If you’re new to my blog let me give you some of my background. I’m a divorced father of two grown daughters who had to learn how to dance in order to keep from becoming a monk. At forty-eight years of age, I got laid off with two girls in college, a mortgage and a tango addiction. I had begun learning how to dance three years earlier. I dropped a lot of money on ballroom lessons and was educated in the footcraft part of the social arts. I had been a whitewater river guide in my pre-parenting life and dancing was a total tangent from the circle of my life. A river still runs through my soul and what I learned from it pervades my thoughts. Or maybe, my life is a river and not a circle after all.
I’m not the greatest writer so I can’t quit my day job, but I find it relieves stress and stress kills. I’ve always been a writer since fifth grade, penning book reports for my friends and enemies for a dollar. I guess it’s kind of like journaling, a way to figure out what I believe of what I’ve seen/heard/felt in the course of raising children to fly the nest. I am the nest. I’ve always been a little bit cosmic and a little bit holistic, probably more of the former and less of the latter; I’d rather contemplate the probability that vegetables are conscious and the moral implications of consuming them than committing to becoming a vegetarian.
If you don’t know much about the world of dance you wouldn’t know that tango is a totally different animal than the other types of dancing: stripping, showbiz, ballroom, latin and the wedding dancer. I started a blog fifteen years ago to cope with the stress of becoming a tango dancer. Tango is like a martial art, it is tai chi for couples moving to music, it is the study of movement with another person. You can learn to cha-cha-cha in a month and be quite good at it. Five years into a tango education, you’ll realize that you’re only a beginner: it’s a humbling epiphany.
As I roamed the country in search of work as a telecommunications technician for cellular networks, I danced tango and wrote about my experiences; it was very therapeutic. I was always interested in science and it influenced my writing. I wrote about tango fantasies, wiccans, zombies, the Law of Attraction and quantum mechanics. Several times I received feedback from nasa.com email addresses.That inspired me to keep searching for the one theory of how the universe works.
To me, tango and physics are endlessly fascinating and, recently, I learned that endless is much further than I thought. The nexus of science and tango is consciousness. The fundamental building block of all matter is a vibration in the quantum field, not a particle, as I was taught many moons ago. The tango connection is the joining of two bodies in a physical, emotional and spiritual way; it is the merging of two consciousnesses. Consciousness, in the quantum world, is responsible for the collapse of the wave function that allows science to measure all that can be measured.
Heady stuff, I know, but don’t let it scare you. I’m going to reveal the secrets of the Universe. .
Two weeks ago, I discovered a way to slip into an altered state while at a milonga, the place where tango dancers gather to exercise their art, and hoped to make scientific observations. Since then, I have learned that Reality is a lot more ethereal than we all knew. The world we live in is a matter of probabilities and decisions, it makes science obsolete and puts religion in a whole new perspective. I used to be concerned with inches and millimeters, now I struggle to envision alternate theories of existence. Am I just a player in some sort of simulation, like a cosmic video game? Is all that I see a holographic projection on a two dimensional screen? Am I a star in my own reality show or am I just an NPC, a non-player character? One thing for certain is that the only tools I need to make further observations is my mind, tango and time. This is great because I’ve got access to a lot of those things now that I am retired. Scientific study requires resources that I don’t have: money, a degree and/or recognition that my efforts are justifiable. I sometimes read about past inquiries into the fundamental nature of reality. In the past, that was the role of religion, then alchemy and finally, science. It’s possible that past civilizations had a much clearer understanding of the true nature of our existence than we ever knew. Our minds are so much more complex, and, paradoxically, simple, than we have yet to comprehend.
I went to a milonga last weekend and met another person, a young woman, who also was able to enter the same altered state as I and she was present at the dance. We hooked up for a few tandas and she brought me up to speed on what she had learned. I should not have let her leave after our last dance. I was so caught up in the old man/young woman dynamic that I didn’t think to sit her down and grill her on what she knew. She was so young and healthy, as well as the fact that she could enter the quantum state with me, that I could barely keep my sex drive from kicking in and taking control of my words and my deeds. I’m old, not dead. If this shocks you, then you should probably stop reading.
Being able to dance tango well is the key to visiting this other dimension and it helped me to understand her better due to our age difference. When she spoke, her words were salted with so much slang that it was almost as if we spoke different languages. If I didn’t get the jist of her words here, I would when we were both on the other side where communication happens mentally, without the need for speech. Being familiar with her in the quantum world, where all thoughts and desires are on display, was extremely seductive. It was all I could do to tune out the song and focus on the firmness of her breast as it brushed against my chest, or think about the mechanics of the action of her hips as she rotated around me within my embrace. I don’t think I could have done it as a newbie, I would have led moves outside the context of the music, ignoring the rhythm and melody that is essential to a good tango performance, focusing instead on moving her body against mine.
I guess I did the right thing, letting her go. Being aroused as I was when she departed, I am sure the only words I could speak were those constructed by the little man in my pants and we all know where he wants to go: to bed, and not for rest and relaxation, he’d want to party if we got there. In my travels, I had the opportunity to enjoy a sexual tryst with a much younger woman than me and it was a lot of work. It was great but the memory is one of exhaustion and that is a little bit of a turnoff.
That was then and this is now and now I want to get back to the milonga in the worst way. Weekday dances are not as heavily attended as the weekend crowd and oftentimes there are entirely different people in attendance. I’m sure the infatuation aroused in me by the young woman was part of the reason for my anxiousness, but not the sole reason: I’d been to another dimension and experienced interdimensional beings. I was curious as hell and hungry like the wolf for answers. My parents need help more than ever now that I’ve moved in fulltime but I’m still finding a reason to go to a dance a hundred miles away, leaving them to fend for themselves at night. I tell myself it won’t be every night and I hope I’m right but you never can tell with tango: the heart wants what the heart wants and sometimes the heart makes choices for you.
The dance was in a smaller venue, no foyer or anteroom, everything was in one room. There was a small stage at the far end of a wooden floor the size of a basketball court, which is what it was, and on the stage was a DJ stand. There were benches lining the walls on either side instead of cocktail tables and chairs. A few round tables crowded the side by the entrance as well as a banquet table for registration and the obligatory compensation of twenty dollars to be deposited in a large bowl guarded by no one. That’s a peculiar amount of trust the event organizer is putting in the participation of complete strangers but that’s how some people are. I think they feel strongly that making compensation voluntary will help keep their karmatic path clear of debris. I have a strong feeling they may be right, especially after learning what I know now.
Many a priest/guru/shaman has claimed the ability of transcendence through prayer/meditation/incantation but none could prove it, at least, not by me ... .until now. Dancing, in particular, dancing tango is akin to prayer/meditation/incantation. What makes it easier for the milonguero, someone who seeks out milongas like a rebel to a cause, is the addition of movement and bodily contact, as well as the joining of two consciousnesses. The rhythm underneath the melody makes the perfect vibrations at the quantum level to allow a conscious mind to experience a dimension without time, a realm layered over the current reality where thoughts and desires are revealed for all to see/hear/feel. I think the second consciousness super-charges each dancer's mental state to allow them to ascend to the next level. I haven’t been able to make the transition by myself yet and I’m pretty sure it can’t happen so I an limited to the milonga as the place to conduct my studies.
I don’t know what my partner feels when I enter the quantum space alone or not alone. When I am there, time stops: I go in on the beat and exit before the next beat because time has not passed for me in the present. It always feels like something is missing when I alter states. That’s because something is missing: time. It’s an odd feeling when there is no time. It’s a background noise you don’t notice until it’s gone. It’s like an echo that never finds a surface to return from.
Forty minutes later, I was holding a woman more my age who, up close, looked to be a Frankenstein of cosmetic surgery: d-cup mammary inserts, skull-tuck facial lift, painted eyebrows and blond right out of the box. She had no training but she was absolutely delightful to dance with. Her connection was so complete that I found it enticing. I could tell right away, when I led ocho cortado, a common movement, and she stepped back instead of crossing, that was the big give away. Ability is clearly evident to those who have it and those without it are oblivious to the need for it, if their partner, as they should, adapts. The Dunning-Kruger Effect is what makes it possible for two tango dancers of disparate abilities to enjoy the same encounter with equal intensity. She was typical of the paradoxes one experiences at the milonga: totally plastic yet equal to Yoda in the mental/physical/emotional bond of the tango connection and embrace.
I was baffled and astounded in equal measure. I didn’t embrace her, I wore her like a coat. She melted onto my frame like a crayon on a hot radiator, oozing je ne sais quoi; that’s French for I don’t know what and I still don’t know what. She is like pineapple syrup on a banana split, sweet and sugary on top of sweet and sugary. She was so good to dance with that I assumed I could easily alter states but I could not. It was like she knew I wanted to but was not allowing me to enter the timeless dimension.
I didn’t know what to think. Ten seconds before the last song of the tanda ended, I absently fell into the next dimension. It was like I was leaning against a wall and unexpectedly found out it was a prop on wheels. Suddenly, I was aware of another presence very near to me. It was the thief. I couldn’t believe it, I was sure she was captured the other day but here she was, right in front of me, her aura floating in space. Just as suddenly, I was back in the arms of the blond with nine seconds left as a piano tinkled an ending. She waited the appropriate amount of time before releasing me from her embrace, two seconds after the last note, and withdrew her body from mine. Tilting her head, she seemed about to say something before seemingly deciding not to. She turned on the ball of her foot and walked off.
Too late I realized that she was the thief and that she had stolen something from someone at the milonga: my wallet.
Stay tuned for the next episode dropping soon. Don't forget to check out my latest book: . One more day of the free digital book give away, so don't be afraid to download it before the sale ends.
No comments:
Post a Comment