First Leaf and Tolstoy's Fundamental Theorem of History

"Beautiful," said the LC customer as I set his latte on the bar.

"Sure is...You were talking about the coffee, right?"

"The whole process. It's a beautiful thing to watch."

I felt pleased. I recalled for an instant what it was like on the other side of the bar, to have no idea of the difference between a cappuccino, a latte, a macchiato, and so on. To be amazed at the gorgeous foam and the complex leaf designs. Oh wait, it's only been two months since I've started working at LC, and I still am very much amazed by the leaf design! I made my first baby leaf on a latte last Sunday, and it really was a beautiful thing. My hand was going for a heart, then at the last minute, it did the side-to-side dance as if possessed by a will of its own, and suddenly, a small baby leaf sat atop the brown like a tattoo, curving with the rim of the cup.

Today, I watched as my co-worker, Handlebars, created leaf after leaf after leaf, and each time I watched amazed and tried to figure out how he made it look so nice. His leaves are especially circular and wider at the base with many thin prongs. My latte milk was not so on today. It's all about getting the right milk-- not too foamy, not to wet. The design will come of its own accord, as they all have been telling me since the beginning.

I know I can't be serving coffee at LC forever (and why not?). I know I cannot be doing ballet at Symmetry forever (and why not??). But for now, let us appreciate and count our lucky stars that Angie gets to do both, day in and day out. Yesterday was the first day back at Symmetry after a week-long hiatus, and boy was it lovely! I had missed our teacher entirely too much. After the horrid, abyss-like Dark Age of Symmetry, whenever there is an extended hiatus at the studio lasting more than a couple days, it always starts to feel like a thing of the past, and that is a very melancholy feeling indeed.

Ultimately, life is a sad affair because everything good and nice will come to an end, and this summer has been especially good and nice (in fact, 2010 has been the hands-down the best summer I've ever lived in my 26 years). Pardon me if I sound depressing but sometimes these thoughts do occur in my otherwise obliviously blissful mind. I feel like Gilgamesh coming to terms with his mortality. Or like myself coming to terms with the fact that Prince Andrey and Natasha will not live happily ever after and grow old and curmudgeonly together. And Why Not???

Because Tolstoy says so, and he is the master of their fate, fictional as they are.

Tolstoy espouses an interesting view of fate, which goes something like...we are each of us free to make our own decisions, but once we do, our resulting fate is tied to the rest of mankind and history. Mathematically-- logically, it appears to make little to no sense. That is until one reaches page 937 of War & Peace:

"The progress of humanity, arising from an innumerable multitude of individual wills, is continuous in its motion...Only by assuming an infinitely small unit for observation--a differential of history--that is, the homogeneous tendencies of men, and arriving at the integral calculus (that is, taking the sum of those infinitesimal quantities), can we hope to arrive at the laws of history."

You see how hilarious this guy is? He applies complex laws of mathematics to discussions of fate! For all the ways in which he makes fun of Germans and their irrationally pig-headed faith in the sciences, he sure does enjoy using logic to pound his views home. Hey, Roomie, you see now why I burst out laughing when I read the above statement? It happens* to read very much like a typical math theorem from my old analysis textbook (I've added the bold fonts to emphasize the likeness). I laugh because I've finally discovered the reason for the existence of my math degree-- and it is to understand Russian literature. Thank you Tolstoy for giving purpose to my Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics.

*coincidence? I think not! I'm sure Tolstoy did his research into actual calculus textbooks.

Day of Rest

Ah Monday, my weekend! I could conquer the world! ...or I could conquer my bed. For now, I lie upside down on my couch-- barefoot and in the shirt I wore to work yesterday-- reading about Napoleon's attempt to conquer the world. Long live vicariously!

Any Given Sunday

Now that it's cooled down a bit in Philly, we've taken to turning off the AC and turning on the windows again. Oh how I've missed the noise. Earlier this morning, a car drove by blaring Middle Eastern music-- the kind with the lone voice trailing like a call-to-prayer-- and for a few seconds, I thought I was in the mountains again. Then the Doppler Effect flattened it out and took it away.

Now, a couple hours later, an outdoor church service with a big brass band keeps me from sleeping in. The priest calls me to Jesus and the Lord, his voice magnified by his zeal and a microphone. The pace and volume of the music crescendos, the shouts of "Glory!" increase in frequency. They're going for the goal! I'm anticipating...


...

...

Barista Talk

"Oh, by the way Angie, do you have kids?"

"KIDS? Do I look like I would have kids? I have Minnie Mouse on my shirt! In the front AND the back!"

"Not kids- keys! Why does everyone think I'm saying kids?"

"Oh...yes. I do."

Later...

"So you don't have any kids?"

"No but I do have a snowman. His name is Jellybean and he has a rainbow scarf. I sleep with him every night."

On His Toes

Today, after morning class, I lay on the floor stretching and watching Kip teach the following pointe class. Usually, he gives directions while perched on his stool at the front of the class. Today, though, he stood himself in pointe shoes and led the students into exercises. Kip in flowing army-green pants and satin pink toe shoes, leading a pack of lesser mortals into ballet exercises? I'm so done looking at women in toe shoes. I was struck by the juxtaposition of masculine and feminine: cold, hard green against soft, reflective pink; rippling, billowing fabric against the boxy hardness of pointe shoes; Kip in toe shoes. Gorgeous, gorgeous.

Night

Tonight, K called his style of teaching a "dying breed". It is an old style of teaching that treats ballet as the conceptual art that it is. Its poses and moves are motivated by abstract concepts, ideal shapes and consideration of perspective from audiences real or imagined.

As a dancer in training, one could go through the entire training process successfully without knowing or giving a damn about these more elevated aspects of ballet. Technically, one need not know that the aim of the arabesque is to give the illusion of an "inverted firmament"-- a curved line extending infinitely into space-- in order to achieve the pose. The imagery is admittedly "lofty", but then again, I've always been attracted by lofty ideas. What could be more lofty than the studies of relativity and mathematics? But in ballet as in math, one can learn to perform the functions and operations without understanding their deeper significances, and that is perfectly fine.

In terms of mathematics, this doing without knowing would be like being told that sqrt (2) is irrational and learning even to perform operations on irrational numbers without ever having seen the proof that sqrt (2) is irrational. Is it necessary to see the proof? Not in the least. But does seeing or better yet deriving the proof bring one's understanding and appreciation of mathematics to a whole new level? Indubitably. The lack of understanding of the motivations behind moves seems to be the case in most ballet studios: one learns to execute the moves without knowing why. It becomes a "gymnastic feat" rather than art.

Tonight, I was reminded of why I was here in Philadelphia. It is within the walls of the studio on 19th in Chestnut that the art of ballet is endowed with a special spirit and rigor that is hard to find elsewhere in the country and most of the world. And moreover, my instructor seems to believe in the goodness of human beings despite having seen the detritus-- the most banal examples of our race. In fact, it is one of the most interesting and inexplicable aspects of K's personality, that he is drawn to and seems to interact most comfortably with the kinds of characters that the rest of society shuns due to their obvious deficiencies in morals, mental soundness, or other typically valued human traits. I can only theorize that he does so because he himself understands what it is like to be shunned especially having come from the viciously competitive and egocentric world of ballet.

And yet, despite everything-- despite having decided he hated ballet because of its musty museum piece-like quality, and despite having experienced the worst human behavior in the very world he represents, he continues to teach ballet precisely because in his opinion, it takes the best parts of being human and displays them in unconscionably beautiful forms, whether static or dynamic. Now that I think about it, I feel extremely lucky that as a mere student of ballet not aiming to make it a profession, I will only ever expose myself to the good and beautiful side of ballet and not the dirty side. Unfortunately we cannot be so blissfully naive about our actual professions.

Tonight after ballet class, as I walked through the city streets in the dimness of night and balmy summer air, dwarfed by massive skyscrapers reaching to the heavens, I came to the realization that I've been wrong in thinking I needed to find a purpose to support my ballet habit which brings me so much happiness. My happiness is my purpose, and I don't need anything more. Even photography is superfluous.

While walking through the dim, muted streets of Center City surrounded by towering skyscrapers, I recalled a few nights ago how I had gone for a close-to-midnight walk with my camera and wandered into the most unearthly scene of children and lovers, friends, mothers and grandmothers playing in an enormous fountain shooting out magnificent jets of illuminated water like liquid moonlight. On the other hand, homeless folk lay on the benches and grass covered in thin white sheets like the dead.

The two children, years later, will remember nothing but a great big fountain, jets of water spraying in their faces, marble statues bigger than life, and pearl-colored water arcing into the limitless navy sky like white rainbows. For them, nothing will exist outside of this fountain at least in their memories. The grown-ups on the other hand will very well remember that an entire city lay outside of this fountain-- the Moore building, the Franklin Institute, City Hall in the distance, the homeless closer by. The next night, I awoke at three in the morning with the word "kinderspiel (child's play)" bouncing around in my head, and obeyed a sudden urge to take night shots from my rooftop.

Tonight after ballet class, about a block from the El on the way to a tango practica in Fishtown, I would see an owl on a rooftop, hoot at it to see if it was really an owl, and then continue on wondering if it was good luck or bad luck to spot an owl in the night. When night falls, everything becomes a little bit more mysterious and magical.

Horseshoes Milonga

I walked out of the subway station and heard the clopping of horseshoes. Out of the night appeared a carriage pulled by a lone white horse. It was one of those cheesy tourist horse-and-carriage rides. I hailed it like a cab and the driver pulled over asking if I needed a ride. I accepted duly noting that the driver was female-- Rule #2 in the Hitchhiker's Guide for Girls. Rule #1 would be "No hitchhiking in the middle of the night, especially in shady neighborhoods like Fishtown. But that's a hard one to follow, I find, whether I'm in Fishtown, Seattle, or Lebanon.

And so I found myself behind led by way of horse through the main streets, and then through the back alleys of Fishtown that I usually do my best to avoid. That night though, while the driver chatted amiably about how she'd been working this job for the past two decades, I found the view from behind fences and shadowy growth of trees impossibly romantic. The smell of sawdust alerted me that she was close to home, but she continued on until we were about one shady block from the back of the tango studio. Here she let me off and told me which way to go, waving away my money. I thanked her and ran off for I was already fairly late, climbed into and wended my way through the Field of Absurd Objects, and eventually approached the front window where the now-familiar sight of men and women dancing in intimate embrace met my eyes.

Here's a secret about tango dance events: the best time of any milonga is at the very end of the night at around 2am, usually. By this time the general crowd has gone home, and so the atmosphere is intimate, less chaotic. Poetic. Gorgeous strains of Piazzolla are played specially at this time. Only the really serious dancers are left. Meredith, Andres and Damian finally dance.

A couple stands at the doorway leading to Jerry's apartment looking out at these remnant dancers. A heavyset couple, his arm around her waist, her arm around his waist. Their heads form a window; through this space between the couple, in the distance, I see Damian and his partner waiting for the cue to start dancing, wreathed by the periwinkle blue Christmas lights framing the studio's window. I move past the couple and over to the piano. Nearby, Andres leads Meredith into a ridiculous number of spins that look ridiculously fun. She stumbles and laughs, then recovers and spins again. They move along in the line of dance.

Next comes Kristin and John, he'd finally nervously and hilariously worked up the nerve to ask her for a dance. I had been sitting between them in Jerry's apartment in the back of the studio, and it had been like watching high school. Or middle school. Only he was 24 and she in her 40's with a child. At tango, there are a number of women who dress and carry themselves in a way that belies their true age by a decade, sometimes two. I find myself chatting with Kristin about the worth of having a child. She is different from my older friends who do not have children. I think in becoming a mother, what you lose in lightness of spirit, you gain in putting aside superficialities and...yourself.

Carolyn walks in dressed to the nines in a champagne pink form-fitting satiny dress-- a dress she bought more than ten years ago with a custom-made slit on the sides. She is Walking Elegance. Someone should stop time so she will never change. But someone probably had the same thought about her when she was in her 20's and now she's even more beautiful-- and wiser, and a better baker. She had catered the entire menu that night. She says goodbye to us, brushing cheeks one-by-one. She leaves.

Ori walks in, high on life as usual. He had promised Elinora Ballerina a dance and had never followed through. Such is Ori. I watch the two of them communicating. She communicates with intimacy, no matter who she is with. I like, I like. John reasserts himself:

"It's one of those days where...where...where..."

We waited. He blew air under his bangs in frustration as we mocked him playfully as he struggled to get his words out.

"It's one of those days where everything should have gone perfectly,...but didn't! I wish I could do this day over again!"

"Hi, my name's Angie, nice to meet you!" We shook hands again. Before the night is over (just barely), I see them on the floor together in the line of dance.