Note  from  the  Editor . . .

Dear Readers,

As I mentioned in last months issue I was headed to Houston to tango. I do not get to dance as often as I would like so I really pigged out. I Attended 2 classes with Martin and Natia Friday evening, Martin corrected some bad errors in my footwork. Then after the classes I headed to Te' House of Tea for a milonga which was very well attended. Then Sat. I took a 3 class intensive in Milonguero Style Tango. WoW!

Orlando teaching B the proper lean.

 
 it was great, Orlando Budini knows how to get his theories across and put your body alignment in the right position to truly dance this sensuous style.

Orlando with his well attended class.

We had a late lunch at the pizza place. and did more tango there.

Saturday evening I attended the milonga at the Melody Club sponsored by Alicia and Suraz I recommend that event if you are going to be in Houston the last Sat. of the month.

Robert and Valerie at the Melody Club.

Also, this past Monday evening at the Majestic Restaurant and Club was well attended. Watch for more information on future dates on this event.;

Enjoy life and the dance, 

                           B

Deus ex Machina

Men and women scurry about the offices of The Daedalus Publishing Company, in a frantic effort to meet impossible deadlines. I'm on the telephone, talking to Natasha about our plans for a champagne celebration and a night of tango on la Rue du Temple, when I get back to Paris. Then, something gets my attention. I hear someone gasp and whisper…"Oh my God." I turn around. Through the North windows of the office, I see this enormous jetliner coming at me. It’s very close and completely fills the big window. "Christ, if my love were in my arms, and I in my bed. Goodbye my love," I say over the phone. "I gotta go…I will always love you and your crazy, slew-footed tango-walk."

On the 98th floor of the World Trade Center, time takes a walk. My life passes before me, as in a dream, but slowed down and fragmented. It's as if I’m in this private movie theater. The main feature is a silent movie in super slow motion. I see myself up there on the screen. I see everything in great detail, and people are moving around as if they’re swimming in molasses. Natasha is prancing down the Rue du Temple, kicking a nylon-clad leg high into the air and dancing a high-legged, impromptu jazz that brings the sidewalk table-crowd to their feet.......

This movie doesn’t have a beginning or an end. It’s fragmented, like life. It just goes on and on forever, like falling into the event horizon of a black hole. As I watch the action unfold, something really weird starts to happen…I begin to understand the meaning of time. I don’t mean I see a bunch of abstract equations; I mean I actually see time, like I can see length, breadth and width.

Upstairs, in the tango bar on la Rue du Temple, I see on the champagne flavored lips of beautiful women, a sparkling gaiety. So many joyful people gathered in one place with a common purpose: the celebration of life; to laugh, to dance........

There is no sound. Everything is in slow motion. The office filing cabinets slowly levitate, and when they’re about four feet in the air, the drawers slide open and a blizzard of paper floats out and slowly drifts around the room, like big, white snow flakes.

I reach out and close my hand around a ballerina’s long, delicate fingers and feel a warm, scintillating current, like electricity, pass from her palm to mine. It invades my brain, so that moisture comes to my eyes..........

The clock detaches from the wall and floats into the room. The crooked hands smile down at me. Shirley, the office manager, slowly lifts out of her chair. She rises into the air and passes over her desk, as though she’s swimming. Her eyes are wide open, and her lips are shaped like a big, red, jelly-donut ‘O,’ as though she’s singing The Banquet Song she likes so much from La Traviata. I feel myself lifted into the air, and I start swimming around the room with the other people in the office.

The dancers of The Paris Corp de Ballet fly joyously through the backstage door, like a flock of bright, slew footed geese; barely earthbound, their hair trailing in the wind, their movements so graceful, so full of life........

Beautiful patterns creep across the windows, like the ones you see on stained glass windows in cathedrals. The patterns slowly criss-cross, moving and branching out like lightning in a big storm, and then the patterns flow into each other and start cracking and breaking up and flying apart, like you see in a slow motion picture of a car crash. The blue sky creeps into the office and carries me through the open window. That’s when I discover I can fly.

I’m flying, just like I’ve always wanted to. I like the feel of the warm air fanning my hair back, giving me that ‘Valentino’ look, like the old pictures on posters outside the tango bar in Paris. I think it’s all in the way you hold your arms; they’ve got to be stretched out, wide, like an eagle, and you have to spread your fingers, like the wingtips of a bird.

This has always worked very well for me in my dreams. I have lots of dreams about flying, where I just spread my arms and soar above the trees. There's nothing mysterious about this. I simply hold my arms in a way that makes use of normal aerodynamic effects. But the wind has to be just right. In my dreams, I'm on a picnic, in rolling green meadows with my friends. But I'm the only one who can fly. The others run and skip and jump, but I'm the only one who can fly.

The sun is a blinding, yellow ball of fire, and the sky is blue, like a robin’s egg. It’s a wonderful day for flying. I'm Icarus, escaping the labyrinth. But I hardly seem to be moving. This worries me, because, I know if you’re flying too slowly, you can stall-out and spin. Below me, the tiny bugs moving around on Fifth Avenue are barely creeping along. From up here, everything looks like Maybugs.

Maybugs are tiny insects. One of their favorite places to dine, drink and practice courtship rituals is under Le Pont Saint Louis in Paris. This is Natasha's favorite place. It’s two steps from the green benches and the mossy stone fountains in the rose garden behind Notre Dame.

At the other end of the bridge there’s an ice-cream parlor like none other in Paris. May is a glorious time to be standing at the middle of the old stone bridge, eating Raspberry ice cream, while Maybugs get it on beneath the bridge. Natasha has her arm around my waist. I feel her arm tighten, as she squeezes herself deeper into my soul.

I’m trying to finish off my raspberry ice-cream cone before it melts, and Natasha's sexy green tongue is obscenely at work on the lime ice cream cone she’s holding in her free hand. The lavender scent of her perfume rises deliciously on warm currents from the flower garden between her breasts and hangs suspended on summer’s warm breathe, like intoxicating Mayday opium. "Look, Robert," she says, pointing to the swarm of Maybugs beneath the bridge. "Regardes les Epermeres! Ah! How sad it is," she says. "Maybugs have such a fleeting, ephemeral life."

Ephemeral. I like that word. It says so many things, and it has a kind of poetic sadness to it. This poor bug is born and then goes off in search of breakfast, starts dating right away, gets married early, has sex and babies and then dies: all in a few hours. But is the Maybug unhappy? No, I don’t think so. Because its Maybug Rolex, strapped to one of its tiny legs, keeps Maybug time; this bug doesn’t think life is ephemeral, and six seconds on a Maybug Rolex can be a ride across the sun.

I'm not a great poet. Or even one of little consequence. But I would like to be. I have thoughts I would like to express but cannot. I would like these thoughts to crystallize into bright diamonds and sapphires that tell of the bittersweet essence of life and bring moisture to the eyes; things that make us cry with their beauty; like a blinding light that suddenly burst from its shell, casting a dazzling essence that strikes the core of your soul; and you begin to understand this life and this death and this joy that is life.

It's been like this for thousands of years: always the same, over and over and over again, but always the same, always as before, always as now and so on into eternity and the timeless future. It's a big amusement park, with smiling cotton-candy-exuberance and happy times riding the roller coaster and braving phantoms in the chamber of horrors and feeling a scorching heat in the tunnel of love and dancing the tango in the streets of Paris.

To enjoy the dance, and follow the music, wherever it may lead us. That's the secret.