Friday, December 27, 2013

The Healing Power of Tango

               Many times I have danced with a woman who was new to tango and thought that she found our encounter a therapeutic experience. It is as if I am some sort of tango medicine man who can heal with my touch. I am not bragging; it is simply a natural phenomenon that can occur when two people, guided by the sorrowful music of Argentina, join together in a sensuous embrace.
               In order to experience the healing forces of tango, a dancer needs to let go of his or her inhibitions. We hear the music with our ears but we listen to our partners with our sense of touch through our physical connection. Engaged thus, we are ready to open up ourselves to the curative powers of tango dancing.
               Dropping our defenses and allowing another human being into our personal space can put us in a precarious position. Thus exposed, a dancer, after completing an unexpectedly successful movement, might experience a spasm of delight that has curative properties. It is also possible that a person might suffer a devastating emotional blow after an unforeseen faux pas on the dance floor.
               At fifty-three, I now see more clearly the effects of stress on my health. I can no longer remember how I felt before I started dancing tango all those years ago. I was like a knotted old oak tree, twisted and bent over by the constricting forces of parenting and the guilt of a good old-fashioned Catholic upbringing.
               Today, I feel ‘clear’ and I can thank tango for that. Along the way to clarity, I experienced emotional setbacks but they were few and far between, especially when compared to the many episodes of absolute ecstasy that I experienced along the way.




For more of the Kayak Hombre, read my book Fear of Intimacy and the Tango Cure or River Tango. Available on Amazon.com in paperback or Kindle.





               

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Tie Your Shoe!!!!

               In many classes I’ve attended, a male instructor’s shoelace seemingly becomes loose.  It usually happens while he is elaborating on a concept so important that he deems it necessary to ignore the dangling string that keeps the shoe on his foot.
               If you see this happening, keep quiet and watch the drama unfold. The sight of an unraveling cord drives some people absolutely crazy! What could be worse? A person moving, wait…a person dancing precariously with an untied shoe!
               After you’ve witnessed this scenario unfold a few times, you will begin to realize that the frantic student is frequently a beginner.  
               The teacher tactfully cuts off the first warning from the pupil while forging ahead with an illuminating lecture and demonstration. A complex movement by the at-risk educator drives the newbie over the edge and he compulsively blurts out the obvious.
               Finally aware of his predicament, the master dancer, a person who makes a living in his dance shoes and who most certainly can tell when his binding is undone, lifts his foot to his hands and tightens the knot while standing on one leg.
               I’m not sure why this happens and, frankly, I don’t care. I just thought I’d bring it to your attention as just another one of those curious tango phenomena that occur during workshops.
               I’m in Wisconsin Rapids, now, and looking for some new tango venues to explore. There are three tango communities within a two and a half hour drive. I should be able to provide my readers with a plethora of new tango experiences and insights this coming winter…......stay tuned.




 For more of the Kayak Hombre, read my book Fear of Intimacy and the Tango Cure or River Tango. Available on Amazon.com in paperback or Kindle.



Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Watch Those Eyes

               A tango dance invitation is all about the eyes but after the deal has been struck and the couple finds themselves on the dance floor, the eyes become a distraction. The leader needs to scout for obstacles and invariably ends up making eye contact with a bystander or finds himself transfixed by a shiny object, the flash of a thigh or a nice pair of high-heeled shoes attached to a beautiful calf adorned with a devilishly-red, chili-pepper tattoo.
               Each of our senses is capable of processing an amazing amount of information. With a direct connection to our brains, our eyes may be the number one sensory input. In a room full of couples dancing, our visual sensors become more of an impediment than an asset.
               Once, I found myself looking into my partner’s ear. When the light caught it just right, I thought I could see almost into her brain….almost. I had to consciously restrain myself from craning my neck to get a better view before she noticed my distraction.
               Did you hear that? Before she noticed my distraction. That’s right; your partner can tell when you are looking at something that has nothing to do with the dance. This is true for leaders and followers.
               I danced with a woman at the 2013 Albuquerque Tango Festival who scanned the crowd at irregular intervals. Not only was this annoying to me, it did not look good on her. A friend confided in me afterwards that she, and everyone else, could see that my partner was conspicuously glaring at the audience.
               What a person does with their eyes at a milonga affects the overall ambiance of the group. A woman looking around to see if she is being noticed, or a man constantly ogling the ladies, devalues the collective experience.
               I was three years into my tango education before I received useful instruction on how dancers should deal with this dilemma of ocular overload and self-control. It was at a workshop in Summit, NJ, conducted by Diego di Falco and Carolina Zokalski.
               At one point in the class, a male student, complaining about the complexity of leading, opined that, “it would be easier if I had my eyes closed.”
               He went on to say that it was unfair that the tangueras performed better when they shut their eyes but a tanguero had to listen to the music, choreograph movements and navigate the crowd which meant keeping the eyes open was an absolute necessity.
               Diego then instructed us to focus our gaze on the empty space about twelve inches to the left and beyond our partner’s right ear and to rely on our peripheral vision to spot obstacles. This did the trick!
               After seven years, leading is now not such an overwhelming activity. I find that I can quite easily allow myself to observe more with my eyes as I plot a course through traffic. 
               However, I still have to be careful about what I choose to look at. A gathering of tango dancers can be a feast for the eyes. It is up to each of us to try and make the event more like a romantic dinner and less like a bag of burgers from a fast food restaurant being eaten on a park bench. Tango is food for the soul and not something to be consumed in the company of pigeons.

                


It's still not too late to order a copy of my two books, River Tango and Fear of Intimacy and the Tango Cure, both available on Amazon.


Saturday, December 7, 2013

A Farewell To Fargo

               I’m almost out of here, out of Fargo.  I’ve got a new contract lined up for work in Wisconsin and I leave this Friday. 
               I haven’t danced tango since the Albuquerque Tango Festival at the beginning of November and I’ve been unable to work out my stress through dancing or jogging.
               The tango community in Minneapolis is just too far away, especially considering that a snow squall could force me to miss work.
               I haven’t jogged since the beginning of October when it started to get cold. This coincided with the heat being shut off in my building and I just couldn’t break out of my warm nook to force myself to go for a run.
               Another thing deterring me from outdoor exercise is the stench from the Fargo Landfill. I didn’t mind it at first but now I detest it. It is very noticeable from at least three miles away which encompasses most of the town of Fargo.
               It’s been below zero degrees here for a week and my theory that the stink will freeze has been proved wrong.
               I’ve been here over four months and I feel qualified to give an honest report on the town and its people.
               Demographically speaking, most of the inhabitants are Caucasian and trace their roots to Germany or Scandinavia. There is a sizeable Muslim community here, comprised mostly of Somalians and peoples from India.
               The Nordic people can be very large, guys and girls, and have platinum blond hair. This is in stark contrast to the Somalis who can be so dark as to be almost black. The white people dress in greens and yellows, the colors of their favorite football team, the NDSU Bisons. The Africans dress in solid colors, mostly black, blue, red and green.
               The Swedes and Germans migrated here because they were looking for a place as cold and desolate as their homeland but with the opportunity to own land. Devout Lutherans, they took it upon themselves to bring as many Somalis here as they could in order to save them from a dire situation in their home country.
               The Indians are here because Microsoft has a huge manufacturing plant here. It’s a very big facility located on the southern side of town. I found it on one of my many quests to find a decent supermarket.
               That side of town is growing at a phenomenal rate. There is so much construction of new buildings that it reminds me of New Jersey.
               Here’s something pretty cool. Some of the Somalis look very Italian. They also have Italian names, like Lorenzo and Marco. I guess that’s because part of this country was Italy’s only colony during the Colonial Period.
               After six weeks of idleness, I got bored and joined a recreation center called the Family Wellness Center. It’s a great facility with modern equipment, comparable to Durango’s Recreation Center except Durango’s is much larger, much better and not so crowded.
               The first weekend I went, it wasn’t so packed but that changed on Monday when the temps dropped down to zero degrees at night. Then there was a waiting list for all the free weights and weight machines. The indoor track got so crowded that it was impossible to jog around or maintain a steady pace without bumping into slower traffic.
               After work, especially so now that the temps are so low, there is nothing to do except walk around the Westacres Mall. One complete circuit of every store is two miles in length.
               It feels good to get back into a regular exercise routine. I’ve been idle for too long.
               Since I’ve been here, I’ve written a book, devised an extensive marketing plan and executed it. I’ve reached the end of the internet and have rediscovered that there is nothing on TV except the Weather Channel. I can’t wait to leave.
               Fargo is not a bad place. For me, it was anticlimactic after living Durango, CO, and Farmington, NM. The people here are good people. They come in spite of the cold for employment and opportunity. To give you an idea of what kind of people we’re dealing with here, let me relate a few recent discussions I overheard while I was out and about.
               I was seated at a bar one day, studying for my Cisco Router certification. A loud-mouthed man next to me was engaged in the usual barroom braggadocio when the subject of Obamacare came up. He berated the President for a couple of sentences then his talk quickly became more extreme. When he used the N-word and threatened the leader of our country, something amazing happened: everyone around him got up and walked away.
               These people here aren’t afraid of harsh language. I was at a mini-mart/gas station the other day when the cashier opined that she felt awful.
               A large man behind me blurted out, “And you look like fucking shit, too!”
               The cashier and another lady laughed heartily and then cooed about the man’s honesty. The vulgarities didn’t bother them in the least and they both continued to engage him in flirtatious chatter.
               This just goes to show that the people here place a premium on honesty. Life is hard here and I guess it’s difficult to survive if a person tries to live in a fantasy world. This is probably one of the reasons why I find this place so conducive to writing: it inspires honesty.
               This is not a restaurant town unless you are a fan of restaurant chains. The best place to get good old American food is at the Super Buffet Mongolian Grill on 45th Street. There’s a good salad bar at Hornbacher’s supermarket on 13th Street South and that’s about it.
               One final note: the people here don’t have an accent but they do have a way of speaking. When talking to strangers, they show very little emotion. When talking to fellow Fargonians, they are very animated but the conversations seem to be limited to talk about fishing, hunting, football, hockey and alcohol.
               People from Minnesota have a very pronounced accent and are prone to saying, “Sure, you betcha.”
               I look forward to leaving. The prospect of a change in scenery has brightened my spirits considerably. I am glad I finished out my contract with my current employers to the very end but I am ready for it to end. It has been a long two years, full of amazing journeys and contrasts in landscape and peoples.
               So long, Fargo, it’s been real and it’s been fun but I can’t say it’s been real fun. I am a better man and a better writer for having been here but I won’t be coming back.

Yours truly,
the Kayak Hombre and Capitan Frog,
a.k.a.  perri iezzoni


Saturday, November 30, 2013

The Sad Truth About Americans and Tango

               My knee hurts. It’s been hurting ever since I learned how to lead a pasada, a tango move in which the leader invites the follower to pass over his outstretched foot. I think I’ve finally figured out what’s wrong with me: I don’t know how to walk.
               I find this statement comical. In the many workshops I’ve attended, the instructors are always telling us that we need to walk naturally, particularly the foreign born teachers. I don’t think they realize that walking is not a natural activity for Americans.
               We drive everywhere. I once heard a British comedian make a joke about how to identify an American. It was simple, he said, all you need to do is ask them one question: walk or drive?
               We are also averse to the human condition known as 'sweating'. As billions of dollars in advertising has informed us over the years, sweating is to be avoided at all costs.Thankfully, products have been created to help us remedy this awful condition often resulting from walking too much, too fast and too far. 
                I guess that's why antiperspirants are an $18 billion industry. 
               The dried sweat of Americans is a markedly reprehensible aroma. There’s good reason for this: we don’t eat well. Fortunately, our poor diets help sustain an even larger industry that is helping us spread our culinary habits around the globe.
               When we sweat, our odor tends to take on the fragrances of the food we consume. If all you eat is fried food and processed meat, it is probably best that you don’t sweat in the presence of people with whom you wish to make a good impression, like your tango partner.
               I remember the first time my aching knee became a problem; I was attending a workshop in NYC led by an instructor named Dragan.  He analyzed my movement and correctly concluded that I was putting too much weight on my extended leg. If I positioned my weight appropriately, I suffered no pain. If I did it wrong, the ache became excruciatingly obvious.
               That was five years ago and now the pain has returned. Oddly enough, it only hurts when I walk. When I backpack, jog or dance tango, there is no problem. I must conclude that I am doing something wrong in the process of walking.
               At fifty-three, I am realizing that it is necessary for me to retrain myself in some fundamental facts of life, like walking and eating.  
               My diet now consists of raw, or slightly cooked, vegetables, legumes and nuts, such as beets, radishes, tomatoes, peas, walnuts, etc.
               As for my walking, I am no longer trying to find the closest parking spot to the store. I am incorporating tango techniques into my movement: rotating my hips and shoulders, focusing on pushing off the standing leg and keeping my frame straight and centered over the weighted leg. 
               Once again, I find that Tango is not just a great metaphor for life, it is a guide for all on how to live our lives better.




p.s.  It's not too late to order a copy of my two books, River Tango and Fear of Intimacy and the Tango Cure, both available on Amazon and Kindle. They make great stocking stuffers!
                



              
              

               

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Don't Judge A Book By Its Cover

               The woman I spied across the room was not a covergirl for Cosmo. She had a pretty face and was a little on the heavy side. What attracted to me to her was the confidence in her stare as she caught me looking at her. I nodded towards the floor and she accepted with a slight tilt of her head, unperturbed.
               She wore a bright red dress and smelled…clean, like she’d just gotten out of the shower. There was a feint whiff of perfume but not so much to distract me from her natural body odor. Her soft, tight curls bounced slightly as she rose and proceeded to follow me to the dance floor.
               When we embraced, her pleasingly plump body filled my arm and she felt comfortably familiar in my grasp. Her breasts were very large and mashed into my frame like a pair of incredibly soft pillows. She sensed my satisfaction and I could feel her taking pleasure from that.
               She was dignified, warm and absolutely at ease in her own frame.
               When we dance tango, a partner’s lack of self esteem sometimes burns through the embrace like a foiled roux. The harder we try to ignore it, the more it blackens and ruins the soup.
               As I moved and invited her to join me, I was aware of her intense desire for more time. There was a dominatrix inside her and it told me that I needed to wait until she was finished with her movement before I began the next step.
               I obeyed. An immense sigh of relief welled up inside her and rushed into me like a warm wind before a thunderstorm. All she wanted was just a little respect and I was the one who gave it to her. In return, I was granted the prize: an ocean of gratitude and a virtual Fourth of July fireworks display of passion and musicality.
               The uncertainty had been there all along but she refused to let it show until she was convinced that I was worthy.
               Her delicate feet traced delightful circles on the floor in such a way that the vibrations ran up her full-figured frame and into my very soul. As we danced, I could see her for what she truly was: a skilled dancer and a very sensual tanguera.
               She gave herself to me and together we headed to the upper atmosphere. Nothing was hidden as we embraced each other. In her movements, she ran with the wind and sang at the top of her lungs! She had been holding so much inside that it all came out like a dam whose walls had been breached.
               Three songs passed in an instant. I let our connection linger for a few seconds after the last note had played. It was an eternity. In that brief span of time, I could tell she was savoring the memory of our encounter, drawing it all in like a big breath; it made me feel wonderful and appreciated.
               It was time for us to part company.
               She looked at me for a brief moment and our eyes met. I could tell that she was almost afraid to look at me, fearful that she might see something that would ruin the moment. She couldn’t resist and, when our eyes met, her brows raised in short-lived glee before she turned away.
               I escorted her back to her chair, thanked her profusely and found my way back to my seat. I did not dance the next few tandas, savoring the memory of our encounter for as long as I could.
               It is still with me now, four months later, as I sit in this drab hotel room, looking at the frost forming on the window. It is cold outside and yet, I am burning on the inside from the warmth of a flame in my memory of that sensuous woman.

  

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Girls Behaving Badly

               Recently, a very experienced tanguera complained to me about the slutty tactics employed by other women to get dances. The things she said, such as tangueras removing their panties, seemed very vulgar. She was extremely upset and she used the F-word for emphasis.
               It is not unusual for a bra to disappear after a lady slips out of sight and reappears seconds later, but I never figured they’d go so far as to lose their panties. I’ve never been consciously aware of the absence of panty lines but they must register with a man subconsciously or else why would women be doing it?
               I am in awe of the opposite sex’s talent for influencing my behavior. I am equally amazed at my inability to realize that I have been manipulated until much later. I have to believe women do this instinctively and that it is not a learned process.
               Until I became a proficient leader, I always thought those nice ladies chatting with me on the sidelines were truly interested in having a conversation. Now I know they were only looking for dance invitations.
               Men don’t understand women at all, yet, I think there are times when a woman also doesn’t understand the reasons behind her own actions.
               There was an article in the New York Times on the competitive nature of women. What it said reminded so much of tangueras vying for the attention of the leaders at a milonga and the inevitable sniping that occurs as a result.
               The article referenced research done by Susan B. Hrdy, yes Hrdy, on Langur monkeys in India. It seems these monkeys kill their babies periodically and the prevailing theory was that these primates did this to reduce overcrowding.
               Dr. Hrdy proved that the infanticide happened after an invasion of males from an outside tribe. As the alpha males integrated with the group, they would kill nursing babies in order to force the females to ovulate sooner. This increased their chances of copulating with the conquered females and introducing their DNA into the subjugated tribe before possibly being overthrown by other raiders.
               After further study, she noticed that the female Langurs employed a counter-strategy against the baby-murdering invaders by having sex with as many males as possible, the victors and the defeated. This makes paternity more difficult to prove and the confusion probably saves the lives of many baby monkeys.
                The female Langurs came up with a sexual answer to what they perceived as a threat to their offspring but their promiscuity created another problem: competition for the males.
               The article goes on to quote the findings of a clinical trial conducted at McMaster University by Tracy Vaillancourt and Aanchal Sharma, to document just exactly how women compete with each other.
               They secretly recorded young women sniping at other young women who were dressed seductively.  
               They called this process slut-shaming and it seemed to me to be exactly what the woman I mentioned earlier was doing when she was complaining to me. This may not seem like news but it does go a long way towards explaining the social and biological forces affecting women's behavior at a milonga.
               My conclusion is that, at times, a woman may subconsciously be motivated to make herself available to as many men as possible. This conduct could be some sort of biological and sociological response to unknown forces at work in her social network. The milonga provides the perfect opportunity to quench the fire burning within her.
               At a tango gathering, she can satisfy her desire to dance with an abundance of leaders. If she is not lucky, then she must be cunning. 
               I have to guess that she experiences a tremendous amount of guilt the first time she emerges from the ladies’ room sans undergarments; I think she knows what she’s doing is indignant but she must answer the call of the wild.
               Not every woman hears that phone ringing at the milonga but they know what is happening and they feel threatened. Sniping occurs.
               Dancing tango is not a sport for children or monkeys, nor is it for the timid or those who are easily upset by the opinions of others. We expose ourselves when we join the crowd and seek a partner.
               In tango, it is important for all dancers to keep a tight leash on their primal inclinations. I don’t think the removal of underwear is necessarily a bad thing. This act is kind of like fireworks: if they’re used to amuse, there is no problem; if they’re used to blow up a house, then we got trouble.
               Growing up during the sexual revolution, I was inundated with constant reports of the ways that women have been repressed throughout history. When I read The Histories by Herodotus, the first written account of the various cultures of his time, around 450 B.C., I could discern no repression, only that the sexes had different roles in society: men fought wars and women bore children.
               And so it is in Argentine Tango, men and women have different roles. When girls behave badly to get asked to dance, they are merely reacting to the external forces generated by the people in their lives. This does not go unnoticed by the other ladies at the milonga, who, in turn, get catty. 

               Slut-shaming is a female phenomenon and a natural reaction to a perceived threat.  As long as it is only a verbal release, I think it is probably a healthy emotional behavior. We are, after all, only humans. We’re not perfect and we don’t have to pretend that we are.

Monday, November 18, 2013

Talk to Me, Baby!

               Sometimes I take great pleasure in dancing with a novice tanguera who talks compulsively. I don’t pay attention to the words, just their meaning: she is relaxed. The effect of the tango embrace can be overwhelming for a newbie and an uncontrollable river of seemingly disconnected statements is often the result.
               It makes me feel good to know that I did this; that I am part of some sort of healing process and that I’m making the world a better place.
               Her realization that she feels safe with me is a trigger for the cloud to burst. She doesn’t understand that my ability to connect with her and to make her feel secure is an acquired skill necessary for all leaders of this dance. 
               I’m not sure what she’s thinking but I can tell that she’s relieved. A deluge ensues and becomes a swollen stream that has been held back for years, maybe even decades.
               This may be hard for many milongueros to believe but sometimes people need something more than music and physical contact with another human being. Some new dancers find that they have an irresistible urge to talk and it doesn’t matter what they say, only that they let the words out.
               A major reason for language is the human species’ need to communicate. Our verbal correspondence allows us to do more than just convey information. There are health benefits derived from the use of our vocal chords.  
               Our desire to speak is not satiated if our words fall on deaf ears; there must be a recipient. This is the bane of many marriages, possibly even mine. Too often, men hear the words of their spouses but fail to exhibit the signs that indicate they are listening.
               I love to talk. I enjoy the meter of the words as they fall from my tongue. I delight in the emphasis of the syllables. I constantly strive to find just the right word for a sentence to complete its meaning and its melody. Most importantly, I need to gauge the impact my words have on others.
               I was ‘shushed’ many times when I first started dancing tango. This was not the kind of feedback I was expecting. It seemed to me that I was being unfairly singled out at the time, but later, I would come to learn that the mood of the crowd dictates when conversation is appropriate. 
               This is why a particular milonga can be loud and clamoring one week and sensuously silent the next.
               Tango helps us refine our innate talent for sensing the emotions of the people around us. That is why it is important to consider the effect your actions have on your partner as well as the other dancers at the milonga.
               As I became a better leader, I accepted the responsibility of staying on the receiving side of any dialog during the dance. I came to realize that listening is an act of compassion and a tool for healing. It is an art form and an obligation we owe to the community we serve.
               Ultimately, the best dances happen when both partners are listening and responding to each other with movement and passion, not with words. This takes a long time to learn.
               Very rarely has the talkative tanguera made it to a full blown milonga, she is usually in the very first stages of her tango therapy, at a beginners class, or at one of the many small practicas I’ve attended all across the United States. Sooner or later, she will be silenced by the codigos del tango but, until that happens, I am here for her: ready, willing and listening. Maybe one day, she and I will dance and we will conduct our discussion through our dance and not with our words.





My new book, Fear of Intimacy and the Tango Cure is available online at Amazon.com










Thursday, November 14, 2013

The Perfect Partner

               Tango is an attempt by two people to spontaneously choreograph, together, their individual interpretations of a piece of music.
               That’s a pretty complex statement but it is the reasoning behind the colloquialism that says, “In tango, there are no mistakes.”
               Once a person accepts this idiom for what it is, The Truth, then he or she can discontinue the pursuit of the perfect dance because it is an unattainable goal, and carry on with the real reason why we dance tango: to find the perfect partner.
               I encounter many novices, and even some not-so-new dancers, who are obsessed with absolutes.
               “I was told never to do this,” they say, or, “I was told always to do that.”
               There are no ‘nevers’ nor are there any ‘always’.  There is only your balance and the fundamentals: forward, back, side, pivot, in-place, pause….and your partner.
               What makes a perfect partner? One way to find out is to dance tango with as many different people as possible. When you find the right one, and there may be several or maybe just one, you will know it but not right away.
               On the drive home or sometime the next day, it will occur to you that there was chemistry between you and a particular dancer. The perfect partner is not a person, it is the memory of a person you danced with when everything was just right: music, mood and tempo.


Saturday, November 9, 2013

The Tango Trance

               Candace Pert, Ph.D., the New Age scientist who discovered the opiate receptor in the brain, references research in her novel Molecules of Emotion by a famous psychiatrist and hypnotherapist, Milton H. Erickson. I put down her book and read a few of his Wikipedia entries on the hypnotic process. The work of these two scientists does much to explain a phenomenon most tango dancers are quite familiar with, the tango trance.
               In Dr. Pert’s book, she theorizes that our emotions shape our perception of reality and, consequently, how we remember things. If we experience a terrifying event, our emotions may cause us to block it out. Our bodies, she says, and not just the brains, are where our memories are stored. Our bodies are capable of processing so much data that it is impossible for a person to remember it all, so our body-mind subconsciously selects which events to keep and which to ignore.
               As a child, we remember grandmom’s pies smelling and tasting particularly good; we record that as a pleasurable memory. At the time, however, our parents may have been fighting or bombs may have been exploding all around us and yet we still remember that occasion as a happy moment.
               Later, when we encounter that same smell, we recall that incident and become elated by it, even though there may have been so many bad things happening around us at that time.
               The same may be said about hearing a particular sound, or song. If we associate it with a happy or sad event, it may cause us to experience the same emotion when we hear it again.
               Dr. Erickson writes that the confused person is the most easily hypnotized. He reveals his methods to induce a trance with a handshake. During this seemingly innocuous salutation, he distracts that person by grabbing their wrist. He continues to divert the patient’s attention in such a way until he is finally ready to implant a suggestion into their subconscious.
               Often, I find myself dancing tango with a woman who is a nervous wreck. She finds this dance extremely difficult and is uncertain as to why she continues to pursue it. If I am calm and distracting, I can make her believe that she can dance tango. If I can prevent her from constantly analyzing her perceived faults, she can easily accept that she is indeed dancing and doing it well.
               If I am successful, she will remember this experience as pleasurable. If I am not successful, then, hopefully, she can block out this experience from her memory.
               The occurrence of the tango trance differs from a hypnotherapy session in that it can be a shared experience for the couple dancing as well as by the people around them.
               I’d like to take Dr. Pert’s and Dr. Erickson’s theories one step further. There is a collective body-mind-universe and it stores memories in things like the smell of the ocean, the sight of a star-filled sky and the sound of music.
               Tango dancers are drawn together because we are spiritually wounded and overwhelmed by the stimulation of a technological society that is always increasing in complexity. There is too much for us to comprehend so we block it out and find our way to the milonga. 
               There, we remember a time when things were simpler because the memory has been stored in the music by our collective consciousness.
               When we take up this dance, we are bewildered because tango is an illusion. A thought is planted into our brains that we can learn how to move on our own balance and we do. Subconsciously, we find the answer to the question we didn’t know how to ask: where is the balance in our lives?
               In a world where we are constantly multitasking, nothing could be more simple than a dance that requires us to move only one step at a time.


p.s. Don't forget to check out my new book for sale on Amazon: Fear of Intimacy and the Tango Cure.






Tuesday, October 29, 2013

A Halloween Tango Story

               Desmond looked at his watch again. It was past 4 a.m. and she was late. Dr. Marta Van Vorst was always late. He had no choice but to wait and not complain. The moist night air of the old wooden dock smelled oddly of fresh-baked pastries.
               Ten long minutes later, her small, green, hybrid car rolled silently onto the wharf by the Hudson River in lower Manhattan, where he waited.
               He speculated that she appeared much too calm for a woman who had such a disturbing effect on his libido. 
               He’d met her two weeks ago at a tango gathering called a milonga, a place where tango, and only tango, is danced all night long and often until nearly dawn.
               He'd found her absolutely captivating ever since their first encounter and entertained thoughts that she had magical, bewitching powers over him. There was something about her that he found intoxicating and as addictive as a drug. He felt it oddly strange that he was so attracted to her.
               They had been dancing together less than an hour ago at a milonga when she asked him to meet her here.
               He stood mesmerized as her long legs slid out of her tiny vehicle. It was late October and the chilly night air had become cold enough to fog her breath. Tango music emanated through the open window of her ride.
               “You didn’t stop for coffee, I hope,” Marta said as she stood before him, dressed in a long leather coat, stockings and high heels.
               “No,” Desmond replied, regretting that it hadn’t occurred to him. He was very tired and could have used a cup of joe right about now. He’d been dancing all night and his brain was getting numb when she invited him to this eerie place beside the water.
               She was a professor of quantum physics at Columbia University and he was surprised that she would be interested in someone like him, an electrician who never finished college.
               “Are you tired?” She asked.
               Somewhat puzzled, he answered instinctively, thinking it would be a turnoff for her if he actually admitted that he was tired.
               “No, not really,” he lied.
               Her voice could not hide her disappointment. “You need to be almost ready to sleep for you to see her. How old are you? Don’t you smell the pies?”
               He found her line of questioning bizarre and frustrating. His temper started to rise. It was extremely late and he was beat. He didn’t want to be playing these games. She was a good-looking woman; it should be obvious to her why he agreed to come down to the docks at four in the morning.
               “Yes,” he responded, curtly, “I smell pastries or something, and yes, I am tired. I’m forty-three and too old to be looking for cookies at four a.m. on a wharf in New York City. Is someone else coming?”
               She looked at him directly with her deep, dark eyes and he was back under her spell. When he saw her thick brown hair and dark red lips, his anger dissipated.
               He took her in with his gaze.  When he spied her long, stocking-clad legs extending from inside her coat, he remembered the short skirt she was wearing at the milonga; the wolf inside him began to stir with a hunger for her body.
               Another woman was coming? He had never been in a ménage a trois before; maybe tonight was the night. Was he ready? She said, “she,” right?
               “Don’t worry,” Marta assured him, “and get your mind out of the gutter.” 
                Her eyes glanced down at the erection in his pants and he blushed heavily. 
                “We can take care of that later,” she said, as if this wasn't the most embarrassing thing in the world.
               When she smiled and winked at him, his anxiety disappeared. Knowing this was not all in vain gave him the strength to control the animal inside of him. It was a good thing he was older, he thought, if he’d been a young man, he never would have had the will power to keep his hands off of her.
               It was an incredibly sensual moment for him: the dim light, the sound of the river mixing with the tango music from her car; this seductive woman with whom he’d been dancing with all night. This was not a game for boys to play.
               “It’s time!” she exclaimed. Unzipping her coat, she invited him to embrace her. “Let’s dance and then you will see her.”
               He was too tired and too infatuated with her to wonder about who this other woman was. Once he saw her short black skirt and her breasts pushing against her black cashmere sweater, he simply obeyed and moved to join her.
               “Just walk to the music,” she whispered in his ear.
               The wind from her words brushed his ear and he nearly climaxed. He was tired and was struggling the subdue the animal inside of him. He needed to move to the melody. She relaxed into his embrace as their torsos united, her soft bosom melting into his chest. He could feel his brain going numb.
               He tried to convince himself that this was enough. If this was all that came of their relationship, then he would be satisfied. The wolf retreated back to its lair.
               He lost himself in her scent. She smelled of milk and grapes and other sweet things. Her silky, soft hair pressed against his cheek as he thought he must be falling asleep.
               Her head nearly blocked his vision. With his left eye he could see her ear and the back of her skull as they moved to the songs in a tango trance. 
               Beyond, he could see a single, dim light illuminating the end of the wooden pier and a white figure rising up from the river in the form of a stout, old woman. She was carrying what seemed like a large basket. The smell of fresh baked pastries was stronger now than it had been since he arrived. 
               The apparition stood at the end of the wharf for a long time.
               The image of the elderly lady was so white that she did not seem real to him. When he realized that she was not real, the hair stood up on the back of his neck. Adrenaline shot through all his limbs like lightning from the clouds. 
               He was electrified!
               Marta knew what was happening and asked, “You see her, don’t you?”
               Desmond didn’t answer. He couldn’t answer. Every cell in his body was quivering. He stopped dancing and stared at the spirit. Her form seemed to be fluid, and, even though she was standing still, she seemed to be floating.
               For a moment, he thought he must be dreaming. He seemed to be in that place he went to just before drifting off to sleep. He knew he was not asleep because he had heard Marta speak. When he convinced himself that he was indeed awake and staring at, what he could only describe as a ghost, that is when it suddenly disappeared.
               Marta felt his body spasm and said, “She’s gone, isn’t she? You saw her, didn’t you? I am not crazy.”
               They left the pier and met at her loft not far away. The apartment was cluttered with papers and clothes. She cleared a space on a large white sofa and they sat together, his arm slung over her shoulders as she snuggled into his chest.
               “The woman you saw on the dock was the first one I’d discovered on purpose,” Dr. Van Vorst explained as she played with the buttons on his shirt.
               “I stumbled upon the phenomenon accidentally," she said,  "nearly five years ago, at the milonga where we met. I was nearly falling asleep on the dance floor when I first saw them. It was right around Halloween, about this time of the year. At three in the morning, I was suddenly surrounded by all these white, flowing figures of couples dancing the tango.
               For the first time in my life I had decaffeinated and gotten it all out of my system. It was a struggle to keep dancing without my usual coffee crutch. I came back the next night, after a good night’s sleep but I didn’t see them again. I returned the next three nights in a row. Finally, on the third night, I saw them again. I was extremely drained and it was nearly dawn.
               It seems that the caffeine in my system was depressing some sort of intuitive ability of mine that enables me to see these, these…things, these people from the past.
               Once I had deduced that I wasn’t seeing things, they disappeared and I didn’t see them again for another year. I nearly went crazy trying to find them again.
               “Wow,” Desmond said as he breathed out a sigh, “that’s quite a story. How’d you learn about the woman on the dock?”
               She replied, with more than a hint of pride in her voice, “That was just some good old-fashioned scientific process.”
               She smiled and looked up at him.
               For the first time since he’d known her, he noticed that there were dark circles beneath her eyes. For a brief moment, he worried that she might be psychotic and have homicidal tendencies. He looked around the room for telltale signs of coffins, zombies and weapons of mass destruction. When she lay her head back down on his chest, his fears dissolved.
               “For the next four years,” she continued, sounding as if she was recanting a confession, “I set about establishing exactly when the apparitions would materialize. I found that I could only observe them if I was on the verge of falling asleep or in that trance-like state you get into when you’ve been dancing tango all night with a dreamy partner…like you.”
               She smiled and nuzzled her head into his frame with those last words and continued, “I’m certain they only become visible during the week of Samhain, right around Halloween. Samhain is the Celtic word for the end of the harvest season, when, in the middle latitudes, there is more darkness in the day than sunlight.
               Desmond, what we are seeing are not ghosts, rather, we are looking through a window into the past. As we travel through time, we somehow leave a trail of our passage. When we are in the right state of mind and the earth is at the proper point in its orbit, the…., I’ll call them echos, the echos of our ancestors are revealed to us.
               The universe is constantly expanding. It is my belief that one end of the cosmos is illuminated and spewing forth matter. The other end is dark and drawing in all the light and the matter into itself.   
               I think that, when the Earth is at a particular point in its revolution around the Sun, the illumination from the beginning of the universe shines on these apparitions and we are able to see them, if we are in the proper state of mind.
               Not all echos have the same staying power, nor are they able to be viewed by everybody. We have to be connected in some way to the people who created these echos in the first place.
               That woman we saw tonight, I believe she is my great-great-great Aunt Tula.
               In the early 1700s, she baked meat pies on the family farm in, what would become, Jersey City. Twice a week, she would paddle across the Hudson River to sell her pies and pastries in New York City, when it was still a small town on the Hudson River.
               I found a pencil drawing in the Van Vorst family library of her wearing the same scarf as the old woman we saw tonight. There is an inscription on it that reads Tula.
               It took me two years to realize the conditions for a sighting were only ripe during the week of Samhain.  
               That first week of discovery, I didn’t see the echos anywhere else but here. I took a wild guess and hypothesized that I must be drawn to this place for some other reason than my love of tango. I wondered if they didn’t show up at other places where I loved to dance.
               I went to all of them. It was on the last night of the cycle that I found Tula at the wharf where people sometimes held impromptu milongas
               I smelled the pies and thought it strange because there were no bakeries nearby. Then I saw her. I burned her image into my brain and had a therapist help me recall the memory while an artist was present. We were able to create a drawing of her and that’s how I found out her name.”
               Marta lifted her head and nodded toward the far wall where a large charcoal drawing of a woman was framed beneath a cover of glass.
               She placed her head back on Desmond's torso and began where she had left off, “The story of Tula’s pie-selling business has been handed down in my family for generations. She and I share the same DNA. I think that is why I was drawn to that particular dock. It is where she crossed the river, over three hundred years ago!”
               As she finished her last sentence, the sun began to rise and its light reflected off the buildings of the Jersey City waterfront.
               Marta fell asleep on Desmond's lap.  
               It seemed as if his eyelids had just closed when she was suddenly shaking him.
               “Get up,” she said, slightly agitated, “we must not be too rested or we’ll fail to achieve the proper meditative state. No coffee! No caffeine! No chocolate! We’ve got to be ready.”
               His nerves were shot. He looked down and noticed he had a huge erection.
               She saw it, too.
               “That’s going to be a distraction,” she stated nonchalantly, “we’ll have to make sure this doesn’t pop up at the wrong time or will miss them.”
               She was now wearing a bright red bathrobe. She loosened the belt and allowed it to slip off her shoulders to the ground.       
               Grabbing him by the hand, she led him to the bedroom and said, “I guess I know what we’re going to be doing for the next few hours.”
              
               They spent the rest of the day in bed and had a late dinner. She suggested that they take a long walk before the dance, to increase their fatigue, she said. He assured her that he would be plenty tired when 3 a.m. rolled around, especially after their vigorous love-making session.
               She conceded that point with a smile and the pair made their way to the milonga.
               He hardly felt like dancing but the women that night were persistent and wouldn’t let him stay seated for any length of time. Once, he almost fell over sideways but Marta caught him and escorted him onto the dance floor.
               When the music was playing and he held her in his arms, he was surprised to find that he had the stamina to navigate the crowd successfully.
               On the back wall of the dance studio was a large mural that covered it completely. It was a painting of a tango gathering and he guessed that all the people depicted in it were famous dancers.
               The normal length of a tango engagement between two people consists of a series of songs called a tanda. There can be three, four or five songs in a tanda. The end of the tanda comes when a short clip of non-tango music is played. This music is called the cortina, or curtain, because it separates the tandas.
               Normally, at a milonga, the couples separate when the cortina is play but Marta insisted they keep dancing. 
               The time was coming near, she whispered, obviously exhausted.
               Thirty minutes later, he could barely stand. His calves felt like bricks. If it wasn’t for the music, the scent of her hair and the softness of her breasts pressing into him, he felt certain he’d fall asleep standing up.
               He was fixating on the mural of the dancers on the wall when he saw them. All of a sudden the room was filled with a crowd of shimmering pale tango dancers, dressed in the fancy styles of yesteryear.
               Every hair on his body stood up as they had the night before. He could see the white phantoms all so very clearly.
               This time he was not jolted out of his trance-like condition. He could sense that Marta saw them, too. He tried to dance around them but they were everywhere. The real dancers moved right through them.
               “I…I see them, Marta,” he said, timidly.
               She replied, “Me, too, Desmond. Me, too.”
               She pushed her head against his and shut her eyes as she trusted him to guide her around the room.
               “Do you see us?” she asked.
               Puzzled, he began to look at the couples individually. A pair of phantoms moved right through him and Marta which made his body shiver. He felt her shudder, too.  As the forms traveled through the space occupied by their bodies, he came eye-to-eye with a spirit that looked just like him. Except for its ashen color, it was the mirror image of him.
               Oblivious to his presence, it looked right through him. The specter-Desmond spun around in a fancy tango maneuver and he noticed that his counterpart was dancing with a woman who looked just like Marta.
               “Marta,” he said, shakily, “I see them. I see us. I don’t know how…..but that’s us.”
               She stopped him, saying, “That’s how I knew to pick you, Desmond. It seems that we’ve always danced together; back then, now and I guess we always will………….but the next time you have to find me.”

The End
              
              
              
              
              
              
               

Friday, October 25, 2013

Cosmic Mind Blowing Shit…and Tango

               I have a nice desk here in Fargo. It is very conducive to writing. There is a window in front of me and I can watch the wind blow against the trees and the clouds roll across the sky. It is a good situation in which to ponder the larger concepts of life.......and how they relate to tango:-)
               Last month, Candace B. Pert died. I read her obituary in the New York Times. She was the scientist who discovered the opiate receptor which is the place where endorphins are bound in the brain. Basically, she revealed the physical connection between emotions and the brain. It was a tremendous breakthrough for real science.
               I mention her because she is an important figure in something I’ve been studying called the Law of Attraction. If you want to meet charlatans and crazy people, this is the field for you. I believe, however, that there is a grain of truth to this theory, so I pursue it in spite of the company it keeps. 
               Maybe I'm a crazy charlatan, too;-)
               The Law of Attraction simply states that like attracts like. If you think good thoughts, good things will happen and vice versa.
               It travels in the same circles as homeopathic medicine which suggests that like cures like. This is the premise of my latest book, Fear of Intimacy and the Tango Cure. If you are sick, a homeopathic remedy will use a similar poison to the one that made you sick. I was uncomfortable being near people and I cured my discomfort by dancing tango, which put me in close physical contact with many people.
               I discovered tango long before I ever heard of the Law of Attraction. However, since my days as a whitewater river guide living in rural towns at the headwaters of several beautiful mountain streams, I ran into quite a few people whose interests intersected this field of study.
               Over the course of time, I was exposed to more disciples of this quasi-scientific principle as well as to homeopathy.
               My sister-in-law introduced me to Edgar Cayce, a great proponent of the Law of Attraction and a renowned prophet of the 1930s and 1940s. He lived in Virginia Beach where he prescribed cures and predictions through the mail. 
               The river guides in North Carolina educated me on the many types of medicinal plants that could be found in the forests of the Blue Ridge Mountains and then sold to homeopathic practitioners.
               In Durango, Colorado, a very special woman asked me to watch a movie called What the #$*! Do We Know!? It attempts to prove the Law of Attraction but there are many leaps of faith that must be made in order to accept their claims as facts, such as the one made by a Japanese artist that beautiful pictures of snowflakes were caused by happy emotions.
               Durango, and much of the American Southwest, is filled with students of this philosophy as well as homeopathy. It goes well with yoga and, surprisingly, with tango.
               Like religious preachers, the faithful proselytize and ask me to accept their teachings using dichotomous facts such as this: microwaves are bad because radiation is bad and, therefore, eating food that has been microwaved is bad for you.
               As a technician in the cellular phone industry, I have a solid understanding of microwaves and I don’t see a connection between food that is heated by them and my health. If I was being inundated by microwaves, that would be a different story.
               When I ask how I can measure the validity of their statements, they scowl at me and wander off.  I don’t want to hurt their feelings but it seems like a logical question to ask.
               Fargo is the philosophical opposite of Durango. Here they drink beer in 22 ounce buckets, eat their meats breaded and deep-fried, (called fleischkuekle) and the farmers pound the ground with chemicals to produce as much corn as possible. With one hand they push the government away and the other they hold out for ethanol subsidies.
               Candace B. Pert was a real scientist who did not hesitate to think outside the box. She was not afraid to ask why the placebo effect worked when most other scientists ignored its existence. How could the body heal itself with a fake remedy? She gave an audience to the people who studied the Law of Attraction and other fringe science concepts such as intuition, déjà vu and love.
               Since I’ve been dancing tango, a horrible monster that was inside of me steadily shrank until it disappeared. I’m not sure what it was but it was always there, gnawing away at my innards. An examination of over 250 of my blog posts on the subject of tango, helped me to see that the dance was indeed a homeopathic remedy for what ailed me: a fear of intimacy.
               I was sick but I didn’t know it in my brain; my heart was aware that there was a problem and it led me to tango. I knew it was the right thing to do, intuitively, and I was cured.
               The tango embrace is full of fringe science phenomena. The acts of leading and following can be nearly impossible for some people to grasp, yet others can do it right away, almost instinctively.(Instinct, there’s another topic for fringe science to study.) Some people are so good at bringing me into the tango embrace that I feel as if they’ve connected with me telepathically.
               Making the tango connection is an acquired skill but it could easily be a subject of fringe science. With practice, almost anybody can do it. I guess it’s like hypnotism and it requires the ability to become relaxed. My partner relaxes because I am relaxed and she miraculously becomes susceptible to subtle suggestions of weight changes and directions of movement.
               I am always fascinated by how well a great tango instructor has mastered the art of making the tango connection. They don’t look at people, they look into people, grab them by the soul and lead them into movements they never thought they could do.
               I’ve heard people say they are drawn to this dance because of the music. It is my belief that many people who take up tango have been hurt deeply. To describe a milonga as a homeopathic healing session is all too easy since tango music is so full of stories of pain and the people who dance to it are often hurting inside.
               Here is something else that fascinates me about tango music: even though the words of most tango songs are in another language, we can sense the meaning of the melody and we find solace in words we do not even understand.  
               When I am successful at making the tango connection and my partner is anxious, she becomes calm. A happy woman will have the same effect on me when I am uncomfortable.
               I’ve seen this many times at milongas, where a happy person will dance with different people around the room throughout the course of the night and light them up like candles. One happy person can change the mood of an entire crowd and, unfortunately, one depressed person can share their depression with the whole gathering.
               As I look out the window, I notice that the wind has died down and the clouds have disappeared. Looking at the clear, bright blue sky makes me feel good. I wonder if the Universe did that just for me, just to make me happy. I’ll never know for certain but I’m sure glad it did!