Silliness and Rapture

Wow, apparently it's the week for blog posts!  I've just come back from a performance of Lady Windermere's Fan (surprisingly good), and it's put me in a fine mood.  The last few posts have been rather heavy, so I thought I'd grab hold of this cheer and use it for some lighter posting.

So tonight at dinner everyone was telling jokes, and I wanted to tell this one, but didn't get a chance:

Three nuns go up to heaven, where St. Peter says to them, "I know you've all led blameless lives, but the rule here is that you have to answer a test question before you can get in. Everyone gets the same question, and here it is:  What was the first thing Eve said to Adam?" The first nun thinks for a bit, and then she says,  " 'I will obey you in all things'?"  St. Peter says, "Sorry, no," and off she goes to hell.  He says to the second nun, "What was the first thing Eve said to Adam?"  The second nun thinks for a longer bit, then says,  "'Praise be to the One that made us both'?"  St. Peter says, "Oh, I'm sorry, but no," and off she goes.  He turns to the third nun and says, "What was the first thing Eve said to Adam?"  The third nun says, "Oh, that's hard."  And St. Peter says, "In you go."

I would also tell you the octopus joke, but that one is so good that I'll save it for later (otherwise what would you have to look forward to?).  Instead I'll tell you what is, sadly, a joke that never fails to make me laugh:  A man walks into a bar with a lizard on his shoulder. He says to the barman, "I'd like two drinks, one for me and one for Tiny here."  The barman says, "Okay, but why do you call him Tiny?"  And the man says, "Because he's my newt."

Yes, it's true, for me there is nothing like the pun.  I swear, If you want to make me love you, just make plays on words, the badder the better.  Never mind the stomach, or the wallet:  the way to my heart is through the pun.

And all of this somehow reminds me of a story my friend S. loves...Years ago now I was sitting at the dinner table with my parents, and I must have been leaving for England in a few days, because we were talking about seating on airplanes.  I fancied myself quite the international traveller in those days, and I said to my parents, "My rule is:  window on domestic, aisle on international.  That way, you can get up to pee easily on international flights."  My father mused for a moment, and then he said in this very contemplative voice, "Yes...but the people in aisle seats are the ones terrorists punch in the head."  It was such a fully realised scenario, and the phrase "punch in the head" was so unexpected and unadorned, that it was hilarious - and I still find it funny.  And the best part is, I remember it every time I go on an international flight (even though terrorism is a rather more realistic prospect these days), and I'm torn between whether to sit by the window and have to climb over strangers if I want to use the toilet, or to sit on the aisle and risk head-punching.

And now, a cheerful admission, one I have had reason to re-realise and reflect upon since starting tango:  I love to be touched.  I usually say I like to be touched by the people I like to be touched by, but what I really mean is that I like to be touched by everyone except the very few people I find creepy or off-putting.  It's funny, because I don't think I give this impression (at least, very few people touch me), but it's true.  You could put your arm around me, or hold my hand (although, oddly enough, holding hands standing up I associate only with romantic partners), or stroke my arm, or ask me to do any of those things to you, and (unless I found you creepy or off-putting) I'd be delighted.  I wouldn't take it as a sexual overture, either.  I just like to be touched, and I like to touch people.  

This is, in fact, one of the very best things about tango for me.  The fantastic tango teacher (hereafter the F.T.T. - as it happens, making up acronyms is something else I like very much) told me once that although tango is about sex (since it began as a brothel dance), it's also about loneliness:  the immigrants wanted to feel close to a woman, to hold her and derive the comfort that comes with that.  This makes perfect sense to me, because although I love nearly everything about the dance, and couldn't really separate one of the bits I love out as more loveable than any of the others, I'm certainly actively aware of how much I love the experience of being in another person's arms.  This is why I like close embrace better than open embrace (although in the interests of full disclosure I must confess that I also like close embrace because, as a beginner, it makes it much easier to feel the man's directions): in close embrace you are, truly, held "in the other person's arms."  What's more, when the FTT danced with me at the milonga last week, as he got more into the music he rested his cheek against my face, and that was lovely.  I could feel his cheek, with its just starting evening stubble, lying lightly against mine, relaxed and unconscious in its resting:  delightful.  Ah, you see, it sounds sexual, but it wasn't sexual; it was comfortable.  Those immigrants got it right:  for as long as the song lasted, it felt like just being.  Not being sad, or even exactly being happy, but simply being with another person, not as if you were fully two, but rather as if that other person had melded a little into you.  When you tango, I think, you give up a bit of yourself to the other person, as you do when you have a cuddle (only more so). And that's sublime.

Oh, my, you're saying:  so metaphysical about tango.  But it's a very metaphysical experience, and it makes me very happy.  So it ends this happy post.

(incidentally, who was it that decreed that stubble is unpleasant?  I love stubble!  So I'm a sucker for puns...and stubble.)

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Small

Last night my friend M. said to me, "You're a small person, so how do you also have such a good body?"  She was asking me, I believe, how I manage to be slender, but what a score!  That's two compliments in a single sentence, and one of them is the best compliment you can give me (I am a sucker for being called small - God, it makes me happy).  So today and all days this week I love M. Which I would do anyway, but, hey, she made my week.  God love her.

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Emotions and Their Discontents

Tonight I am moved to write about dislike, perhaps because last time I wrote about like.  

As will be and has been true everywhere, there are people here that I don't like.  I don't hate them, but I don't like them.  Obviously, there are lots of legitimate, if not reasonable, reasons

for disliking someone:  so-and-so has an incredibly irritating voice; so-and-so holds opinions you find reprehensible; so-and-so has, or appears to have, something you wish you had.  These dislikes are puzzling, and perhaps embarrassing (depending on which of them applies), but they aren't as puzzling as dislike for no reason.  For me, at least, there are some people I just don't like.  They never did anything to me or gave me any reason to be jealous (two common motivators of dislike, in my opinion), but I just don't like 'em.

Sometimes I try to pin down these dislikes - maybe everybody does.  "We just don't have similar outlooks," one might say, or, "He's too pushy," or whatever.  But those aren't true.  In some cases, antipathy is much simpler and simultaneously much more mysterious.  After a number of years and a number of these experiences, I've gradually decided that the only way to explain them is to say the person "doesn't smell right."  Because it seems to me that in the end these dislikes come from some instinctive place inside, the part of us that remains still animal (which, in my opinion, is quite a large part - but that's a story for another day).

The difficulty, of course, comes not in experiencing these dislikes but in negotiating them. What to do with the people you dislike?  Befriend them, on the "keep your friends close, but your enemies closer" theory? This has its applications, certainly, but the problem is that then you have to hang out with someone you don't like.  Out-and-out spurning is not a good idea, for reasons to do with you and with them (you don't have to be mean, after all).  So the best response seems to be a kind of measured engagement, in which you don't seek them out, but when you're with them by happenstance you keep up a smooth front so they don't know you dislike them.

And here we have the "s" of "Emotions," above, because this solution is also the only solution I've learned to any extreme emotion as I've grown up.  I have a friend back at my home university who once said to me, "We can't pick our emotions, but we can pick what we do with them."  That struck me as one of the smartest and most useful utterances I'd ever heard.  It seemed to me to mean, "We can't pick how we feel, but we can react to those feelings with dignity and sense."  You can sit at home gnashing your teeth about how much you hate that man with the high-pitched giggle who sits behind you in lecture, or blushing and tittering about how fabulous the girl who sits next to you in seminar is, but face-to-face with these people in public situations the best thing to do is to grind your emotions under your heel and appear relaxed and collected.

Which is actually a damn shame in some ways, it seems to me.  For one thing, you're denied the pleasure of, say, drinking in the face of that beautiful girl - or of expressing your contempt for someone of whom you're contemptuous.  And in the case of love, it makes the world a little less filled with happiness (because love is always good, I think, even if wasted on someone who isn't interested or isn't right).  On the other hand, though, you haven't debased yourself in any way, and since in the long run the only person you can be sure you're going to have to encounter daily for the rest of your life is you, there's a lot to be said for not behaving in ways that will embarrass you when you look back on them.

I'll tell you a little secret, though: sometimes I think dignity is just plain over-rated.

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Love, Loving, Beloved

Last night I went with a group of friends to see a production of Romeo and Juliet.  I've only actually seen the play once, at Shakespeare in the Park in Boston, so I was quite looking forward to it.

Alas!  The production was much hampered by the fact that almost no one on the stage could really...act.  It once seemed to me that most bad actors fall into one of two types:  yellers and whisperers. Yellers try to show you how intense their emotion is by yelling, while whisperers try to do the same by whispering. I've since seen many more actors, so I now realise that this division on my part is inaccurate, but I think there was

something to it for last night's production. The actors were almost all, not exactly yellers, but very, very hyperactive. They showed that they were experiencing emotion by becoming overexcited.  Very overexcited. Actually, now that I think of it, I should have seen the poster as an omen...

I can't say I got nothing out of the experience (and I wouldn't say that about any night at the theatre, anyway.  I always get something out of going to see a play), because the very fact that I found it bad forced me to think about what made it bad for me, which in turn forced me to think a little more deeply about the play, and about acting.  It seemed to me that a good deal of the problem last night (and the people in my group who didn't like it said the same) was that there was very little sense, at most points, of the people engaging with each other (this was especially true of the Romeo, whose performance suddenly made me understand what an "antic disposition" is, and how it can grate.  Or, as one of them put it, "he spent too much time cleaning his own wound."  A striking but perfectly apt description).  Perhaps the actors were inexperienced, but there was a sense that they were focusing most of their attention on their own performance, rather than on connecting with each other.  I was particularly sad about the Mercutio, because at first I thought he would be good, but then he substituted ranting for emotion.

It wasn't just that, though.  Maybe it sounds odd to say, but the Romeo and Juliet fell in love in what I felt was just a wrong way.  They captured the almost hysterical enthusiasm of love, the giggling and the adrenaline and the crazy excitement, but they didn't capture what I would call the sliding - the open-mouthed bit underneath.

Whenever I've fallen in love (that is to say, been at the beginning of love), or even been infatuated in more than a simple surface way, I have certainly felt foolish (and acted so!), and giggly, and filled with crazy excitement (although just writing that makes those things sound boring and controlled).  But I've also felt a kind of wonder, a sort of disbelief that a person like the one I fancy could exist.  There is a sense, for me, of marvelling at the simple fact that I have discovered such an other person.  Of course, I suppose under analysis this turns out to be wonder at the intensity of my emotions, but it doesn't feel like that:  it feels like a great rise in the chest at the sight of the other person, a catching of the breath and a clutching of the heart. Love is the giggle, but it's also the gasp:  the open-mouthed bit underneath.

There are without a doubt such moments in R&J.  When Romeo sees Juliet for the first time, and says, "O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!  It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night, like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear..." of course this is rhetoric, but it's also how it is to see the person you love - a moment of pause in the soul if not in the body or the life.  And the same when she is waiting for him on their wedding night and muses, "When he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night, and pay no worship to the garish sun."  Yes, this is a statement and a moment of great intensity, but it seems to me that part of that intensity is a sort of wonder that there could be such a person.  And such wonder is to me a quiet thing, inexpressible and disbelieving and thus soft-voiced.  But, although the Juliet was better, neither of the main characters captured that part of the experience of falling in, or newly being in, love.

Of course, as some of the people I was with pointed out, they're young, so they would be giggly and slightly hysterical.  But I got to thinking this morning, they're not really young.  Juliet's parents say a number of times that there are women her age in Verona who are married, even mothers; this would seem to suggest that 13 was a lot older than it is now.  Romeo's a bit of a fool, one could argue, and there's no reason to suppose that this love will be for him any more intense than his love for Rosaline.  But his love for Rosaline is pretty deep, and pretty dreamy, so I think you could also make the argument that he, too, can feel profoundly.

I am a bone-deep die hard romantic, and have been one all my life, for better and for worse. This means, of course, that I believe in the magic of love, and it also means that I strew my loving and my beloved with sparkly dust. So perhaps I am wrong; perhaps love really is just giggling and frantic behaviour and foolishness. But I think part of the greatness of reading or seeing Romeo and Juliet lies in the watching of two people discovering the marvel of love, and in watching their revelling in the pleasure of simultaneously disbelieving and believing (and because of that disbelief finding greater delight in their belief) that they have found an other that gives them such pleasure, in all valances of that word.  And I didn't see that last night.

I couldn't find a clip of a good performance, so here is a clip that includes a tiny snippet of a performance, although you have to fast forward.

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Uncontrollable Laughter

Last night I was sitting in the bar with my friend R. and another man, a fracquaintance named C., and we were discussing dancing:  whether or not we enjoyed it, and so on.  C. said, "I couldn't dance to save my life."  There was a little pause, and R. said, "Do you think anyone ever actually has had to dance to save their life?"  For some reason, this struck both of us as so funny that for the next minute we were incapacitated with laughter.  It was something to do with the vision of someone dancing in a life-saving manner.  When I think of it again tonight I again find it hilarious, so I thought I'd preserve it here for eternity.

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Arms and the Man

Tonight I attended a showing of the German film Die Welle (The Wave). I remember wanting to see this movie when it first came out, so when the film society here announced they were showing it I was quite pleased.

Well, it turns out that Die Welle is a deeply upsetting film. It's about a schoolteacher who, during a weeklong unit on autocracy, manages to turn his students into a mini (but growing) fascist group who call themselves "die Welle." It has a rather foolish ending, and quite a number of funny bits at the beginning, but nearly all the action that takes place in or springs from the classroom in the middle is deeply disturbing and, to me, awful. As it came towards its end (that would be shortly after the time I stopped crying, which I did for a minute or so when the indoctrination reached its climax), I thought to myself that it was the kind of film I would have liked to hear about, but not to have seen. And when it actually did end, it took me quite a long time to stop that nervous shivering I experience when I'm in shock.

I should have remembered that I don't do well with films about Nazi and fascist indoctrination. Around about the time that Leni Riefenstahl died I happened to catch the middle and end of a documentary about the fate of several lower-level Nazis. They all served prison terms of given lengths, and then they were released back into society, where they did things like got jobs, dandled their grandchildren on their knees, and so on. And I thought at the time, How do you do that? How do get up every day and live a normal life, rather than arising and thinking to yourself, I was that person; I believed those things and played a role in doing terrible things to people? Surely, I thought to myself, a thinking human reflects on that behaviour, and marvels at - or at least observes - themself performing it. I had a similar reaction watching this film - I couldn't believe that none of these people (including the teacher, who sort of got into it) could see what was happening, what they were doing and who they were becoming. I never think of myself as someone who views people positively, but I think I must be, because my reaction with such films is always to be unable to believe that people can be boondoggled into this, that they reflect so little on what's offered to them. But they can, and they can do.

Sitting next to me while the film was going was a man, I would guess from his looks and reaction of either German or English descent, and every time there was a bit of indoctrination, or the students behaved in a fascistic way, he laughed as if someone had just told him a brilliant joke. I assume this was a nervous reaction, but as the film progressed I had less and less sympathy with it, until I just sat there thinking, fucking MORON. Indeed, a good portion of the audience generally laughed at many of the to my mind more traumatising moments, and while I didn't think they were morons, I was puzzled by the difference in our reactions. I wondered if it was because I was so much older than they, or because I was a Jew.

I was going to write a lyrical post about tango (I had a class tonight and learnt the importance of holding my arm firm, which is how these two portions both connect to arms), but having been so disturbed by this film I don't think I have lyricism in me. Instead, I'll have a tiny rant. Here's the thing about my tango class: there is only one teacher (who is fabulous, by the way), but every guy in there thinks he's a fucking teacher. I don't mind with my friend F., who explains what I'm supposed to be doing at a very basic level, acknowledges that his level is only one or so higher, and helps me to do it, and I don't mind it with S.A., who is in fact exceptionally good, but here's a thought, other men in the tango class (none of whom will ever read this): if you are not at teacher level, do not try to teach. Just because you know a little more, that does not mean you are in a position to teach anything, and what's more, just because you know more doesn't mean I want to know it, too. Perhaps I want to work on nailing down the skills I have? Or perhaps I do not want to be told what to do by someone I scarcely know who is clearly not the best person in the room? I'm just throwing those out there as possibilities. If you can't control your burning urge to "help me out," here's another thought: maybe instead of the sentence after "Do you know how to do x?" being, "I'll show you," the sentence after "Do you know how to do x?" should be, "Would you like to learn?" I'm simply making a suggestion. You know - just as something to consider.

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Shoes and Toes

So here is a mildly interesting fact about me:  I don't have bones in three of the toes on my left foot.  It used to be four, but when I hit puberty and things started to grow, one toe grew a bone. In the others I just have a kind of soft cartilage, and in two of them it doesn't even reach the top of my toes - the tops curl over.

Now here is another mildly interesting fact about me:  if you know me, chances are you'll know about my toes or I'll tell you pretty soon, because I don't have a problem telling people about it. But writing that three-sentence paragraph up there embarrassed me to such an extent that I seriously thought about erasing this post.

When I was little, I wouldn't wear sandals at all.  Then I wore them, but I hated it.  When I got finished growing as an adolescent (finishing finished pretty fast, in my case), though, my mother offered to pay for me to have constructive surgery so my two feet would match.  I said no, because in order to do such surgery they have to take skin from somewhere else on your body, and I didn't want the scars.  So in some way, clearly, I'd come to terms with the toe thing. I've never stopped looking down at my right foot, which I feel is pretty elegant, and thinking how much better it would be if it had a matching partner, but that's wistful reflection rather than active emotion.

But today I was down in Cambridge attempting to buy some new fancy shoes, and after I'd 

requested to try on a beautiful pair of discreetly glitzy sandals (which are over there on the left.  Aren't they luscious?), while I was waiting for the saleswoman to bring them up, I found myself thinking, I wish there were a version with a covered toe.  Is there anything here as nice with a covered toe? And then I realised that I think that all the time when I buy fancy shoes.  With summer sandals, I guess, I've learned to ignore the toe thing, or accept it, but with shoes that are meant to be part of an outfit that makes you look beautiful, I'd rather have shoes that cover my toes.  I wouldn't say I know (in that adolescent way of knowing) that people are looking at my toes, but I would certainly say that I fear they will be, and since, to me, it's obvious that one foot is considerably shorter than the other, I feel that it must be as obvious to others.  (What makes this whole ramble even stranger is that the correct way to deal with this is not to tell me that it's scarcely noticeable:  I've had a boyfriend do that, and it made me very angry. Apparently the correct way to deal with this is to agree that they look weird, but in a level tone of voice, and then do something that somehow indicates that you know it must have been tough to grow up with weird toes.) 

After I came back from trying on the glitzy sandals (which didn't fit, so I didn't buy them - wouldn't my mother be proud!), I went online to try to find some ballroom shoes (which is what the glitzy sandals were for).  I've been a on quest to find the Platonic ballroom shoe for quite some time.  When I had a bit of a search around this time, though, I was mindful enough to realise and accept that I would need a shoe with a closed toe, or as close to it as possible.

So, seeking the perfect balance of elegance, comfort, utilitarianism, and psychological protection, I finally arrived at the shoe here on the right.  I'm not entirely satisfied with it (I think the front toe bit looks slightly odd), but I wear a size 4, and it's a 2.2 inch heel, which is about as high as you can go without incurring some serious heel pain if you wear a size 4, and about as high as you can go if you want to be able to move smoothly.  Plus it cunningly appears to reveal the toe whilst in fact revealing no toe at all.  Sophistication and mendacity in the same footwear package!

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