Everything I Need to Know in Life I Learned from Salsa - Part Uno

Dance is a conversation. Often, as is the case with me, it’s a monologue. I don’t care what you’re saying, just listen to what I’m saying. Or, even more often, it’s a monologue in my house when no one else is home. I only hope our curtains aren’t see-thru.

Yet, in disconcerting attempts to better myself as a human being and teach myself that it’s not all about me (a lesson that comes as a shock most days), I’ve recently been making forays into social dance. More specifically Salsa. Just like when using actual words, sometimes you and the other person are totally on the same wave length. You get each other, you understand the movement, as a female, I can pick up on the signals (which in dance I find a bit easier than in life, but that’s another story and, er, em, moving on...).

Other times, you’re both speaking the same language, but the meaning isn’t coming across. Yeah, we got the steps down, but I’m not sure what that last thing was and although we both seem to be on beat (for the most part, cringe), I can’t tell by you lifting your hand in front of my face if you want me to duck and turn under it or if you’re trying to poke my eye out.

Sometimes I’m apparently giving the wrong signals as no, pretty sure I didn’t want to do that triple turn and end up looking at the room upside down, and I definitely didn’t want you to try to kiss me as I left the establishment. As I have a hard time giving off the latter signal when I do mean it, I marvel at strangers’ inability to correctly read the situation.

But most uncomfortable are the times when dance feels like I’m speaking German in the remotest regions of Mongolia. All the hand gestures in the world can only get you so far. It’s those times when I’m praying for the song to be over so I can extract my somewhat introverted self from a tense embrace and regain my much coveted personal space in which I can wipe my sweat/the sweat of someone-who’s-name-I-didn’t-catch (Jorgé?) off of my arms/neck/forehead. Gross.

Lesson #1: People are sweaty, you’re sweaty, they’re going to get in your space and you’re going to have to talk to them. And it ain’t always gonna be pretty.

HEAT

Everything is moving with the speed of mud. The patio furniture at the café sits haphazard and abandoned, like an inappropriate joke. It's oppressing, this air that is two clicks short of hazardous, and any water splashed on the skin warms to it so fast it feels like sweat. Even the cars are sluggish pulling through the four-way stops. Breezes feel like exhaust and traversing black pavement is as unpleasant as walking through steam erupting from a manhole cover. It's unreal, the thickness lying in wait outside the door. Time ticks, the sun is merciless, and eventually the sky will rumble and burst from the pressure. Tepid drops will rain onto the sun-baked bricks and steal ten degrees with a sigh.

it isn't

My head tells me it's ok,
my heart tells me it isn't.
My lips tell me one thing
and with different words my body agrees,
but my mind is trying to placate;
to avoid the disappointment
if things don't turn out as I hope.

Why hope if you don't know? it repeats.
But my heart refuses to accept only what it sees,
instead beating wildly in the midst of imageries.
Stay calm, this isn't it,
don't hang your hat on hooks that aren't there.
There'll be a house soon with plenty of space
and room to touch and features on a face.
Wait, just wait, the world still turns
one orbit at a time, the life inside me coursing.

But time steals from me my magnanimity
and I drag my feet the way home,
because while my head tells me it's ok,
my heart tells me it isn't.

Panache

The stage intrigued me as a child, teased me as an adolescent, rejected me in college, made an occasional, but un-noteworthy appearance during my forays into adulthood, but today, wooed me and won me completely in a two hour production of what in typeface is my favorite play. I picked up a copy of Cyrano de Bergerac about seven years ago on a whim; thought I'd read for myself the story behind what was a rather ridiculous, though endearing film starring Steve Martin and Darryl Hannah that I'd seen as a child. As my eyes took in the prose, wit, and meter emanating from the title character with every line, my heart thrilled. Although I love to read, reading plays never thrilled me. Plays were written to be performed and the action never quite came alive for me until it was presented in flesh and blood on a stage. Cyrano was different from the very first page. I wondered if I'd ever have the chance to see it live.

I got my chance this afternoon in a performance that moved me and unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, dislodged that part of me that has become somewhat satisfied with reality. I escaped; my world was left behind without so much as a tear shed in farewell, and I wanted more than anything to grace that stage with its players. This Cyrano won my heart. Of course he doesn't exist, the man is merely playing a character; there exists a horrible and jarring disjunct between fact and fiction, but I may just be ruined. Theater, when done really well, affects me thus. It's the most bittersweet experience. I want to watch it over and over, but I cannot. Every performance is an entity entirely its own and can't be taken out of the venue in which it lives. Eventually the run is over and the production can never be revived in quite the same way again. I find it quite tragic. These actors will move on to play other parts and compose other ensembles, and I wish I could trap them there under that heavy proscenium forever. Perhaps that's what so special and unique about performing. You only get one chance to play, one chance to watch, one chance to experience. For a moment in time, your life is intersecting with the lives of a group of very entertaining strangers and you exist for that space and time away from the outside world in the mysterious magic that habits only the inside of theater houses. I want more of this magic... more of these words spoken with such deeply felt speech.