Dancing With Lawrence the Eagle

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

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

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

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!

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

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 ...

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