danceboy

ricevermicelli and I are off to Paris tonight. By this time tomorrow we could be lost in the midst of people unwilling to admit that they speak English (or understand our attempts at French)... There might also be museums. Or alcohol. Or finding the local (and so far uncommunicative) CI dance community...

Wish us luck, and if you have any ideas, opinions, observations, what have you regarding things to do, see, eat, or otherwise experience in or near Paris, please let me know.

Be well.

I'm not sure why, but these last few days I've been noticing things about my dance. It feels like I've recently improved my ability to step outside and watch myself without throwing the dance all to hell in the process (reduced Heisenberg factor).

( I trust my instincts and they tend to be good )

( strength and ease are not mutually incompatible )


( people don't hear you the first 50 times, but then they think you're an expert )


( I can leave )


( I dance with a lot of women )


Oh there's probably more, but I have to go to sleep. I'd love feedback, particularly from people who've danced with me. Be well.

Since I know loads of you come to the Sunday Jam (at The Arlington Center from 11:30 to 1:30, bring a friend!), you should know that this Sunday it will be from 12:30 to 2:30.

Yay! It's started. The first people who are planning to host a party at Arisia have gotten in touch.

I've been rereading old Doonesbury strips from 90-91. Reading his take on GHW Bush is intriguiging. He's described as a windsock at one point, standing for nothing unless puffed up by the prevailing wind of the moment. This sounds eerily like how W is defining Kerry. I'm wondering how much of this is W knows it worked to undermine a presidential campaign once, and how much of this is deeply Oedipal.

After all, GHWB may have been a windsock, but he stated why he didn't remove Hussein from power back then. He was worried that Iraq would turn into a quagmire that would breed terrorism and hatred. W evidently didn't read his dad's book. Or talk to his dad. Or take his calls. Maybe W felt a need to set himself apart from his father, be his own man, do something different on one of the issues both presidencies faced.

Jeb Bush has evidently been using the Florida state troopers to harass leaders of the black turn-out-the-vote effort (details, more details). Frankly, he's doing a very bad job of subverting the democratic process, and we've all seen that Jeb can do a good job here. People know what he's doing ahead of time. There will be UN inspectors this time, and W needs those votes. It feels (you know, from my intimate knowledge of Jeb...) kind of like he's fed up with his brother getting all of the attention, and is therefore helping very badly in a passive aggressive attempt to dethrone W.

I've heard that the religious right and the log cabin republicans were both unimpressed by the RNC. I know that the log cabin is withholding their endorsement. I can't imagine that any of them are going to vote for Kerry, but he doesn't need that. If a fair chunk of log cabin types vote Nader or Libertarian or something, and a fair chunk of Moral Majority types vote... umm, I'm not honestly sure who they'd vote for. If they vote for someone who isn't W, Kerry should win.

Then there's Neil Bush; no longer running a S&L as a personal piggy bank, he's now making educational software for "hunter/warrior" children (no issues there) in high school. It mentions three whole founding fathers in its rap about the constitutional convention. Neil could easily be an vote costing embarassment for his brother (details), but he seems content to lay low.
His (now ex) wife made a bit of a stink about his business trips to Asia where he evidently routinely found women in his hotel room waiting to have sex with him (details). Evidently she thought the $1K/month he was offering in their divorce was a bit low. She ended up with $30K/year, but I think that if she feels like it, she could still blow things up. The allegations that she was practicing voodoo on Neil can't have made her happy...

In all, I'm wondering how much of a role Kerry is actually going to play in this election. I've heard the conventional wisdom that the Republican party has the decency to wait until after the election to fall apart into petty bickering. I'm wondering if that's changing. My pet theory is that we elect the people who give us better stories to tell each other over the water cooler. If that's so, W is a shoo-in.

It's also uncomfortable realizing that family dynamics are shaping the course of this nation. It's all too Roman Empire for me. W was, at least at one point, known for the cowboy boots he wore. There's no mention of whether or not they were little boots.

Today on the way to lunch, somebody employed by my building had a table with free samples of the stuff just outside the cafeteria. Having insulted its name previously (even though I'm vaguely sure no one reads this (if so, what made you stick it out in the roughly 6 months between my first and second entries)), and being nigh-powerless in the face of free stuff, I felt obligated to try it out.

It is terrible. Truly awful. Four hours and two cokes later I still have the fake, plastic-y taste of something that I'm pretty sure is supposed to be a sweetener in my mouth. The name isn't the worst part of it, and that's impressive.

I'm envisioning the meeting where they came up with slogans for the name "With a name like Frusion it might not suck!" , "Tastes better than I think it sounds!", "Most people never use all of their taste buds. Frusion!", "What do you get when you mix raspberries with something that destroys cities?"

I've been trying to come up with a way to say that thing that I'm trying to do when I dance lately. It's something having to do with not-responding just to respond, not doing just to do. Accepting what is, witnessing it, feeling myself and anyone with whom I may be dancing. Sounding pretentious as hell.

It's loosely based on Olivier Besson's theory of using the smallest motion that will fulfill what you want to do. Letting all of the options play out, rather than just doing the "obvious follow-through".

I've noticed it really bothering a few people, they seem to really want a response, for me to do that thing. When I don't they try harder. Sometimes I respond "wrong". Other people seem to love it. It definitely opens up a whole range of new space, ways to break patterns in my body.

Now I just have to decide how I feel about it, and when to use it.