Time to Dance Alone

Tango is just a dance, you know. It is meant for two people. But sometimes there's a time to dance alone. Dancing allows us to be in our bodies.  It makes time stop or race. It makes regular people feel as if the music has them doing things better than anything else they have ever done in life.  It's an excuse to hug people and be transported to oxytocin heaven without even knowing each other's names.  It transfers warmth to everything we do in life. . . .  But it's just a dance. 

***

The pandemic is likely going to bring Jerry to psychological ruin.  Tango had pulled him out of a deep depression in 2008.  He didn't even know he was depressed, or at least how depressed he was.  He found refuge in dancing salsa, and that was fun.  Depression's best medication is fun, but tango was not a psychotropic medication--it was therapy and medication.

"I told myself that I would never be so vulnerable," Jerry tells himself as the first milongas began being canceled.  Being cut off from dancing is as scary for him as was getting a divorce.  He is afraid that he has let himself fall in love again. He thought he was safe because a dance should not be able to abandon him as a woman could.  "This is only a dance!" he tells himself over and over like a mantra.

He knows this is a bad omen when he starts catastrophizing with slogan-like phrases:

"A close embrace will never be the same."

"Everyone will be afraid of microbes and viruses." 

"Even if things get back to normal, I will be all rusty and lose the flow." 

"I'll be lonelier than ever before." 

He looks at himself in the mirror and tells himself to slow the onslaught of negative thoughts.  "It will only take over my mind and make me spiral down into despair," his internal psychologist tells him.  

Tango is just a dance, but his fear of being depressed--not the lack of dancing--is what he truly dreads. Another episode of his blood flowing slowly in his veins looms. Depression knocks at the door.

But that's not going to happen. Tango did not leave him; his wife did.

Now he has skills he never had before.  He just doesn't really know it yet.  Like many others in the tango community, life indeed goes on during a pandemic or if a dance partner dies or if a foot gets broken.  Jerry, like others, starts connecting to family and friends on video chats and messages and texts. They read books. And tango dances with them through life, but just in a different way.

His mother is the most amazing connection during the pandemic and this dearth of social touch. Going to his therapist, David, helped him most reconnect to his mother.  "I don't want to get on medications again," Jerry warns his on-and-off therapist. "But I am dreaming a lot. Some are okay dreams but they are very vivid.  I keep dreaming about my mother, who died in 2018, along with my grandparents the same year."

***

It is good to reconnect with David, who is his old self, even on a normal video chat, which now federal law allows patients to use during the pandemic.  David peers over his glasses and stares at Jerry.  He's silent for longer than usual--as if he is stumped by this dream problem.  "Well, well ..." he finally says haltingly.  "I know you are an agnostic, but you are presenting me with a spiritual issue."

"How's that?" Jerry retorts.

"If you're haunted by your dead mother.  She is a spirit, and therefore, is this not a spiritual issue?"

"Not really . . . no, it's not."

"Okay, then. Do you want to talk about something besides ghosts, then?"

"Actually, I want to talk about my fear of another bout of depression now that I cannot go dance. But these dreams are bugging me the most."

"Okay, then tell me what you dream about."'

"I dream over and over about her casket going into the ground, and I have no feelings. I cannot cry. My ex-wife and my Mom kept in touch after our divorce.  I was kind of jealous.  Then, just as it truly happened, Nicole comes to the funeral, staying on the out edge of the funeral party. Then and now, these scenes are like a close-up zoom lens. I can only see Nicole there crying as I am numb and cannot cry. I feel jealous that she can cry and I can't.  At the same time,  the audio is turned up, and I hear the casket being lowered into the ground.  People in the funeral party take a shovel full of dirt and throw on the casket.  They wait for me to do it too, but I am paralyzed."

"So who is the producer of this film in your head?" David asks Jerry.

"I guess, I am."

"Right.  And who is the director?"

"Me."

"Really?"

"Yeah, who else?"

Again David is silent and looking over the top edge of his glasses.  "You are watching a B movie that no one wants to watch; not even you.  And that is because there is no director.  Jerry, what do you want me to say?  Should I be like a psychoanalyst and find the archetypes and deep meanings of your cast of characters?  Should I be a shaman and help you speak with the dead?   Or would you prefer that I help you be a better film director to change this shitty movie into something worth watching? It's your choice."

"Okay, help me with that.  That is better than having a spiritual problem."

"Then just maybe this is a spiritual problem? That you have not spoken to your mother except in B movie films at night?  And even then you are the emotionally paralyzed child who has no voice.  How would you make this a better film?  A film that you would want to watch or want to show to some intimate friend.  Would you wait for your dream life to come up with better storylines or would you sit down during the day and create a better film?"

David and Jerry go on about his worries about the pandemic, how his anxieties are returning, and how depression is his greatest fear.  But all of that is a blur.  The thing about showing up as a director, that is all he can really remember about their video call.  Now the empty director's chair haunts him rather than his mother.

***

Jerry sits at his desk and pulls out some things he still has from his mother:  A cross that she had from her mother.  A ring.  And some papers that he has forgotten, including a completed a genogram from an undergraduate sociology course.  He recalls his mother. She tells him about the family as far back as she knows. He charts dutifully as he had learned in class--that square boxes are for men and circles are for women.  Then came the amazing stories from his mother.  Her first husband's father had raped her.  She has told no one until they sit there together, filling out the genogram. Also, she admits that she had given away her first child to adoption. On a lighter note, she recounts how Jerry's sister is such a natural ballet dancer; how his half-brother is a musician; and his brother is a natural artist and sculptor. She recounts how Jerry was playing guitar even as a toddler.  Jerry connects the dots. He is the musician/dancer in a family of artists.

Jerry stops to think. "Here is a movie worth watching right under my nose."  Well, at least he realizes he has something better than the B movie he has been watching in his dreams.

Memories pour in.  Mom teaching the kids to cook, taking them to church, and the words on the wall in light blue, painted with a 3-D effect:  "God is Love."

"I don't want a melancholy movie," the Producer says, leaning over Jerry's Director's Chair.

"Fuck off.  Fire me and get another Director."

***
"Mom, I want to tell you how it felt when I visited you. I could finally really hug you.  I have to admit something.  I learned that from tango.  I learned to hug people.  I had forgotten how.  I knew how to do it as a kid.  I relearned with my first girlfriend, but after my divorce, I had forgotten. I was even afraid.  But I had long stopped hugging you since my teen years.  I wish I could've hugged you more. From tango, I learned to dance with the young and the old.  I hug the young women, the daughters I never had. Yes, I hug the sexy ladies who miraculously allow me to dance with me because of my musicality. I hug friends who giggled with my playfulness. I hug the older ladies like they were my aunts or even you. So when I visited you, it was easy to hug you again. Do you remember the time we went back to church, and I kissed my old Sunday school teacher on both cheeks as if she were a venerable tango teacher visiting from Argentina? I could see it in her eyes. You both were as surprised as you were delighted.  But I just had learned how to do this because of tango.  It was a reflex. It was etiquette. It is the new me."

"And Mom?" Jerry went on, then pausing.  "I want to keep hugging you.  Holding you long.  This feels right.  David tells me that I can have a growing relationship with you. And I know how I can do this.  When I dance by myself, please come with me.  I have danced with others who were hurt like you were in your divorce and sexual assault.  They found healing.  And I too will find healing dancing with you.  I am glad Nicole came to say good-bye to you.  It was her right and yours too.  It was your right to have all the people who love you to come to your funeral.  And she had the right to say goodbye.  Maybe death talked to her and told her that we are all connected and the times we loved were the only moments we were truly alive. I am grateful for those moments. Anyway, it was your funeral, sorry that I have been so fucking selfish. . . "

"Don't say that word, okay Jerry?" a motherly voice says in his head.

Jerry knows that he has reconnected with his mom at that moment.  That voice.  It isn't what his mother would say; it is what she is saying.  "David was right," he admits to himself. "I have had a spiritual problem."

The pandemic will give him plenty of time to get back to dancing by "himself."  He can work on knowing the music better, knowing Laurenz and Tanturi and some other lesser-known orchestras better.  But mostly, he is sure that he can find a deeper sense of himself and a healed past--or better said a "revised past, a different storyline."

***
In a video group room with tango friends three days later, he hears someone in the group say, "Tango is only a dance, you know."

"Not in my Movie," he whispers under his breath.  The voices in the chat group dim as he reflects: "It is who I am--the musician/dancer who learned his warm embrace from his mother."

Story by Mark Word

Art credit:  

Jean Groberg https://pixels.com/featured/1-greek-dancer-jean-groberg.html

Returning from War in my Tango Uniform

The following story is fiction with a high percentage of truth.  Find what seems to be true to you. This is a story about finding liberation from jealousy and possessiveness.  (I originally wrote this in 2009 while living near Ft. Hood, Texas).

It wasn't the prettiest tree,
but we guarded it well

The hardest thing for me to be deployed was not getting shot at. Having near-miss IED explosions that dazed me were horrifying too, but the hardest thing was to be away from my fiancé. I wanted to believe that she was being faithful, but there were so many stories of women cheating on their men. “Teresa was different,” I would tell myself. “She has true class and culture. She wouldn't do that.” But over and over we would hear about affairs that were being firmly denied, and the facts came in that were undeniable. Although it was against regulations, we even had access at S-2 to use satellites to go look at our homes. I had heard stories of guys who could see the pickup trucks parked out in front of our homes, and later the denials over the phone. Soldiers went home for two weeks of home leave, and they had their stories too. Infidelity was our obsession.

Although it was against regulations, Specialist Gaffney in the S-2 shop went and took real-time photos of everyone's home near Fort Hood.  He was in our platoon, and decided to do us all a favor.  One evening he handed out "pictures of home" to everyone in the platoon.  I told him that he could be busted to private for that.  "The intelligence satellites are to keep us alive from deadly threats, not to see who is sitting on your porch at home, Specialist!"  But then, I couldn't help but look at the photo.  Teresa's car was there.  No pickup truck in sight.  I didn't bust Gaffney to private, but he had extra duty and a counseling statement.  If the captain had known about it, he would have had an Article 15 and lost rank for sure.  I was easy on him because he just was being stupid and wanted to help everyone in his own 19-year old way.  

The winter sun on Teresa's car near Fort Hood made
 it look like a pickup truck at first glance. 

Since learning tango with Teresa, my fiancé, I noticed the word "tango" being said all the time in Iraq.  In the military if you are spelling something out on the radio or even in person, you don't say "t" but "tango."  Also, everyday I would hear someone saying “Tango Uniform” for this or that, meaning "broken."  For example, over the radio, we would hear that a vehicle had broken down and was irreparable: “Call out the wrecker, it’s Tango Uniform.” In reality “Tango Uniform” means "T.U." for “tits up” (that is, flat on your back).  Radios, vehicles, even relationships were "Tango Uniform" -- ruined by infidelity or some other thing.  The first sergeant even said at chow, “My marriage is Tango Uniform."   I would have thought that the young marriages would be the most fragile, but officers and senior enlisted soldiers had the highest statistics for relationship casualties.  The rear detachment commander had checked the First Sergeant's fears of fidelity.  At chow Top lowered his head and told me, "Yeah, she's cheating on me.  My kids even know the guy, and he’s sleeping in my bed.” He told me that he didn't want to go back because he was afraid he’d kill them both, leaving his children without parents – one dead and one in prison.  I felt sorry for Top because he would never confide in the chaplain or -- God forbid -- go to the behavioral health tent.  He'd just suffer on his own, and maybe he'd join the other soldiers on the growing list of soldiers at Fort Hood who had consummated their deep pain with a murder/suicide.  I didn't let my mind wonder about this.  I couldn't report the top NCO for pondering murdering his wife, but if it happened, I knew that I would never be able to get that out of my mind.


Instead, I preferred to think about good reunions.  I preferred to imagine having Teresa in my arms again.  Before I left for Iraq, Teresa and I had taken some dance classes and we loved it. First we loved salsa the most. But then we discovered Argentine tango.  We were getting pretty good at it before I left.  To keep me up on my tango, Teresa has been sending me videos of “tangueros” dancing, and I even practiced by myself whenever I had a moment by myself. I loved to watch, but again, the atmosphere of distrust made it very hard for me not to feel jealous and wonder if some sultry tanguero was slipping off with her after a dance. I wondered if she were happily “Tango Uniform” with him in bed and that our engagement also might be sadly "Tango Uniform."


Next to my cot, I always had a stack of her letters that always started, “Dearest Tanguero Adorable…”  She often wrote about being true to me.  She affirmed her maturity, her own self-worth and of course, our love. I hated that I still had my doubts. But I did.  The negative thoughts would come to me and whisper, “A lot of women were saying this, and they were off doing the wild thing.”  But one thing she said really made me believe her. She told me over a crackling long distance conversation, “Sweetheart, you know, if a lot of these women had a way of getting their need for touch met, then they might find it easier to be faithful. Tango allows people to get an important need met—the need to be touched. And if they had any sense of culture and self-discipline they would feel no need to go beyond that.” That sounded genuine. I also was able to dance a few times and feel what Teresa was talking about. There was dancing at a large FOB not far from our sector in Baghdad, and they had salsa dancing there. I found myself feeling so much better after that dance, and even more committed to Teresa.  The magic of music, dance and human touch fulfilled me.  I didn't have to go beyond that.

This is where the driver should
maneuver with "back ochos."

Close to the end of our deployment after I came back from a mission with my platoon, the commander was standing there, and I thought there was bad news. We all fear last minute tragedies in theater or back at home at the last minute before returning.  It seems like shit happens all the time at the very last minute of a deployment.  We were supposed to come home on the 10th of January, and we didn’t have much time left in country. As I had suspected, the commander had bad news.  “The XO's team just missed running over an an IED, and he’s being MEDEVAC’d to the hospital in Baghdad.  He’s doing okay -- nothing really serious, but that means that you’re going back early as the rear-Detachment commander instead of the XO,” he told me. That meant that I’d lead the forward party to help prepare for the return of soldiers back home at Fort Hood. 


My emotions were properly dampened as the commander told me.  First of all, the XO and I were close friends.  We were in the officers' basic course together; so this was terrible news, but at the same time I knew that I would be home for Christmas.  It is probably impossible for most people to understand that this actually 99% bad news that I would be home for Christmas.  I felt like a traitor to my platoon, getting to go back early. I felt humiliated telling the soldiers under me, and all the while I was so happy to be leaving that hell hole and see Teresa. I was totally conflicted in my feelings.  But if I had been given the chance I would have stayed.  Like it or not, I was going back in time for Christmas.  I also decided that I would not tell my family or even Teresa.  I felt sort of ashamed that I was coming back. I was also dreading my return to my fear of what I might find remaining of my hope of marrying Teresa.


What would I find? Intellectually, I knew that everything would be okay, but I had these great fears in my gut too -- fears that seemed deeper in my gut than the the dangers of going "outside the wire" on a mission.


When I arrived I had to go through lots of briefings and medical screens like everyone else would have to do in January. But on Christmas Eve, I would be free. I knew where Teresa would be from our conversations -- at a Christmas Eve tango party. So I put on my dress blue uniform – the only thing I had at my locker at work. I drove down to the University of Texas in Austin.  The UT Ball Room was down I-35, sixty-something miles from Fort Hood, where the milonga was being held. I put on an overcoat so as not to cause a scene when people saw me in uniform at the dance. 


It took a while for me to spot Teresa. She was dancing with a handsome man, and I felt my face turning red. I stood in the back, and no one seemed to even notice me. I realized that I was spying on her like Specialist Gaffney's eagle-eye from through the stratosphere.  I knew it was wrong for spying, and I deserved extra duty like I had given Gaffney.  Also, I felt this mad jealousy well up in me because they were chest to chest, and he danced so well. She looked so satisfied in his arms. I had a feeling of great sadness at first: Like a little boy who was watching his best friend run off with someone else. Then I fought back the rage and jealousy. I tried to stay in the shadows of a far corner but I was sure that my red hot face would surely alert everyone that I was there.  Certainly someone would ask, "What's burning!"  The striped sides of my dress blue uniform pants surely would give me away if I tried to escape now as the tanda ended.
  
As people were leaving the dance floor, I spotted Teresa coming my way. My stomach twisted and my hands were sweaty. 

An older gentleman stopped her with a nod of his head. Another song started and they danced. She had not recognized me. The man was old enough to be her father. Wow, he was good. He made the younger man look like a klutz. Although they danced simply, people stopped to watch them.  Teresa and he looked as if the music controlled them, forcing them to dance so wonderfully. Teresa looked like she were in some sort of tango Nirvana, and I realized that it was the music, the touch, the moment that was filling her soul. I felt this … this … huge well-spring of emotion, of love, of trust.  She wasn't in heaven because of that old man but because of the power of the embrace, the music and joy of movement, just as she had said before.


As if I did not even choose to, I felt my overcoat fall to the floor around my feet. People were leaving the dance floor, and someone said, “Teresa! My God, he’s back!” 


Teresa's tanguera friend was pointing with one hand and the other was over her mouth, realizing how loud she had said it. The room went dead silent. Everyone started clapping, and Teresa came running to me, with a crowd behind her. She melted into my arms. She was crying. Others stood by and gave me hugs like I was their long lost friend. “Thank God you’re back. Teresa has told us so much about you; it’s as if we have known you forever,” an older woman told me, holding onto my hand like my mother would.

This is the tango community: A bunch of people who touch each other as if this were what human beings do best. 

The music started again, and she led me out onto the floor.  I felt so self-conscious at first.  It was like a wedding dance and we were the only ones on the dance floor.

I just tried to do what I had seen the older man doing, listening to the music and letting the music move my feet. I danced simply, but it felt like I was on a level that I had never had experienced. It was the embrace, Teresa melting into my soul.




My engagement and my love for her were all saved from my worries of catastrophe and hurt at that moment. 


Now when there is a military event, Teresa does no longer calls my uniform my "Dress Blues"; she calls them my "Tango Uniform" because of our reunion dance in Austin.   


I am reluctant to tell her what "Tango Uniform" really means.

Post Script:
This story is of course fiction, but so true about soldiers, love, trust and what tango has to offer the world.


Photo credits:
Link to IED explosion is here.
Older gentleman photo:  Visit  http://practimilonguero.wordpress.com/page/4/
The photo of Salado, TX was from Google Earth.
All photos with the "tango uniform":  Izabella Tabarovsky, Washington DC


Photo models:
Dina Dalipagic and some unknown tanguero in uniform.

Note:  The "Tango Therapist" now resides in Germany.  He is father of two sons who live in Germany.  Besides being a lover of Argenitine tango and a tango blog writer, he is a therapist for post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and family problems (now in Germany) and is a lieutenant colonel in the US Army Reserves, Medical Service Corps.

Chronicles of the Tango Therapist

The Keyhole into the Universe

[Tango fiction]

Thekeyhole into the Universe

Once long ago but in a time very much like ours there was a milonga in Bucharest...

Romania had a small butlively tango community.  No one recognized the stranger when he came through the door.  He wore black and he had a air about him that made him seem like an experienced tanguero.  The regulars whispered toeach other about him as he sat down and observed the dancers.  A few tangueros approached and welcomed him,but nearly everyone figured that he was just watching and did not dance at all. 

After about five tandas,he approached Margareta.  He asked her what her name was as they stoodwaiting for the music to start with an accent that was clearly not Romanian. She told him that her traditional Romanian name, Margareta, meant"pearl."

"That seems to fit your soulvery well," he replied, looking into her eyes.  "I knew a girl whose name was Pearl. She had a very deep and precious soul.  Although she had beenseverely abused as a child in an orphanage, she grew up to be the kindestperson I have ever met.  Pearl had the ability to do what most of uscannot:  She saw the universe through a keyhole.  She found littlepieces of evidence of kindness and goodness in the world through the littlekeyhole to the universe, and it these bits of goodness shaped who she was. Many of us focus on a few negative things in the world and we then cannotsee the beauty all around us.  She found the beauty just throughsmall glimpses of the divine."

Pearl's eye view

"That seems to fit your soul very well," he replied.  "I knew a girl whose name was Pearl.  She had a very deep and precious soul.  Although she had been severely abused as a child in an orphanage, she grew up to be the kindest person I have ever met.  Pearl had the ability to do what most of us cannot:  She saw the universe through a keyhole.  She found little pieces of evidence of kindness and goodness in the world through the little keyhole to the universe, and it these bits of goodness shaped who she was.  Many of us focus on a few negative things in the world and we then cannot see the beauty all around us.  She found the beauty just through small glimpses of the divine."

The music continued.  As she began to dance with the stranger, every pause and every impulse was as if they embodied the music.  The left-right pulse of his tango walk seemed to pull her into a world in which she could see her life going before her.

She returned to the orphanage where she had lived until she turned seven years old.  She saw the terrible things that had happened there but for the first time she remembered these events as if she were an outside observer.  She watched in deep compassion for the orphaned child as if she was totally removed from the experience, except for her compassion for the child.  The music stopped.

Before the second song of the tanda began, the stranger went on with the story:  "One day Pearl looked through the keyhole to the universe and saw all the moments of kindness she had ever experienced, most of which she had forgotten.  It filled her soul with the resolve to be the kindness she saw.  At that moment she joined Plato in his understanding that the world is but a shadow of the real and eternal.  She chose at that moment to find real and eternal beauty and goodness and bring these to fruition into this world."  The music started again.

The next tango was the one that meant the most to her.  She had fallen in love with the person with whom she first danced it some two years earlier.  Poema represented  both beauty and loss to her.  But the stranger’s steady tango walk again brought her back to the "keyhole" the he had just mentioned, and she imagined herself now looking through it.

This time she saw herself as an adult looking back at the child in the keyhole.  She felt a deep empathy for the child.  Strangely, she then switched to being the child, looking through the keyhole at the adult Margareta as a kind and compassionate person.  Just as her adult self seemed to be coming to the door to open it, the music stopped.  The man continued yet another part of the story.

"Pearl grew up to become an incredible woman.  Her compassion to others had no boundaries of nations or races or religions.  She was kind.  She carried an aura of kindness.  It was simple and powerful at the same time."  The music started yet again, the third song of the tanda.

This time his pause before taking his first step felt as if energy was building.  It was more than just standing there:  It was as if their first step was going to explode with energy.  She made dainty circles with her left foot, and they became larger as the energy built.  Their musical tension, she knew, prepared them for the end of the next musical phrase.

As they took their first steps together, she felt like a little girl running out to a set of swings on the playground with a little boy by her side, free to romp and play.  They ran in slow motion as if to not allow the beauty of this moment of freedom escape the moment too quickly. As they moved, she returned to the door, and before she could even bend down to look through the keyhole, she heard footsteps.  The door opened.  Her adult self did not seem to recognize her.  She wanted to say, "Don't you see that I am the child you once were?" The music seemed to end too soon, she had been so deep in thought.

The stranger just looked at Margareta, as if to peer into her soul.  "Isn't it a wonderful thing to start with a little piece of sand and then have a pearl of great beauty come from it?  Such is one of the wonders of the Universe."

The last tango of the set started.  He opened his arms and this time she his chest.   "This!" she told herself, "this is entrega, surrender.  This is what others have talked about, not yielding to a man's lead but surrendering my soul while dancing!  Margareta returned to the door.  She was the little girl beholding the older woman who did not seem to know her.  

The little Margareta then realized that the older Margareta acted only out of unconditional love and kindness.  Her older self knelt before the younger Margareta.  The older Margareta was being kind to the little girl not just because it was herself but out of unconditional compassion.  The little Margareta said, ”You are what I have become and what I want to become.  Please stay with me.  I need your love more than anyone's.”

The older Margareta promised the little girl that she would never neglect or leave her.  As Margareta danced, she whispered out loud to herself,  "I cannot stop or save you from the hardships of life, but I want to be with you, and I hope you will be with me in my hardships, okay?  We need each other."  The two agreed to meet often.  She hoped the man hadn't overhead her promise to herself.

The tanda ended.  The cortina played.

"You have danced beautifully, Margareta.  I truly have found a pearl here in Bucharest.  It was such a pleasure for me.  You seem to have brought me to the same Keyhole into the Universe that little girl named Pearl saw as I danced with you.  Isn't that the best of what tango has to offer us, a way to sense the beauty of another person through their embrace?"

Margareta felt as if he had spoken the words that she should have said.  Yet they seemed as genuine for him as for her.  "But what is your name?" she asked him as he escorted her on his arm to the edge of the dance floor.

"In Buenos Aires they call me Angel del Gotan, but I am just a tanguero, a man who is led by the music.  He left immediately, snatching his umbrella from the table near the door as he left. She toyed with her necklace, and just then remembered that she had worn a single pearl that night.  "That's so weird," she told herself.  "That's just too weird!"  She stared at the door for nearly a minute until a friend came over to her to ask if she was okay.

"Sure, I am fine.  Great, really."

"Then why are you crying?

"I just had a look through the Keyhole to the Universe.  And I met someone there that I will never forget -- myself."

Photo credit:
Universe -- See the artist's great work at http://www.light-and-illusion.com/space-art-science-fiction-art/?p=522 
Keyhole -- http://www.richrussell.co/metaphysical/applying-the-law-of-attraction/

Note that for those who have read The Book of Jonah:
Fiction:  The attempt to get closer to the truth.
Non-fiction:  The attempt to present the truth and thereby distance ourselves from it.

When Eros and Agape Met

While on vacation in Argentina some years ago, Eros and Agape happened to meet at a café. They had met before in Athens and got into a big argument.  Since that time, they had refused to talk to each other. But this time they were both on vacation, and were more relaxed.

Agape was the first to speak because she felt that it was her place to put aside old hurts, and she figured Eros would never take the lead on normalizing their relationship. She was right. Eros had a certain inflexibility to him.

"Eros!" she said, "funny meeting you here in Argentina!"

"Hi, Agape," he said, noting how nice she looked in her toga.

"We really have the same mission in life; so perhaps we really should get along better." Agape was so right on this one. What an embarrassing thing it has been having the same name "Love" as translated in many languages, but the two of them were not getting along:  Ironic, to say the least!

"Agape," Eros interjected, "you know that so many think you are the highest type of love, but without me, a lot of people who talk about you would be not very loving at all. They'd be frustrated and up tight all the time. They'd all be at each other's throats in less than a month without my influence."

"Okay, Eros," she said calmly, "but you must realize that I am not the one that makes all this stuff up about me being higher than you. I am not out there upgrading my reputation! It's sort of like the opposite of slander. Slander and Adoration are part of the same coin. This coin, no matter how it is flipped, is beyond our control."

That day in a coffee shop in Argentina Eros and Agape created a dance called Tango as a way of showing their solidarity and affection towards each other. They decided that tango's rhythmic roots would come out of Africa and its melodies and harmonic structure would come out of Europe. This dance, tango, at that moment became sensuality combined with the best of the human spirit. From Tango, mortals would embrace in a way that even siblings embrace each other, heart to heart, and they would find themselves transported by and possessed by the beauty of the music. Tango became the celebration of movement, a walking embrace, the transcendence of sentient yet spiritual ecstasy.

Just about that time, the muse of dance, Terpsichóre, also avoiding the winter in Athens, showed up to play for Eros and Agape.  She was about to play the first tango on her harp, but said, "Wait!  You have to hear this instrument I found in the Reinland of Germany!"  She put down her harp and pulled out a squeeze-box from a case lined with purple velvet.  "It's called a bandoneón," she said.  And out from the crying bellows of the bandoneón, Terpsichóre played the very first tango.
 

Agape tenderly embraced Eros and he navigated her around the room as Terpsichóre led and inspired them in the dance that never had been danced.  The people in the streets of Buenos Aires started gathering, watching this incredible moment in human history.

Now you know the true history of Tango: The dance that Agape and Eros danced when they met in Argentina some years ago.

Special thanks to Ovid, who still inspires me to make up my own etiological stories.

Photo credit:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eros

Art credit:

Artist	Antonio Canova
Year	1787-1793, 1800-1803
Type	White marble
Dimensions	155 cm (61 in)
Location	Louvre; Paris, Hermitage Museum; Saint Petersburg

Enslaved Tango Blog Writer

"If you finish your blog, you can come to the practica."

September 2012

Margarita and Elena let me have the keys to my cell today, and they are now allowing me to tell my friends and family where I now live.

Santa Fe, New Mexico.  I like it here.  I dance a lot.  The community is caring.  I really did not mind being enslaved by two tango-hungry women in their basement for over a year.

Well, let me explain.

It all started back at the Denver Tango Festival in May 2011, more than a year ago.  I was dancing with Margarita.  She was sure she knew me.  Then it dawned on her that she had been reading my blog.  She was introduced to my blog through her friend, Elena, who had danced with me in Austin, Texas.  Elena shared my blog with Margarita back in November 2010.


So Margarita had been reading my blog for a while, and knew way too much about me:  My tango philosophy, my military service, my passion for music, and how I was using tango as therapy.  Suddenly she found herself dancing with the guy who was writing the blog -- the Tango Therapist.

We hit it off, and danced several tandas over the course of the Denver Festival.  We sent each other a few messages on Facebook, but then I never heard from her again. 

A month after I returned from Denver, unexpectedly Elena and Margarita announced through an email that they were coming to DC, and I agreed to introduce them around at local milongas.  What I didn't know was that they had decided to enslave me.  Tango slave.  Human trafficking.

Elena drugged me with Ambien and I slept in her back seat all the way to Santa Fe.  They put me a basement cell.  But to tell you the truth, being a free slave (slave to tango) and a captured slave was very much the same.  Really, it was an easy transition.  

Okay, this enslavement thing quickly developed into the Stockholm Syndrome.   I started siding with these criminal dominatrices.  It was brainwashing I am sure.  But at the time the washing felt cathartic, you know.  Sure, I considered escaping the prison they had made for me in the basement, but then I was unsure what freedom would bring me.  It wasn't so bad.  They let me out sometimes.  They were kind to me at times.  


So it didn't look too suspicious, they allowed me to dance with other women.  It was just like living in DC.  I was dancing a lot.  I only came out from my apartment to go out to dance.  Really, nothing new at all to my regular routine.  They even would take me to tango festivals and one trip to Buenos Aires to be their tango-slave-taxi there.  Life was good. You would have never caught me humming Negro spirituals, or mumbling about freedom.

But what about all the rest of the time?  There's more to life than tango, right?  Well, they gave me a TV . . . but I never turned it on.  They allowed me to continue writing my tango blog from the basement cell.  They edited everything I wrote before sending it out on the Internet.  This was great.  Yes, they were checking to see if I was giving out my whereabouts to family and friends, but the positive side was that I now had two editors.  They caught typos and awkward sentences.  All in all, I was gaining more than I was losing, although I did miss my children.  Elena and Margarita let me talk on the phone with my kids.  On Skype, Ben and Toby even said they liked the way I had fixed up my cell.  

This is my first unedited blog since being enslaved.  So now you know my story, and why I disappeared from DC.  I will tell you later about how I was finally freed.  The short story:  My blog readers started a "Find Tango Therapist Committee" on Facebook. Some wonderful tangueras from Germany, Santa Monica, DC, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio came all the way to Santa Fe to free me.  They all showed up at the same time, and Margarita and Elena invited them in for tea.  We all went to a milonga that night.  One of the committee freedom fighters is offering me my own second floor room, better food, two trips to Buenos Aires a year and the same freedom to dance with other tangueras at milongas.  She says she adores me, but I am not sure.  You see, most men just have one loving dominatrix and I don't know if I can go back to just one now.  Two make it easier because they sometimes get into a fight, and take out their frustrations out on each other rather than me.  It works quite nicely.  I am starting to understand the Mormons.

By the next blog, I hope to make a decision about my future enslavement.  Your comments are welcome. Should I go with the adoring slave-owner, or the two rather frisky tanguera slave-owners?  I'd appreciate your opinions, dear Readers.

Sincerely, 

Esclavo Tanguero

a.k.a Tango Therapist

PS:   I am going to try REALLY hard not to write anything more bizarre than this story in my blog.  I promise.  And for a few who didn't look carefully at the dates:  No, this did not happen.  Yet.

Photo Credits:

From Tango Cell Block  http://www.cinemaobsessed.com/2010/07/memorable-monologue-chicago.html 

Tango Uniform (a Christmas Story)

Tango Uniform
Teresa and Uriel’s Christmas

The hardest thing for me to be deployed was not getting shot at. Having near-miss IED explosions that dazed me were horrifying too, but the hardest thing was to be away from my fiancé. I wanted to believe that she was being faithful, but there were so many stories of women cheating on their men. “Teresa was different,” I would tell myself. “She has true class and culture. She wouldn’t do that.” But over and over we would hear about affairs that were being firmly denied, and the facts came in that were undeniable. Although it was against regulations, we even had access at S-2 to use satellites to go look at our homes. We could see the pickup trucks parked out in front of our homes, and later the denials over the phone. Soldiers went home for two weeks of R&R leave, and they had their stories too. Infidelity was our obsession.

“Tango Uniform” (meaning simply in radio language “T.U.”) had a meaning in the military for something that was knocked down and not able to get back up. Over the radio, we would hear that a vehicle had broken down and was irreparable. “Call out the wrecker, it’s Tango Uniform.” In reality “Tango Uniform” meant in the rough rider language of the military “tits up” (that is, flat on your back). But we started talking about our relationships being irreparable too because of infidelity. The first sergeant even said at chow, “My marriage is Tango Uniform. The rear detachment commander checked it out for me. My kids even know the guy, and he’s sleeping in my bed.” He didn’t want to go back because he was afraid he’d kill them both, leaving his children without parents – one dead and one in prison.

Before I left for Iraq, Teresa and I had taken some dance classes and we loved it. First we loved salsa the most. But then we discovered Argentine tango. Teresa has been sending me videos of “tangueros” dancing, and I even practiced by myself whenever I had a moment by myself. I loved to watch, but again, the atmosphere of distrust made it very hard for me not to feel jealous and wonder if some sultry tanguero was slipping off with her after a dance. I wondered if she were “Tango Uniform” with him in bed and that our engagement also might be Tango Uniform. 

Next to my cot, I always had a stack of her letters that always started, “Dearest Uriel, mi tanguero…”  She often wrote about being true to me.  She affirmed her maturity, her own self-worth and of course, our love. I hated that I still had my doubts. But I did.  The negative thoughts would come, “A lot of women were saying this, and they were off doing the wild thing.”  But one thing she said really made me believe her. She told me over a crackling long distance conversation, “Uriel, you know, if a lot of these women had a way of getting their need for touch met, then they might find it easier to be faithful. Tango allows people to get an important need met—the need to be touched. And if they had any sense of culture and self-discipline they would feel no need to go beyond that.” That sounded genuine. I also was able to dance a few times and feel what Teresa was talking about. There was dancing at a large FOB not far from our sector in Bagdad, and they had salsa dancing there. I found myself feeling so much better after that dance, and even more committed to Teresa.

Late in our deployment after I came back from a mission with my platoon, the commander was standing there, and I thought there was bad news. We all fear last minute tragedies in theater or back at home at the last minute before returning. We were supposed to come home on the 10th of January, and we didn’t have much time left in country. But the commander had bad news/good news.  “The XO hit an IED, and he’s being MEDEVAC’d.  He’s okay, but that means that you’re going back early as the rear-D commander,” he told me. That means that I’d lead the forward party to help prepare for the return of soldiers. The XO would be okay, we learned, but his first stop would be Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.

My emotions were properly dampened as the commander told me.  First the XO and I were in basic together; so this was terrible news, but at the same time I knew that I would be home for Christmas. I also felt like a traitor to my platoon, getting to go back early. I felt humiliated telling the soldiers under me, and all the while I was so happy to be leaving that hell hole. I was totally conflicted in my feelings, but like it, love it or hate it, I was going back in time for Christmas.  I decided I would keep it a secret that I was coming back.

I had paradoxical feelings especially about seeing Teresa. What would I find? Intellectually, I knew that everything would be okay, but I had these great fears in my gut too. When I arrived I had to go through lots of briefings and medical screens like everyone else. But on Christmas Eve, thank God, I would be free. I knew where Teresa would be from our conversations -- at a Christmas Eve tango party. So I put on my dress blue uniform – the only thing I had at my locker at work. I drove down to the UT, Austin’s ball room, 60 miles from Fort Hood, where it was being held. I put on a big overcoat so as not to cause a scene when people saw me in uniform at the dance. 

It took a while for me to spot Teresa. She was dancing with a handsome man, and I felt my face turning red. I stood in the back, and no one seemed to even notice me. I realized that I was spying. I felt so jealous because they were chest to chest, and he danced so well. She looked so satisfied in his arms. I had a feeling of great sadness at first: Like a little boy who was watching his best friend run off with someone else. Then I fought back the rage and jealousy. I tried to stay in the shadows of a far corner but I felt my red hot face would surely alert everyone that I was there.  The striped sides of my dress blue uniform pants surely must have given me away too.  When that song ended, people were leaving the dance floor and she was coming my way. My stomach twisted and my hands were sweaty. An older gentleman stopped her with a nod of his head. Another song started and they danced. She had not recognized me. The man was old enough to be her father. Wow, he was good. He made the younger man look like a klutz. Although they danced simply, people stopped to watch them.  Teresa and he looked as if the music controlled them, forcing them to dance so wonderfully. Teresa looked like she was in heaven, and I realized that it was the music, the touch, the moment that was filling her soul. I felt this … this … huge well-spring of emotion, of love, of trust. 

As if I did not even choose to, I felt my overcoat fall to the floor around my feet. People were leaving the dance floor, and someone said, “Teresa! My God, he’s back!” 

She was pointing with one hand and the other was over her mouth, realizing how loud she had said it. The room went dead silent. Everyone started clapping, and Teresa came running to me, with a crowd behind her. She melted into my arms. She was crying. Others stood by and gave me hugs like I was their long lost friend. “Thank God you’re back. Teresa has told us so much about you; it’s as if we have known you forever,” an older woman told me, holding onto my hand like my mother would.

This is the tango community: A bunch of people who touch each other as if this were what human beings do best. 

The music started again, and she led me out onto the floor.

 I felt so self-conscious at first. It was like a wedding dance and we were the only ones on the floor.










I just tried to do what I had seen the older man doing, listening to the music and letting the music move my feet. I danced simply, but it felt like I was on a level that I had never had experienced. It was the embrace, Teresa melting into my soul.

My engagement and my love for her were all saved from my worries of catastrophe and hurt at that moment. How funny that people call us T&U now!  Tango Uniform? That is now what Teresa still calls my dress blues.  I am reluctant to tell her what "Tango Uniform" really means.

Post Script:
This story is of course fiction, but so true about soldiers, love, trust and what tango has to offer the world.


Photographer:
Izabella Tabarovsky


Photo model:
Dina Dalipagic
Note: "Tango Therapist" besides writing this blog and doing other things in life, is a lieutenant colonel in the US Army Reserves, Medical Service Corps.