A Brief Respite

I am writing to take a short break from writing. On Monday I decided to write a book that I don’t really care about in order to practice. Ironically, compared to the stories I have wanted to tell for years, this one is spilling out like water from a broken dam. If you have read much of my journaling, you might guess the story was a science fiction or fantasy novel. It is, in fact, more akin to a Nicholas Sparks novel than anything else. While my experience with Nicholas Sparks is limited to the very small amount of The Notebook that I managed to make it through before deciding the movie did a better job of telling the story and giving up, I did enjoy the movie, and one of his older films, A Walk to Remember, is one of my favorite romantic movies, hands down.

With the current popularity of trashy literature like Twilight and erotica such as 50 Shades of Grey, I feel like this venture could actually pay off when I manage, for the first time in my life, to finish a novel I start. I feel like there’s a good chance of this happening; I have written 13,399 words in the last three days and I will most likely continue working on it this evening.

As a teaser, let me share a tidbit or two with you. The working title, which will probably stick, is The West Wind. Early in the novel, the male protagonist’s father quotes Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind,” a Romantic poem about new beginnings. While the story is loosely based on another famous poem from a different era, The West Wind seemed appropriate. Xander and his father move to the fictional city of Vista Bay, California from Seattle, Washington after the death of Xander’s mother to a terminal illness. They buy a house on the National Register of Historic Places so they might restore it to its former glory.

The female protagonist is Hero, the only daughter of a rich family who lives on an island at the center of the bay. Hero and Xander meet at a local club that hosts swing dances once a week. Swing is -the- activity in Vista Bay, and Xander’s favorite hobby, thanks to his mother who practically raised him in the not at all fictional Century Ballroom in Seattle. They meet and dance. At the end of the dance, he dips her almost to the ground. They are about to kiss and, attempting to be a gentleman, Xander says, “No, I’m sorry, it’s too easy.” Hero understandably misconstrues this as an insult and slaps him. He’s so surprised that he drops her.

The story continues from there.

I find I’m looking forward to telling the whole story, (and discovering where it goes while the main plot develops). I tend to write in an extremely organic process. One might compare it to a coloring book, in which the main idea forms the borders of the picture and I freely fill in whatever colors I’m inspired to use as I go.

I probably should have started writing such romance novels years ago, since I’m rather obsessed with the subject. Ah well, there’s no time like the present.

I am Orsino, in love with the idea of love.  

Immortal, Ephemeral

I have wanted to be immortal most of my life. Stop for a moment and savor the irony in that statement. I don’t know where this fantasy began, whether it was Heinlein’s three thousand year old Lazarus Long, or Anne Rice’s vampire, Lestat. Maybe it was Rumiko Takahashi’s Mermaid Saga. Perhaps it began earlier than that, with the gods and demigods of a plethora of cultures whose tales I read as often as I could find a new book at the library. There are people who wish they could fly, people who wish they could turn invisible, there are those who wish they could read minds. I have always wished for immortality.

How curious then, that I am endlessly fascinated by the mortal, the ephemeral. I am eternally conscious of no matter what mark we make in the minds of men and on the land, in time it will fade. It will cease to exist. All evidence of that we ever crawled upon the face of the world will eventually be obliterated. Gaia herself is mortal.

The older I get, the less I care about the material; the less I appreciate gifts unless they facilitate my access to the things I do appreciate. A Kindle, for example, simply because I want the books I have purchased on it available everywhere. A library I can carry in my pocket. As much as I love books, I am not married to their physical form.

When people ask what I would like for a gift, I usually tell them to buy me wine. Unless I miraculously quit drinking, I will always need more. It is a great way to explore more vineyards as people purchase a wider variety than one might on one’s own. My sister’s gift to me last Christmas was one bottle of wine a month for a year. It continues to be the perfect gift.

The things I treasure: a full glass of wine in hand while I sit on the couch in front of a wood stove, fire raging against the iron of its cage, licking the transparency of the door; a Monday night rain storm pouring off the roof while I stand on the second story deck, the light from the house turning the streams of water into dancing beams of light; a good dance, a laugh and smile from my partner; that moment when she catches her breath, bites her lip as a thought crosses her mind and she is too caught up in the now of us to realize that she is as open a book as she will ever be. I love these things that do not last. I love the stories that have endings, and no matter how they are retold, are a little different every time.

I prefer the beauty of a rose to a diamond and the beauty of a woman to a rose. In the dark, a diamond is just another rock. In the dark, a rose is still soft, fragrant. In the dark, a woman is soft and hard, fragrant, alive with the in and out of her breath, palpable, yet beautiful to the senses. The joys of a woman are limitless, and still, each as ephemeral as the life of that rose, the ebb and flow of an ocean’s tide.

The world is full of things that come and go. Change is the only constant. The story begins, rises, climaxes, falls. We have our denouement and our epilogue. A new story begins. I am entranced by these tales, fascinated by my part in them, passionate about how each new narrative reshapes a piece of my own. Fact or fiction, rain storm or lover, new road or familiar path, I am constantly rewritten. I end and begin, day after day.
Today is a new beginning. Today is a reason for living.

Immortality seems to me an opportunity to live the ephemeral to its ultimate. To experience the constant change, the endless stories and combinations, forever. I would say yes, given the chance, knowing the world and its terrible, tragic nature, and its joy. Knowing how hard life sometimes, being diagnosed with chronic depression and having lived with it, knowing sometimes how much my mind tells me it would accept death readily (it took me years to not imagine my parents at my funeral), I would accept immortality. I would welcome the chance to learn everything about the world, to become the ultimate Renaissance Man. To learn every instrument, every language, read book after book after book. To watch, fascinated, as the world was born, lived, and died around me. To watch the rain fall, listen to it on the tin of the roof, share the fire and wine with a lover, to sail again and again into the sunset, forever.

It will, however, be rather inconvenient when the sun grows old, gets fat and consumes the planet if we don’t find a way to spread ourselves out among the stars.

-m0rg4n

Humanist? Feminist? Rambler.

A friend asked me recently if I considered myself a male feminist. That’s not a question I have really put any thought into. It seems to be a popular topic this last week. Patrick Rothfuss, author of The Name of the Wind, talked about being a feminist in his blog recently. I told my friend that I’d get back to her after I spent some time ruminating.

I tend to be blissfully ignorant as to how others define most labels. I have a very general idea of what constitutes a liberal, a better idea of what constitutes a conservative, barely understand the differences between Democrat and Republican beyond what I see of their actions and decide for myself. This is my general modus operandi. Think for myself. A part of that "ignorance" is a conscious decision. Labels are fluid things, words that shift meaning with time. A decade ago, Republican didn’t mean conservative Christian intolerant assholes deluded by their representatives into thinking it’s still a party for the people by labeling progressive movements scary things like, “socialist” which does not equal “communist” and so on. At least, my understanding of it was different. It’s only since Bush that I’ve concluded that they’ve come down with some sociological form of rabies.

I digress. Am I a feminist? I was raised by one, but that feminist is also Catholic and I am clearly not one of those. I am not certain of my feministry. I admire, appreciate, and prefer strong, independent intelligent women. I dislike patriarchal societies that treat women as baby factories. It was, in fact, my strongest source of distaste for Japanese culture. My manager quit her job as soon as she got married to become a housewife. My friend with dreams of cutting hair in Hawaii wouldn’t chase her dream because her family was putting so much pressure on her to marry. It is a cultural phenomenon, not simply two cases.

I don’t know if my dislike for that kind of treatment makes me a feminist. I am a humanist and no one should be pressured like that: man, woman, child, adult. As a society, we should all be encouraging each other to follow our dreams and make the most of our lives.

Feminism works toward equal treatment for men and women in the workplace, pay grades, socially, etc. I don’t particularly see any reason why a man should earn more than a woman, unless he performs better. That performance should be based on the numbers, however, not pre-conceived notions of what that performance might be.

Is equality enough? One of my favorite quotes is from Robert A. Heinlein’s Notebooks of Lazarus Long: “Whenever women have insisted on absolute equality with men, they have invariably wound up with the dirty end of the stick. What they are and what they can do makes them superior to men, and their proper tactic is to demand special privileges, all the traffic will bear. They should never settle merely for equality. For women, ‘equality’ is a disaster.” I tend to see the world through Long-colored glasses. Women and children first. Even biologically, it makes sense to protect the young and child-bearer’s of a civilization; it only takes one man to recreate the race. I wouldn’t envy the poor fellow the effort, though.

I have my chauvinistic moments, when I roll my eyes and say to myself, “Women.” When this occurs, it is generally in the presence of other men. Which is somewhat subversive, because I tend to appreciate my gender on an individual level. “Men,” irritate me and I usually avoid their company. One might extend that to people in general, however. I enjoy individuals on an individual basis. There are a lot of reasons for stereotypes out there, however, and I have difficulty connecting with them.

Since in a good argument we must weigh both sides, I’m going to explore my male chauvinist side a little deeper. It has been my experience that women are more likely to listen to what they think I am saying without listening to what I am actually saying than men are. That isn’t a particularly good measurement, however, since I don’t make an effort to spend as much time around men. But I think my male friends are just more likely to not listen at all.

In the spirit of the exploration, a moment of vulnerability: I often find men intimidating, particularly when I don’t know them. I rarely find women intimidating. I do not fear women. I am uncertain how that applies to the discussion at hand.

I suppose I must ask myself if I think that men are better than women. I do not. I think we could argue that my problem is generally that I think I am better than many other people, of either gender. You may call it arrogance, if you so desire.

In my own self-diagnosis, I am not a male chauvinist. I separate myself from those I don’t respect equally. This allows us to revisit the topic at hand.

Am I a male feminist? I support the rights of women to have sex with whomever they choose, whenever they choose. I think she should be able to access birth control without difficulty, and have an abortion. If it is my child, I hope she will consider discussing the decision with me first, however. I would volunteer to be a single father. That has less to do with the abortion argument and more with personal life goals, however. Sorry, got distracted.

A woman should have all the rights and privileges as men. There are undeniable differences however and I don’t agree that they should be ignored. The major feminist example in my life still believes in gender roles. My mother cooked and cleaned most of my childhood (with help), but refuses to do anything with machines. Checking the oil and getting it changed is my dad’s job. I am uncertain, however, that if she were mechanically inclined and my dad a gourmand that things wouldn’t have been organized the other way. Impossible to tell.

I know that in my own experience, I would like to try being a “househusband,” if the opportunity is provided. Depending on the circumstances, I want to home school my future children, though were the future mother of my children a teacher and wished to do so herself, I certainly think the topic open for discussion. I would welcome the opportunity of house husbandry to provide time for writing, raising puppies and children and educating them to be the kind of people I wish their were more of in the world. Would I be satisfied in that role? I don’t know. But I would give it a shot. I am not a career-oriented person. As long as my future significant other knows how to balance work and play, I have no problem with her being the professional, bread earning one.

I don’t know that I have come any closer to an answer. I don’t really think I am a feminist, per se. I am just a humanist. Man, woman, everyone deserves equal opportunity and humane treatment. (Not all men were created equal, except in terms of human rights. It’s an unrealistic statement.) I keep coming back to the quote from the movie, 100 Girls, when at the end of his feminism course, the protagonist says, “There are just too many ‘-ists’ in the world. Feminists, chauvinists, capitalists, communists, racists, sexists… These are all groups that fight one another instead of trying to understand one another. I think the only “-ists” there should be are humanists.”

So, my dear Robin Goodfellow, you tell me. In your words, am I a male feminist?

And a thousand words, goodnight.

-m0rg4n

Jekyll and Hyde

That I am I.

That my soul is a dark forest.

That my known self will never be

more than a little clearing in this forest.

That gods, strange gods, will come forth

into the clearing of my known self, and then go back.

That I must have the courage to let them come and go.

- D.H. Lawrence

I have this quote practically memorized. My memory isn’t quite verbatim, but close. I discovered it when reading an excerpt from Lawrence’s essay criticizing Ben Franklin’s list of virtues that was taped to the walls of the narrow halls in the College of English at my university.

It comes to my mind, often, because it reeks of truth to me. It is true in the way of a Zen koan, an anecdote used to stir the mind into enlightenment. When you understand the meaning, things just click inside you.

After my yoga class yesterday I told my teacher that I don’t understand why my muscles and the rest of my body are so tight when I am almost always relaxing. Masseuses across the years have regularly told me I am too young to be so tense. They said it five years ago and they would say it now. Little has changed.

Saying it aloud made the issue more real and sparked further introspection. I don’t have an answer. I am still searching for one, but I have started to collect an idea here and there. I think part of the answer lies with those strange from the dark forest; I don’t know if I have the courage to let them come and go.

I wrote recently about the poet I keep chained up inside. I don’t think he is alone. There is a monster in the depths with him, a monster I have fought and killed a buried and given new life only to fight again. There is an anger within me that I haven’t voiced, a violence I don’t respect and haven’t accepted. The poet always knew the beast better than I, for the poet often wandered through the dappled shadows cast by the canopy of my soul.

I don’t know this beast and I think I fear him. He is not simply trained, or leashed, but a feral creature caged. He has been slapped, punished, beaten. He has been hidden because I became overly sensitive about what people might think of me as I aged. I locked him away with the poet so that no one would have to taste my darkness.

Without the dark god’s voice lending its rough crystal honey to my own, am I a whole man? Without his animal desires, am I body and mind? Have I striven so hard to be the opposite of the creature that my yin yang is nigh white washed? Am I so far from symbol I value so highly? I am no saint. Am I guilty of trying to be one? I only wish to be a man who stands for what he believes in.

What is this burden I carry in my flesh? Is it the arrogant child who learned early that apathy was safer than caring? The middle school student in velvet pants, long hair, and a beret with milk dripping from his hair, standing straight against the words gay, homo, freak with the entire 8^th grade class as an audience? Is it the lazy, unchallenged teen who drew lines of blood so deep in his shoulder that the scars remain almost 15 years later? I once spent hours in my youth pretending I was myself, sans limits. Who did I become when I was actually trying to be myself under the restraints of life? Not that creature I once imagined I was. Not that potential.

I feel like Promotheus, had he been chained to the stone before he could give fire to the world. I writhe against the face of the rock at the injustice. I feel the weight of it beneath my skin and I cannot name it. My shoulders tense at the thought and the ache and tautness lives like a thing in my brain. Some kind of knot that loops and tangles and constricts slowly around the gravity of what I bear until its load is hidden from sight.

I am ready to name it, to let go, to be as relaxed as I imagine myself being. I think perhaps, to do so, I must be prepared for the gods to come and go from the forest. I must greet them by name, ply them with wine and song, and send them home again content in their doing and being.

I must have the courage to let them come and go.

But I am tentative. 

Holiday Lost (Sorry, Milton)

Now that I have finally caught up on my Open Diary reading, (would you say I ODed? -mischievous grin-), it is time to catch up a little on entry writing. I have been a terrible person. I haven’t written at all in the last ten days, with the exception of three and a half hand written pages of a letter to a friend in the UK, which my puppy promptly decided to eat. -sigh- I am not overly eager to re-write my friend, but I suppose I must, since it is my turn in our epistolary venture.

As my friend would say, I just got back from a work holiday. Or, in my fair country’s vernacular, a vacation. I spent 10 days away from the stagnant pool of proofreading and I enjoyed every minute of it, even the moments in which I found myself in the dentist’s chair twice in two days and on a two-hour trip to spend maybe twenty minutes signing paperwork for the financing of my new Ford Escape. The same vehicle that decided to blow a hole in its EGR valve on Sunday, a quarter of the way to the dance I had intended to attend on Sunday night. I did not make it, obviously. Fortunately it is a relatively minor problem. The vehicle is still drivable; it simply runs poorly, like a martial artist with a crushed larynx and a tracheotomy.

On the last two Saturdays I took Mira down to the local Farmer’s Market for socialization and training. Mostly socialization, of which she received a ton, since she is a puppy. People of both genders and all ages are drawn to puppies like moths to flame, albeit with more pleasant results. We enjoyed the sun, the attention, and the company. I have to admit, I secretly enjoy kneeing people in their assumptions. I realize she is very similar in appearance to a black Labrador, but better to ask if your guess is the right one than to barge on down that road without looking. I think that is just a general rule of thumb, whether we are discussing my dog or anything else. If you do want to go that ass out of u and me route, please do though, I repeat, because it is just fun to say, I secretly enjoy kneeing people in their assumptions.

My vacation was exactly what I needed. On my second day back at work, I can tell you I need more of it. I spent a lot of time relaxing and just as much being active. I finally had the chance to do some things I have been wanting to do all summer, which was great. On Wednesday my friends Ben, Dan, and I hiked up Grouse Creek Falls for about an hour and a half before turning back around. Don’t let the word “hike” give you any illusions, we literally climbed up the waterfalls, up rocks and across pools, finding purchase in a deep pocket in the stone in the middle of the flow and pulling ourselves over to the other side. The bed of the creek is all loose river rocks and mountainside and we went up the creek itself, letting the waterway be our path. Ben and I did this barefoot. It was rather rough, but a lot of fun. This is my third time climbing up the falls, though I had never hiked up so far after getting above the falls. It was, as Dan called it a few times, a bona fide adventure, but hardly as epic as it might sound. The waterfall is a series of short falls, cold, deep pools and easily climbed rock faces.

Ben stayed over and had dinner with my dad and I. The next day we loaded my parent’s sea kayak on top of my Escape and drove it downtown, to a boat launch at a place called Sand Creek. The creek is more of an estuary for the lake and we paddled up it until we came to the actual creek, which is too shallow for a boat of any kind. Round trip, it was also 3 1/2 hours. I drive by the creek regularly as I go in and out of town. It is different now. I know it, I have trailed my fingers across her surface, dipped into her and explored her curves. A river looks different, when you have traveled it. There is an intimacy you never expected. She is no longer some stranger you pass along the way, but someone you meet eyes with, a sparkle hidden in them as if you share a secret, a knowing that no one else will ever understand. No other lover will know her the way you did, whether she has one or a thousand. That time, that intimacy is yours, your conversation, your discourse.

(On a side note, I feel similarly about dancing. In three minutes with our clothes on, I have known strangers better than many of their lovers ever will. When you move someone, move with someone, you transcend the adolescent pawing so many call sex these days and rise toward that oneness we all imagine comes along with physical joining. At the end of that three minutes, in my arrogance I have often returned my partner to her so-called lover and thought to him, “You’re welcome.”)

On Friday, Ben and I went fourwheeling. We took the ATVs, quads, fourwheelers, or whatever you would like to call them up and down a series of trails and logging roads up behind the land my parent’s and I live on. After an hour or so we left one of the vehicles in some brush overlooking what my dad calls “The Cataclysmic Event,” where a cliff of pure clay fell into the river years ago, leaving behind a steep slope down to a flat semi-moonscape. Riding together, we took the other ATV back to my house, where we parked it and hiked up the river that runs past our property until we finally came to the Event again, picked up the other ATV and rode home one last time.

Those were the major activities of my time off. I filled the other hours with Civilization V, a few movies, rereading a couple of the Percy Jackson novels, running a D&D campaign based on a book that I may someday get back to writing, taking walks with the dogs, and all the other bits and pieces that make up a life. I went no where, which was a joy after the last serious vacation I took.

Have I ever told you about the world I live in now? I think not. Tomorrow, then.

And a thousand words, goodnight.

-m0rg4n

The Poet in Chains

Ah, poetry lost. Or poetic prose lost. That’s the sequel, right? First poetry, then the novel. Let’s not talk about the rise of the novel. If I do, I will have to remind myself that I spent far more of my life reading Clarissa than I ever wanted to. And Northanger Abbey was shit too. The problem with most satire, I find, is that it tends to be indiscernible from the content it is attempting to comment on. This, in my opinion, is the problem with most American animated comedy shows. It isn’t satire. It is outlandish fiction. Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels was satire. A Modest Proposal was satire. The Simpsons is a bunch of Yahoos gallivanting around.

I had begun to write about my poetry when the computer died. It is one of those rare moments in modern technology when it didn’t manage save my lost work. A pity, I was enjoying writing about the poet inside me who rages against the twelve-bone cage I keep him in. About the worlds, words carved on the bars til the stark white of the bars, invisible in the meaty darkness, is lost beneath the scrawl of symbols to which we agree to give meaning. The poet inside me who rages loudly because he sees through my eyes when I read the poetry inside the words of others and it is flint to the tender of his muse. The poet who rages so that his words may be loud enough that some may drip from my fingers, slip from my tongue.

It has been a long time since I wrote a poem. I rarely consider my lyrics to be poetry as well. There are aspects of poetry in them, but they aren’t poems in truth. Sometimes they come close, the poetry of my song, “Roots,” is one of the reasons I am so proud of it.

I’m tired of playing

at being a tumbleweed

I want to put down roots

and grow into a tree

Poetry, well, creative writing in general, should show and not tell. It is uninteresting to say, “I want to stop living a nomadic lifestyle and settle down with a good woman and lead a good life.” It would make for a boring song, and terrible poetry. Instead, we fill the page with metaphors, make a river of meaning that flows around the boring dam of blunt prose and create images that slip under the skin and gnaw on the imagination of the reader, the listener.

I do not do this enough. There is a reason I describe the poet within me as caged. I don’t write poems as I used to. My lyrics don’t satisfy the part of me that never hung my bachelor’s degree in creative writing on the wall. I never wanted to tell the world I was a poet, I wanted to show them.

Yet, here I am, six years beyond that black cap and stage, unwritten, unpublished, unseen. The poet of me has been reduced to a mediocre lyricist, the author to a personal blogger more introspective than concerned with the world at large. The amateur songwriter barely braves the stage. Perhaps what I need is to call myself to arms. Perhaps I should rage, rage against the dying of the light.

I have the training, I have the texts still, hoarded and boxed and set upon quiet shelves where they can hardly mumble between the tight borders of their covers. The poet lies chained, his bowels devoured eternally by the eagle. His muscles emaciated, his ability squandered, his breath short, hard, fast. He tires quickly, but longs to bring fire again to the world. The light hurts after so long. It seems safer in The Cave.

I am thankful for, and humbled by, the words of a few who stir that prisoner within me. They breathe poetry, whether they know it or not, and remind me that I can, and have. There is a voice in me that once knew song. It sings still, but sotto voce from the depths. If I close my eyes I can linger in the echo of its majesty.

Don’t fear that I don’t give myself credit where it is due. I just know that there is room for improvement, room for the captive to spread his legs, stretch out his fingers and pour verse into the cup of life. There is a voice to shape and define, coax into an eloquent sound skilled in both melody and harmony.  There is freedom to be found for the poet in the twelve-bone cage.

-m0rg4n

For the curious, or interested, dance class went well. I had a private “lesson” with one my most frequent students, a woman in her 50s. She hasn’t attended class in a month and a half, but it turned out to be for the best. The rest allowed much of what she had learned to settle and set in. Rather than teaching her anything specific, we simply danced for an hour, going through as many styles as I have taught her. She danced better than she ever has. I am, however, out of shape. I haven’t danced that much in a long time.

I almost skipped my normal class. No one showed up for the first 15 minutes and I was just getting ready to put away the furniture when one of my recent regulars arrived. I began to teach her the “basic” for Argentine Tango, as much as I know of it when another one of my teen regulars showed up. Finally a second lead, another regular also arrived; he was a half hour late.

We went on to review and learn more West Coast Swing. Since they were regulars and youthful, I made certain they weren’t uncomfortable with poor language and relaxed my filter. I have a lot of respect for propriety, but it makes me somewhat distant at times. Our lesson was both fun, silly, and fairly amusing. Rather than counting the beat, I sang syllables to the rhythm I was dancing, cracked jokes, and made myself comfortable. At one point the whole class fell apart because the three of them were laughing so hard. The first follow who arrived actually walked outside because she started snorting.

I don’t relax my filter that far very often. It was nice to feel that comfortable around people. It isn’t just that I use words like “fuck” more often, either. I just feel more, what’s the word Rapscallion used. . . corybantic. But that’s not right either. Less saturnalian. Perhaps carefree is simply good enough.

No matter what, I enjoyed my evening.

And a thousand words, goodnight.

-m0rg4n

Dance, Dance, Dance

Today I dance. It’s that day of the week. I think it’s been just over a year since I started teaching in this little whole foods café tucked away in a tiny suburb of an already tiny town. For 51 Tuesdays I have jiggled the key the owner’s gave me into the stubborn lock on the front doors, cleared the furniture from the café floor and turned it into a cozy swing dance hall. I have taught East Coast Swing, Lindy Hop, West Coast Swing, Charleston. My students have ranged from those who have claimed beauty to those who prefer wisdom. I have regulars who attend often and random groups from out of town who appear for one night, swelling the class until it almost spills out the doors.

I have been dancing for 11 years now, and teaching dance for 6 years. I started my freshman year of college. Swing and ballroom dance sounded like fun things to learn and I added them to my schedule, along with fencing. At the time the only opportunities for ballroom dancing were in the classes (beginner’s only), while a local club hosted a swing dance with an hour lesson and three hours of dancing once a week. So I took beginning ballroom four times from three different teachers and swing twice.

The fourth time I took ballroom it turned out the teacher was only teaching because they could find no one else to teach the class. This was clear because she was teaching out of an old dancing manual, referencing it regularly throughout any one session. I helped out on the sidelines, once even teaching an East Coast Swing class for her.

One day, after class, she came up to me, and said firmly, “This is my class.” In the pause that followed my mind raced with stuttering apologies. I thought, “Gah! I’m sorry. I’ll try to stay with the class.” My mental deference was unnecessary, however. Her next words were, “But I only teach this because they can’t find anyone else. You’re better at this than I am. Do you want to teach it?”

And that’s how I ended up teaching accredited courses for the University of Idaho. I taught three semesters of ballroom and one semester of Strictly Swing, as the course was called. My so-called supervisor, (who never attended any of my classes), was astounded by the quantity and quality of my student’s reviews of the class. The director of the department couldn’t believe it.

If someone were to ask why I thought I had such an excellent response, I would say, “Passion.” I loved what I was teaching and taught it mindfully. My passion kept me from be insecure or overly arrogant. I didn’t rush my students and taught them what I felt mattered: how to dance.

I taught them waltz, tango, salsa, cha cha, foxtrot. But more importantly, I taught them what was the same about them all. I gave them the foundation, and made them practice that foundation no matter what style they were being taught. By the end of the semester my students could learn everything I knew about foxtrot in a single class. It’s the foundation that made that possible that I am passionate about.

The foundation of social dance has very little to do with your feet. It isn’t about fancy moves, aerials, or costumes. Dance is about communication and connection. Connection with yourself; connection with your partner; and eventually, connection with the music. As I see it, your feet are for keeping time, and as anyone who has danced for a long time knows, as long as you can keep time, it doesn’t really matter what your feet are doing. The steps and timing define styles, to a degree, and serve as a tool to teach you to move with the music. At a certain point, you achieve a level where you can make that movement even if you’ve left the “rock-step” far behind.

Communication and connection are the two major reasons why people use dance for couple’s therapy. They may be the only reasons, any other is likely a sub-category of one or the other. Dancing is conversation. It has its own discourse, its own story and it changes between partners, style, individuals, songs. (I once wrote a 17 page graduate paper on the rhetoric of social dance.)

It is the two Cs of dance that I am truly passionate about. I love taking up a partner who knows herself well enough that she flies across the floor at my slightest touch, as if she could read my mind. Can she follow? Obviously, but the reason she can follow isn’t because she knows the steps. It’s because she’s connected to her partner and herself.

If we can’t connect the different parts of our own bodies, dancing (and communication) becomes impossible. If we are disconnected from ourselves, then the movement we’re seeking gets lost in translation. Toes get stepped on, a turn goes awry, a requested spin fails to happen. It doesn’t matter if you are lead or follow. If your movement isn’t centered and connected with in your own body, your partner will not move with you.

The reflection of that connection becomes a dance. I move and my partner moves seamlessly. We turn together, like a top released with such momentum that it is only through force of will that it comes to a stop. Connection becomes communication. I lift my arm up and away to suggest an outside turn and voila, my partner has performed an outside turn.

Through clarity of self, I have provided clarity in my request. I knew what I wanted and how to ask for it. My partner is prepared for our conversation and knows how to listen. Together we take an era of song and tell a story with two voices. In spite of lead and follow, there is no dominance in dance. At the end of the day, I can only suggest and she choose to listen. Anything else is a breakdown in communication.

In spite of the fact that I am teaching tonight, I miss dancing. I miss the atmosphere at a social dance. The strange faces that stand out in the crowd, the simplicity of the request and the eagerness to say yes. We go to these places to dance. There is no pressure, no meat market. A dance is at its purest, just a dance. When it is over, our two ships in the sea of bodies will part and go back to following the currents of our lives. There is no awkward rejection because there is no misunderstanding of why I am there. I want to dance. That is all.

My class doesn’t have that atmosphere because it is just that, a class. We don’t have the attendance (or space) to host a true dance each week. My dream is to recreate what I knew back in my college days, the four hours of dancing every Thursday night. It is hard to start things in this town. Harder still because there is such a slight population. (One would think a town of 7,000 would provide more interest, but no.) But I will continue to make the effort. I will give the gift of my passion to anyone who shows up to my class and I will give the world and their lives a chance to tell a better story because of it.

If you ever have a choice between dancing and not dancing, learn to dance. It has endless benefits.

Just dance.

And a thousand words, goodnight.

-m0rg4n