Kokapelli in the Wiccans' Kitchen, My Latest Tango-Witch-Magic Fantasy Novel

Kokapelli in the Wiccans' Kitchen, My Latest Tango-Witch-Magic Fantasy is written under my pen name: Carmen Cray. Not so much tango but a lot more wiccan fun as well as an in-depth performance by my favorite Ancient Pueblan Demi-god: Kokapelli.

I am learning that tango allows us to connect to much more than just the human in our embrace; it allows us to establish a connection to the other couples and even to the very fabric of the universe. This momentary bonding is an awesome feeling that most milongueros find addicting. 

That is why I chose connection as the one aspect of tango I hoped most readers of my new book could identify with.  It is always important to me to convey to the reader how special tango is in the grand scheme of things, that it is not just another dance. I don’t believe readers want a tango lesson, they want a good story and it has been my goal to offer a tall tale whilst illuminating what makes tango such a phenomenon. In my book I believe I have taken the most fundamental aspect of tango, the connection, and focused solely on that as a reader’s introduction to the dance. To do any more than that and I would lose my audience and probably not get any recommendations to other readers.

One thing I’ve learned recently is that I have to be careful when I’m talking after having danced tango. I am currently taking care of my parents and have had the good fortune to listen to my dad talk nonsense. He doesn’t mean to talk nonsense but his filter is broken due to old age and sometimes he can’t help himself. In order to make a good tango connection, I find that I need to drop all my walls in order for the simultaneous choreography to happen. Just this past weekend I realized I was talking nonsense just like my dad and had to think about why that was. I think it is because, when I drop my walls to let my partner in, I also turn off the filters between my brain and my tongue.

My new book is a repackaged version of my last two books, Wiccans, Zombies and the Mayan Blood God and The Tango Doctor. I thought, naively, that I could get artificial intelligence, AI, to help  and it did but only in the cover creation, the entire text is totally my creation. In my efforts to harness some value from AI, I found that I really liked what I had written about the witches and their battle with the zombie horde. At first, I mistakenly thought that AI had rewritten some of my scenes but it doesn’t do that; it’ll create new text but it won’t rework old text, which is great because I really liked the old text.

In combining the Wiccans’ tale with the Tango Doctor I got lucky. As I was rolling the character into the Wiccan story, I realized that he was a tool for these ladies as well as something else. That something else is that he has much too much insight into why people do things. In coming up with why that is I accidentally stumbled upon who he might really be. This is one of the wonderful phenomena of being a writer: becoming a creator. I thought I was writing about someone and what I wrote ended up being about someone else whom I hadn’t planned on creating. It's kind of like a tango encounter that goes so incredibly well even though you only meant to kill time until Lady X was available and now you have a new favorite dance partner.

Here is a link to my book, I hope you'll read it and I'm sure you will enjoy it, whoever you may be: https://www.amazon.com/Kokapelli-Wiccans-Kitchen-Carmen-Cray-ebook/dp/B0G1GT4Z5K/ref=sr_1_1?crid=19DTURJQRBVS0&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.whfqBcWH9QGmiBL5i2boHg.6KmbtliYnXLn8rVtEM7M3-x5cRQDnH8XlGRdjHXsO7s&dib_tag=se&keywords=kokapelli+in+the+wiccans%27+kitchen&qid=1763770869&s=books&sprefix=kokapelli+in+the+wiccans%27+kitchen%2Cstripbooks%2C172&sr=1-1

That's all for now. 

Peace, Love, Tango

the Kayak Hombre

The Tango Connection at the Quantum Level: It's All You, Baby!

    4 years ago, I got a new car and a car loan. Unlike my other cars, it is a gas guzzler, and it is really cramping my style. Driving two hours to Tango, four hours roundtrip,  became unsustainable as I became more unemployable probably due to my age: 64. Consequently, I have not danced much tango in the last year and a half. I think I may be at the end of my tango journey. 

  Well, not quite at the end, there's still a lot to process about what I have experienced and that gives me great satisfaction. I know that may sound odd to those of you who are still on the road to Tango Nirvana, maybe one day you will come to understand. 

I guess I am not at the end, I am merely transitioning, exploring in-depth the finer aspects of tango, such as connection. Connection in the tango embrace is such a subtle skill but absolutely necessary to the dance.

In my research on physics and the structure of the universe at the quantum level, I have come to believe that the basis of all matter is energy and frequency: an atom is made up of protons, neutrons and electrons composed of things called quantum particles. Quantum particles are very strange and what exactly they are depends on something called the Observer Effect which takes us out of the realm of science and into another field of study as yet unnamed. This mystery field is a cross between science and religion. What we see at the quantum level changes with each observation and I suspect there is nothing there other than pure energy or maybe just vibrations or a frequency waiting for someone to experience it.

Some ancient religious beliefs propose that all reality is just an illusion and it is possible that each of us is the central character in our own illusion. Our illusion is like a video game and we are players in our own game. To play the game you must be conscious and consciousness is the true fundamental building block of the universe. 

All that we experience, all that everything is is consciousness and frequency. 

Tango has helped me see the truth of that statement. Social tango is an attempt by two people to choreograph movement to a melody spontaneously. To do this a person must learn how to connect to his/her partner on a level that is simultaneously physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. Tango is kind of like tai chi for couples, to do this we must learn how to move but first, even though we are unaware of its need, we must learn how to connect, how to drop our walls and let others into our space and to enter the space of others. 

When I began my tango education, I thought I was learning how to move but I was really learning that I did not know how to connect. It was somewhat humiliating but humility is the beginning of all understanding. 

To acquire knowledge we must first become humble.

Somehow, in my endeavor to lead a partner in this dance, I became aware of the supreme importance of connection in achieving proficiency and I did that through careful examination of past tango encounters and many, many workshops attended all around the USA. 

While we may dance tango with no one other than a partner, the full tango experience is at the milonga, the place where tango music is played and many other couples are present. When we dance tango at the milonga, we make a connection not just with our partner but to the entire crowd as well. At the milonga, I am one person, one half of a couple connected to all the other couples present as we move around the room counter-clockwise, hopefully, in harmony.

Music is the key ingredient to a successful connection to the other couples in attendance. To move to the rhythm and melody of a song in syncopation with a myriad of other pairs of dancers takes a lot of thought, education and practice. This is what makes Tango one of the most difficult art forms to master. A proper Tango education requires constant inquiry into what is going on inside you as well as a rigid respect for the concept of balance in all its forms. It takes years to achieve competence and a willingness to start over from scratch in order to establish a proper foundation upon which to build a fruitful relationship with your partner as well as the crowd, and, though you might not realize it at first, to the universe.

I believe this connection to the partner/crowd/universe is only possible through the music. It is the music which helps us vibrate to the proper frequency that allows us all to join together as one. It is that feeling of oneness that is like tasting the fruit of the Garden of Eden that we find so addicting. It is that feeling of oneness that is the answer to all the questions we have but do not know how to ask. To be aware of the cosmic consciousness and to join it, if only for a few hours, is what keeps us coming back for more.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1976586577/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1506046303&sr=1-1&keywords=the+tango+doctor