a second hot dog - with mustard, ketchup and kraut.

Again, it wasn’t the distance of a dozen steps before I saw her again. Suddenly the second hot dog seemed to weigh a ton, it was covered in sugar and yellow cheese, it was frosted and pointless ...

... until it left my hand - suddenly it was the most lovely hot dog in the world.

I suppose I’m being unfair and clueless, as usual. It’s only a hot dog and a piece of pizza and there isn’t a great deal I can do about a homeless person, at least not right now.

But, right at this moment I’m grateful that I can afford a second hot dog, that a second slice of pizza came into my hands and that I really didn’t think about the impulse to give it away until right this minute, sitting here at Mousse, writing, looking at what is the last Farmer’s Market of the official season.

The day before Thanksgiving.

I’m the luckiest man in the world. We, all of us, all over the world, can be the luckiest, most thankful people in the world.

Once we see what is obvious - and then act.

Caught Between the Full Moon and Blowing Leaves

2009-10-05T21:57:00.003-04:00

I should be writing music. There's a perfectly good set of intervals in my head and they're starting to swim in patterns I can see - or at least what I call "see". It sounds a visual thing, I know, but if it could be easily put into words I'd be a novelist or some other kind of wordsmith, rather than a composer, an explainer.

Just got in from a walk to the local smoke shop - which also serves as a very overpriced grocery store, full of items obtainable much more cheaply elsewhere. Milk and cookies (well, Fig Newtons) for more than eight dollars.

The moon is clear and bright, high above, almost directly overhead. Its glow is aggressive and full, a rich vanilla disk floating in a dark velvet cloak, the lining pocked with stars.

I wish I could go back out - I probably will when I 'm done with this.

The difference between where I was one year ago: the start of my Orchard experience - and two years ago: my first realization that LField wasn't the heaven I thought it was - and three years ago: when the motor of my fear and loathing first began to spin - all of those differences define the distance I have moved, the places I have seen and left behind.

Four years ago? Arguing with superintendents and band parents.

Five years ago? Opening a new school and not even aware that I could do and feel so much more than I was.

The moon has always been there. It circles the Earth, it circles the Sun, the aspect of its face grows and wanes and grows again. It changes, it is the same.

I am the same way. I change by becoming more what I have always been, deep down inside.

Hiatus - day three

2009-09-16T13:36:00.003-04:00

Having lunch at 2 Cats - very nice eggs and bacon, lot's of toast - more than I should have, probably.

It's turned grey and cloudy out - yesterday was partly cloudy - partly clear? and very bright.

Sat in a chair by the water and gave my best imitation of the mushroom in this picture.

Reading Dan Brown's latest, "The Missing Symbol" - actually read it in two sittings - yesterday and this morning.

Sleep was fitful until I got used to the soughing of the wind through trees directly overhead - combined with the sound of waves I couldn't help but hear rain everywhere - hard to sleep with the implied discomfort.

I'm sure others of my acquaintance - Matthew comes to mind - would be more carefully kitted and prepared. I borrowed a tent from the W's and headed north, buying the simplest of food and a ton of wood. Last time C and I were here - I'm at the same campground - it seemed impossible to get a fire going and then we ran out of wood. This time I want a roaring fire as long as I can.

There is something mystical and entrancing about sitting with a burning fire and the ocean waves breaking about 10 feet from your chair. A lot of very useful thoughts going through my head.

I'd share some but the lunch serving is done here at the "2 Cats" and my chair is being meaningfully swept under. I'll be on the road early - early - tomorrow - so I'd better get back to my "camp" and study.

Hiatus - day one

2009-09-14T19:09:00.009-04:00

The Orchard is closed for the next four days - we're being rebuilt, with some new space added and other nice taradiddles.

There is a part of me that really wants to sit at home in front of a screen and write/edit - and I suppose at some point I'll have to.

The major part of me - and that part has won the day - is going to hare off to Bar Harbor, where C. and I spent last Labor Day camping.

It should be a lot of fun. I borrowed my traditional loaner tent from the W's - I should just buy the damned thing, as their kids have already outgrown it. Still, it's perfect for one or adults.

Meanwhile, today has been just a day to breathe. Slept late - or slept as much as time allowed. The day has been bright and once galleries from last night's Quarterly Meeting had been uploaded I grabbed my shoulder bag, complete with camera, and headed out into the town.

It was immediately apparent that a cruise ship was here in town. There were groups of somewhat over-tanned people scanning maps while standing on street corners, looking at buildings, taking videos of traffic.

Having lived here as long as I have I've gotten so I can tell the signs.

The group I chatted up seemed to come from the Midwest but not as far South as Oklahoma - Nebraska, I'd say - strangely we didn't get to the point. "What do you think of DiMillo's".

"What do I think of DiMillo's?"

It's hard to answer that. My first answer was that it's not the kind of place the locals go to ... when pressed, I wanted to say "because we all think it sucks" but that wouldn't be a gracious answer - so I improvised (which is always a terrifying prospect to those who know me well ...) that it felt much like any other mid-range restaurant in any mid-range town.

So I armed them with some other locations.

The numbers of the lost increased as I went closer to the waterside. A couple of the young larvae were sneaking up on the Guy-In-A-Lobster-Suit down by Brothers Lobster Company.

It gave me great pleasure to call them out. The one causing the trouble was pissed at me for spoiling his fun. I might have felt bad except he used the one phrase guaranteed to lose my sympathy, namely "I was only ..."

After that I walked away and let him splutter. "Jesus, kid, it's just a guy in a lobster suit". Not I like stole your lollipop - though I suppose, in a way, I did.

What a twink.

The roofs of a pair of parking garages gave me some new views of the town. The one next to the State dock gave me a next-door view of the ship. Farther away was the one next to the Residence Inn - very nice.

Shopping for spaghetti fixings at Miccuci's Market - how Italian is that - even in that rather run-down section there were isolated clumps of lost tourists trying to find the local brewery.

It was on the way home through Post Office Park - the scene of last week's "Fireflies" performance - that two distinguished men in prayer shawls were blowing a shofar and talking to the media.

Turns out it is Rosh Hoshanna - who knew?

David Bergman, president of Shaarey Tsphiloh Temple - the "Little Shul in Woodfords" - is shown with the shofar.

Once he warms up he gets a good tone.

Rabbi Akiva Herzfeld is not shown, as he was talking to the media. We all had a nice cross-cultural chat and I walked away with honey to celebrate the New Year.

So now I'm at the NorthStar for our bi-weekly (kind of) tango evening. The lesson is going on and the regulars are starting to drift in. I'm going to take the W.'s tent and spend the next couple of days camping on the edge of the ocean in Bar Harbor. More then.

Actually, kind of a nice day.

Flying Chickens in Food Sauce

2009-09-09T11:09:00.005-04:00

As I've said so many times before "you see the strangest things on the streets of Portland".

...and I'm sure you'd see strange things both on the streets of New York and Kankakee for that matter. It's just that these are the strangenesses I'm looking at right now.

Still, it's kind of nice to know I live in a town where I can get food sauce if I need to. A lot of people go through life with just the regular sauce. Being able to put sauce made of out food - even specially processed food - makes a big difference.

On the (pause for modest cough) serious side of things - or at least things that are less semantically tortured - the Orchard is going to be shutting down for 4 days next weeks while we are remodeled. I can guess that this is a fairly unusual occurrence - at least it seemed to catch all of us on the hop.

This means that besides the two days off I was having this week already I've got the possibility of 4 days off next week. This might be a financial hit, but I will say that it might give me a chance to head out of town, if I can borrow a tent.

It might be nice to study for my qualifying quizzes sitting by the side of an estuary next to Bar Harbor - at the very least it will get me away from town.

If I can get someone to look after Sebastian then maybe it will happen. Stranger things have...

Speaking of which I've already been out to the Orchard, only to find out my hours have changed. This let me hare back into town to have blood drawn and thence to hit the Farmer's Market.

There was a juggler on the sward that was really good to watch. He had a nice patter and anyone who works with rubber chickens is OK in my book.

The fun part was watching a nursery school crew of kids being entertained. It's always a great thing to contemplate - or better still, actually watch - little kids experience something, anything, but especially the performing arts, for the first time.

The kids had to be shown how to applaud - when and how. It was really cute and the juggler worked the crowd very effectively. He told jokes, running a patter that caught the kids' imagination.

I very much remember the feeling of connecting with a performance. I could easily show you the place on Boston Avenue where I sat watching the Will Rogers High School Marching Band during the Tulsa Christmas Parade and heard the big bass drum go by. They were playing the "Manhattan Beach" march, by Sousa. I can still remember the sound of the bass line in the Trio's second part.

A very famous line.

A little later I'm going to help a friend out - again - and go in to cover a couple of lessons. This should be fun. Then two more actually scheduled days off.

So now I'm going to go out and poke around ... probably wind up in some kind of trouble. It's a lovely, almost too-warm, day and I intend to make the most of it.

Final First Friday of Summer 09

2009-09-04T23:06:00.006-04:00

If there is any image that says to me "First Friday", especially in Summer = it's of this young man, whom C. and I dubbed "Mothman" - though at times he's also "Ribbon Man" and sometimes "No Props At All Man" - who is a totally free spirit who dances at almost all public music events.

First Friday tonight was especially fruitful.

At first there was the PanFried steel drum band from Yarmouth.

MobileMe Gallery is here.

They held forth in Congo Square - earlier scene of the Flamenco Affair - starting about 5 p.m. They played pretty well - I think they were associated with the Pan band attached to North Yarmouth Academy - a nice mix of ages, genders and abilities. I wish I could see - and hear - more group artistic performances. They hark back to the old Town Band movement - rather like the Chandler's Band that used to hold forth on Thursday mights in the Summer at the Eastern Prom Gazebo.

There used to be Gazebos used for such community-building purposes in town squares in every town in the U.S. - I wonder what happened to our sense of community art?

Anyway - they sounded great.

Next I wound up down at Post Office Park - my steps just led down there - I was looking for a hot dog or something similar.

What I found was Betsy Dunphy, an extraordinary local choreographer. She had erected large muslin cages in the park, lit them from the inside to eerie effect. She used this as the backdrop for 10 or so dancers, girls she trained in expressive movements.

MobileMe Gallery is here.

The piece was called "Fireflies" and was put on by the Elm Street Arts group. I've never heard of the Elm Street Arts group but I'll have to look them up as they did great work.

FInally, back down to the Monument, where my friends in the Goth community were presenting the last Dark Follies of the season.

Belly dancers, a devil-stick juggler (quite a good one) and fire dancers - it was quite the event and seemed to draw all sorts of people. Everyone likes belly dancers, I guess.

MobileMe Gallery is here.

By that time of the evening it's kind of hard to get the pics to come out right - not all of them do, but it's fun to try and I kind of like belly dancers too.

Diablo jugglers are also cool.

Wednesday with Scone and Fresh Grapefruit Juice

2009-08-12T10:18:00.004-04:00

For the moment ... for this one wonderful moment - I'm back here at Mousse, on the edge of Monument Square, enjoying the crowds, the noise of trucks backing up, children and parents exploring the stands of the Farmer's Market - in short, another perfect Wednesday in August, here in Portland, Maine.

President Obama was down - up? - in Portsmouth yesterday ... I wish I'd had a chance to go be a part of the crowd. Work intervened, though it was an enjoyable intervention.

I'm getting fed up with all of the lies and manipulation - and inherent stupidity - of the current national "debate" (giving it more grace than it deserves) on healthcare. I don't have health insurance right now and am working out of pocket. The years since last I was in the position have seen a lot of compensatory mechanisms in place - generic drugs, special "$4" lists of medicines, things like that - but there's a lot more to be done.

So I guess the beauty of the day has a deeper emotional context. Which is what makes it so beautiful, as opposed to being merely "pretty".

Well. The scone, as shown, is lemon-cranberry. The juice was fresh-squeeezed - "squozen"? - as I placed my order. Grapefruit. My new favorite for today.

I'm going to rescue a pair of reading glasses from the Orchard, go visit a marching band in rehearsal (just to kind of gloat and to enjoy the ride) - then I have to sit down and really give the writing for "Inuk" a bash.

Tri For a Cure

2009-08-11T07:13:00.005-04:00

It was a fine, fine summer morning - the kind that is so bright, warm, breezy and rich that folks living here in Maine are willing to forgive a whole Winter of misery.

We have to have days like that. It's almost an expectation, a demand; payment, if you will, for the real struggle that life can sometimes be.

On a day like that, Sunday, two days ago, seeing 770 women push themselves to raise a reported $440,000 to support the Maine Cancer Foundation, well, that is something that offsets what can seem like a lifetime of misery.

We're not talking the weather, we're talking about cancer. I suppose it's inevitable and maybe it's a foolish Native American attitude to think that there should not be a cure for everything. Some things just kill people and how we see the balance of life and death can be a measure of our maturity.

Doesn't mean you can't try to kick it's ass anyway. The Seminoles have never signed a peace treaty with the U.S. government - I don't see why we need to sign one with cancer.

So there is Cathy, Chief the Wonderdog's Mom, in a floral-topped triathalon suit, a little nervous but already a veteran of two races down in Orlando. Of course, Casco Bay and the Florida coast are different critters when it comes to hitting the water for a third of a mile, but Cathy, she's a gamer, she is, and off she went.

Her parents were there to see her as well. Next time they're not brining the chairs because A) they want to be moving to watch the various transitions and B) they're not going to have time to sit to wait for the transitions if Cathy has anything to say about it.

If you have to have a hero for something like this, Cathy is about as good as you're going to find.

One of the reasons I left teaching is the false dichotomy between "process" and "product", between "Feel good" and "grades/test". My experieince has been that working to build your grade point average strengthens you and that both are equal parts of the equation. The Universe is big enough for both.

Call it a foolish Native American Attitude.

The Tri for a Cure is proof enough. It's partly what you've done, it's partly who you had to become in order to do it.

I like that. People should go out of their way more to do wonderful things for each other - and themselves.

Well done - as if my opinion mattered ...

Check out the video I shot.

Preparing for the Back End of Beyond

2009-07-31T20:57:00.004-04:00

Facebook gallery is here.

Well, so Dan Franek, tall of build, blond of hair and fast of foot, is moving back out West for family reasons and we're all sorry to see him go. He has a gracious, affable air and is a formidable tanguero ... and a very nice guy.

So saying Matt Duvenick, his roomy (shown left) threw a little "affair" for him. A small crowd showed up, friends, well-wishers, camp followers, the like.

It turn out to be surprisingly pleasant. Ordinarily such events tax my ability to stay socially focussed - but for a while this seemed entirely pleasant and fun.

More fun came when Matt demonstrated his technique - almost one could say "passion" - for using a vacuum pump to prep toilet paper for his trip. It was observed that it might be the first time such necessities were vacuum packed inthe hsitory of SoPo.

The paper in question is a physical requirement, though why one couldn't just use the Snake River as one of the largest bidet in the world is beyond me. Maybe I'm just slow.

If you click on the Facebook link you can see the whole progression from start to finish. It was really fascinating and led to all sorts of comments.

Hmmmm.

Flamenco Tuesday

2009-07-28T13:52:00.005-04:00

MobileMe Gallery is here.

Well alright, people.

Flamenco in the hot July sun. Very welcome, I must say - both the flamenco and the sun.

This is the first of two days off. I've been working in the Orchard pretty much full on since the new iPhone came out. I don't think I've had two contiguous days off in a month.

I will admit that work has been fun.

Apple Camp was a riot. I had the best colleagues and the format came off brilliantly.

And today?

Today there was flamenco in Congo Square, just around the corner from Doctor's Row. I had seen a Facebook posting about it - Facebook is occasionally good for SOMEthing - and wandered by just in time to catch the activity.

Three string players - one playing oud and flute. One percussionist. Three singer/dancers helping keep the beat.

Each dancer would take a turn on the plywood sheets laid on the concrete of the platform. Either that or help add to the energy of the performance by sitting and keeping time with her hands.

There was a very spotty crowd. I suspect the heat was discouraging folks from being out and about. For myself I need to be a little overheated as a way to stave of bronchitis which is my annual summertime bane.

I love the energy, the seriousness and the sheer presence that flamenco presents.

There is a grace and focus to the relationship between music and dance. There is not a single wasted movement, not a gesture out of place. Same with the notes - both guitar and percussion interleave, mix, each driving the other, each musician almost daring the his/her partners to drive the energy along.

So now I have something to use when I finish the tango I'm currently working on. Now it almost seems de riguer to do a slideshow of somekind so I can upload it along with the music. Not sure which is wagging which.

Oh well.

I think the air conditioning here at JavaNet is messing me up - back to Doctor's Row so I can get this tango scored and recorded: then I can use the pics to some really dramatic effect.

I love this town ....

Wheels Within Wheels with Cat

2009-07-12T08:58:00.005-04:00

And here we have My Lord Sebastian surveying his kingdom.

Anyone else would probably have incredibly cute pics - or even video - of him playing with the ring/ball toy - maybe even write a song.

Sadly I was too involved with eating breakfast - and getting the camera out took too long.

Oh well.

And here we have Jim, living his life.

C. and I went over to Manchester NH to watch the arena version of Cirque du Soliel's "Alegria". The chapiteau that used to house it is now being used for the new show, "Ovo" - at some point I'll h have to go see that one, but "Alegria" serves in the meantime.

The acts themselves were wonderful - I always love aerial acts, both strap acts and trapeze. When I was a boy my Dad took me to the American Airlines Christmas party, where the Engineering Center would hire a damn circus and take over the Fairgrounds Pavilion to host it.

It was at one of those where I saw a young single-bar trapeze artist blow a turnaround an fall 30 feet to the chairs below - it had been rigged right up against the seats (with the ones directly below being cleared out).

Needless to say I didn't go to a circus again until I was in my 30's. Now I have recovered my love of them and hope someday to audition to the Cirque as a counter-tenor (which is the only way I can possibly think of a somewhat physically thick 50-year-old man could have a shot a joining).

The show - separate from the acts - made more sense after we had looked up the wiki on my iPhone and got a handle on what the characters meant. Even the set had a relationship to the meaning of the show. My only problem was with my inability to figure it out just by looking.

Oh well.

Yesterday was another hoop event. I biked over to the Farmer's Market - the strawberries, of course, were all gone by the time I got my act together - but there was Adira and a couple of friends just hooping.

Well, I did get some good new potatoes so with business done I got a chance to practice.

It's all starting to make more sense and I have to take my calendar and try something new - namely to plan out every minute of the next week.

By which I mean providing my days with enough structure - outside of work, like the imminent Apple Camp - to write, practice tango, hooping, write, bike, maybe do some Pilates.

Oh, and write.

Today, Eckardt and I - and, apparently, some of his German visitors - are going up to Lisbon Falls to check out the Pow Wow there. I've not been to one in over a year.

It's been quite a year and I'm not really sure the man who enters the ring to dance will be the same one who did so last year.

The synchronicity - the ring of Sebastian's toy, the hula hoop, the Cirque (even the word "cirque") is very moving. I'm supported by it, affirmed by it, I see my beginning and present and future in one moment.

I've said before that Cherokees have a fifth verb tense, an eternal tense. This is how I experience my Mother now - no one, nothing is ever truly lost.

Go beyond that - everything is always old and new, raw and comfortable, sad and joyous, fresh and nostalgic.

Everything is a circle.

FridayCirque

2009-07-03T23:34:00.003-04:00

MobileMe Gallery is here.

It didn't take much.

It didn't take much at all.

The sun came out for about an hour - maybe two, depending on where you were at.

But that was enough.

There was a palpable lifting of spirits throughout the town - starting at the Orchard where we could see light streaming from the skylights in the ceiling in the Mall.

I got home and promptly fell asleep - we've been going like mad for a solid two weeks - the new phones hit and then the cloudy weather insured the entire Eastern Seaboard hit the Orchard. It's been fun (pretty much) but starting to get a little wearing.

The return of some semblance of Summer was a great release. You can see where everyone's Facebook page catches the moment.

So, once up from my nap - and an impromptu counting of blessings for the day - I grabbed my camera and wandered down Doctor's Row to the Eastland, where another applet, James, was having some charcoal pieces on display. They were in an intricate triptych, rich and detailed. I hope he sells them - I wish I could afford them.

Ian was next, one of the famous pair of DJ's from the late lamented Party More. He's got work across the street, an ironic triptych of drawings the skewered contemporary media and thought. Quick work, a rapier thrust of commentary.

There were other folks from the Orchard out as well - I saw or heard of at least 6 - I'm sure more were out - we're a pretty artsy/craftsy bunch.

Still, my attention was caught by a crowd in front of the Portland Museum of Art intersection, by Starbucks. A show was in progress, the kind of street performance that brings so much fun and community interest to the city.

The group called itself the "Excuse me SirCus" and they were street performers of a particularly daring bent.

Anyone that can successfully pull off a flea circus in this day and age has an audacity sorely missed in contemporary entertainment.

It was a home-grown mix of fire-juggling, the aforementioned flea circus, pie throwing, glass walking, concrete block breaking and other feats. The Blue Man Group has a mantra - always try to open with something the audience just can't (or won't be bothered to learn to) do - no matter what, such a approach immediately sets you apart as a performer and it's easier to get an audience to go with you.

I can say for a fact that the percentage of folks on the street watching who regularly have cinder blocks sledgehammered to pieces on their chests is probably quite low.

All told it was a hoot - even more so when my friend and concierge Melissa took my camera to shoot pics of me as I answered a call for volunteers to hula-hoop (see last post).

I actually got applause.

This was followed by more fire juggling and conversation after the performance.

I heard about another show in Monument Square. This provided a good excuse to head down and have dessert at David's - though it was obvious the lowering clouds might close in again.

The Monument Show was put on by the local Goth community, a cheerful crowd of belly dancers and fire-twirlers. A story-teller/performance artist was shut down by the Fire Department over confusion as to how his fire would be handled - no need to have the course of true art go smoothly, after all.

Still the belly dancers were nice and the fire-twirler was first rate.

The organizer and I had a chance to chat about the provenance of this show - we shared a coffee at David's, she parked her fire extinguisher, billy clubs, megaphone and fire pikes in a chair. Apparently the local Goths had been sharing impromptu performances for some time. First Fridays this Summer had been invested with a commitment to share these performances with the City at large.

So it was a very pleasant evening. Of course the fog has closed back in and God only knows what the rest of the day will bring.

Still, after all is said and done First Friday was full of incident and fun. Things could have been a lot more boring - and how often do I get a chance to hula-hoop and share with the town?

Hmmm?

The World is a Circle

2009-06-29T11:09:00.004-04:00

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

2009-06-25T21:41:00.005-04:00

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

2009-06-24T15:18:00.003-04:00

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

2009-06-13T23:38:00.003-04:00

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 ...