What We Do

If music could speak, would it ask, "What is the meaning of life?" Then why do we? If a star-strewn sky could speak, would it ask, "What is my purpose?" Then why do we? Because we are human, and that is what we do until we lose our bodies to the earth and our souls to the stars...if such things as souls exist, that is.

Annual State of the Self Address

It is December, and I've been working at LC for almost half a year now. Today, for the first time ever, I heard the Penniless Picasso laughing...It was the funniest laugh I've ever heard. It sounded like someone pretending to cry-- like an actor's mock-crying--, and it went on and on and on. It took me a minute to look over the register to see who was making such a racket and find out it was dear old B. I wondered what he was laughing at, and whether it merited such a laugh. I wondered what in the world could merit such a laugh. Last week, he gave me a 9th painting. I hung it up on my "Bartwork Wall" when I got home this evening, and lay on my floor studying it and the others, searching for cohesive elements and hints to his unusual inner world. It is nice to have meaningful artwork coloring my walls. I've been told it's a bad idea to write on the paintings and put holes in them because they might be worth something in the future, but I've done both, as I have no plans to sell them ever.

Once again, it is December, which means the year is almost out. I had some grand plans for 2010 back in January, and of course, most of them have not panned out. Some have though! More than anything, this past year has been defined by ballet (an understatement!). Now ballet defines me. This art form has brought such joys, pains, purpose, and multitudinous other dimensions to my life, none of which I could have predicted when I first stepped into the old studio on Sansom Street last October. A year later, I am transformed both outwardly and inwardly. A year later, I will be dancing the role of Clara in The Nutcracker in front of an audience of 4-to-9-year-olds at a nearby elementary school. A year later, I have come to know what it means to feel passionate about something, and driven. I have never felt either of those before all throughout college or ever in my entire life until this past year of ballet. For that and everything else that ballet has given me, I am eternally, utterly grateful.

The one problem that ballet has brought me is the conflict between staying and leaving. Virtually this entire year was spent in daily agony over the loss of my travel plans. After my year in the Mideast, I had a desperate need to see the rest of the world, but then ballet came along and tied me down to Philly of all places and annihilated all my plans to satisfy my wanderlust. Enter perpetual inner conflict. Now I have many things to stay for (mainly ballet and my job), and in the past couple months, the choices I'd made so haphazardly finally feel "right"-- like actual choices, not random draws due to indecision, ambiguous feelings, and impulsiveness. A couple days ago, however, I had a sudden realization that there are interesting places to visit in my own backyard-- places which I can actually afford to go to, for which I would not have to shell out a grand for the plane ticket alone. This evening, as I sat on the couch researching this idea, a memory came to me of an article I had read months ago about Nicaraguan Sign Language. And thus, an idea was born, of a pilgrimage...an awesome, nerdy, linguistic pilgrimage that will shape the coming year, and perhaps the years following. Who know what discoveries will come of this pilgrimage!

Between my colorful workplace and ballet-- and the mouse that lives in our house and my imaginative roommates-- I feel as if I am living a story (not storybook, mind). Work is more than just work, the studio is more than just a place to dance. Life has become organic and meaningful.

Mission 11/17/2010

Make dinner for roomies + my new friend Naama.

-Acorn squash is delicious. Peel the rind off though. Thanks for the advice, Sarah!
-I forgot to squeeze the lime juice into the chili-lime vinaigrette. So it was just chili-...vinaigrette.
-There IS a difference between les haricots verts (French green beans) and regular green beans. The latter is more beany; the former is more leafy.
-If the recipe says use ice water, do not substitute "very cold tap water". The ice makes for a flakier crust for your Alsatian onion tart.
-However long you think it will take to cook a big dinner, double that time (at least). We ended up eating at 10pm instead of the appointed start time of 8pm.
-Cheez-its make a great dessert. I drew a mouse on my emptied plate with sriracha sauce and fed it a crumbled up square of Cheez-it. The real Hamouse, our newest house pet, never showed up, though he had been invited. His prolonged absence is disconcerting. It is likely that he is busying himself with building more cheese bombs. Also, there is a fish in the house, and no one knew except for Kathleen because it is in her room. 
-I love our house and the residents of our house and my new friend.
-Opened with Goosebumps today. Made a double leaf! Aw yeah...right in front of the Master Barista, too! Happiness abounds. A tiny baby boy with a tiny bald head came in for a coffee. His pajamas matched my socks. We were green-&-blue stripe buddies!

Babies

Once you are out of school, you have to give yourself assignments.

Walking home from ballet with a female classmate much older than I. She was going home to a husband of 37 years of marriage this December.

"Wow, congratulations!" I meant it. "I wish that upon myself."

"Oh, it'll happen! You've got to marry your best friend."

The simplicity of the advice is striking. And so sensible, too...I do hope my best friend is not a dog. Sometimes I think it might be a baby. I spent an hour in the children's section at the bookstore "studying", which is Arabic for "playing with babies". Being a baby is so exciting. You get to throw fistfuls of autumn leaves into the air for the first time. You get to alternatively give and take contents of your mother's wallet to a stranger over and over again, with increasing delight. You get to explore everything from books to feet with your teeth...even if you don't have any yet. Everything is amazing and new, and you are adorable just because you are so small and alien-looking and acting and because you walk funny...if you can even walk yet. Hah! Babies...

New Perfume

I smell like work..."caramel, nutty, and fragrant". Or is it "uncommon, rich, and full"? Whatever the particular coffee smell, it's in my hair, in my clothes, on my hands, and in my very skin. The grounds are stuck under my nails, too. Every time I grind a bag of beans, and shake it down to settle the grounds in the bag, I like to imagine the tiny brown particles flying all over my face and in the air like an earthy, organic pixie dust. It's no wonder I come home smelling like I do. Today, my co-worker and I took turns being latte-making machines. The line of customers did not clear until three hours into our shift, and only for a minute then before the next wave began. Wow...as a newbie, I'm still wowed by this.

"How do you say 'factory' in French?"
"Usine."
"Je suis une usine!"

Rhythm in Work

A facebook friend just tagged a dead man in one of my photos. I didn't even know of his existence, or that I had "seen" him without really seeing him before. But there he was in my photo-- two of my photos actually--, and now he has passed on after his body was hit by a car a couple days ago. Strange feelings abound. I memorialized a man with my camera. Just coming out of a photography moratorium, I am driven once more to pursue this line of work/art.

Work is wonderful. There are moments when customers get on my nerves, but for the most part, I consider myself lucky to be behind that bar. It's getting busier and busier as the season progresses into winter, so it's good that I am getting better and better at hitting a stride with my regular weekend co-worker. Last week, during a very busy shift, I was facing the machine pulling shots when suddenly I heard a woman's voice behind me say "It's like a ballet!" This made me look up and come out of a "zone" that I hadn't even realized I'd been in until that moment. I saw that we were being watched like performers on a stage by our customers as they waited for their drinks. Apart from the usual compliments about our coffee and service, this had to be my favorite customer comment of all time. Rather than a ballet, working behind the bar when it is super busy can feel like being on a swing. The rhythm of teamwork is tangible. It is the presence of rhythm in a given process that makes it comparable to an art like dance or music.

It occurred to me later that night that the entire process of working behind the bar at LC is a creation from nothing. There was no absolute rule that governed the process of making and serving coffee; no rule that placed one at the register and the other at the machines; no rule that governed how to deal with dirty dishes and spoons; no rule that detailed how the person at the register was supposed to assist the person at the machines and vice versa, and when. And so on. Nothing had to be the way it was, but because of the way the machines and other equipment were set up, and the given roles and the way the roles were trained to interact, a process was created that eventually came to be regarded as a dance by one customer.

A New Friend

I picked up the cello last night. I think this is the beginning of a beautiful...friendship.

If there's a cello lying around the house, one should learn to play it, yes? Yes indeed!

I struck my first note (a low C). "It sounds like a boat!" were the first words that flew out of my mouth.

Who picks up the cello at the age of 26? But then again, who picks up ballet at the age of 25? I, I.

I begin with Bach's Suite. It's gonna be my one-hit wonder.

Immunized & Primal

Longtime customer of LC wanders into the back kitchen. "Hey, do you need a flu shot?"

This year, I got immunized while perched atop the metal milk repository in the back kitchen of my coffeeshop. This is the best health care I've had since turning 18. After getting injected, I went back to chowing down on the most delicious falafel I've ever had.

Today was a good day. I got to open with Goosebumps. Endowed with an incredible ability to read my mind and mood, he makes me feel safe and taken care of. As soon as he goes on break to chow down on his own falafel, I set the pot of coffee dripping into the to-go cup, and forgot to watch it while grinding beans and ringing up the register. Coffee flowed all over the counter.

The day just got better as it aged into night. I was on my A-game in the best modern jazz class I've had yet. The teacher had beautiful form-- simultaneously powerful and dainty--, she didn't fuck around, she nitpicked, and she broke down the steps in an easily digestible way. The music was haunting and moving, and the choreography style was very Koresh-- lyrical and primal. Always the touch of jungle fever.

Ballet never leaves my bones, but here, in a modern class, it was important to move more instinctively. Also important to associate key movements with count as Kip always reminds us and not try to fix everything at once and consequently get overwhelmed and lost.

As I walked home from my usual evening study hall at the gelato shop, I swung the world by the tail and bounced over the white clouds, a la Allison Krauss and Robert Plant.

Red-Eyed Tree Frog

Why you should be fascinated by red-eyed tree frogs:

(a) They are living mood rings. Normally a bright lurid lime green, depending on their mood they can change to dark green or a reddish-brown. Obviously, frogs only have three kinds of moods: happy, sad, and jumpy! Besides the green, their sides are striped by blue and white bands, and their feet are red or orange. They really are beautiful creatures.

(b) Sometimes, they eat smaller frogs. Can you imagine if humans ate smaller human beings? I would not live to tell the tale.

(c) They (and frogs in general) are an indicator species. Because of their ultra-sensitivity to changes in their environment, if anything is wrong, frogs are the first to feel the effects. If you hear less ribbiting at night, it means your ecosystem is not so healthy.

(d) Contrary to what their freakishly red eyes might lead you to believe, they are not poisonous. The color is used as a startling mechanism.

(e) They look funny and adorable. Bulging eyes, wide mouth, flat head...cuter than your average chihuahua.

I became curious about red-eyed tree frogs after a meeting at my coffeeshop with a Rainforest Alliance representative. The meeting was casual, yet informative, and now I know what to tell my customers when they ask if our beans are "Fair Trade certified". Answer: "No, but we are Rainforest Alliance certified. Check out the cute froggie sticker on our packaging!"

H Sound

Semitic languages are so interesting in both structure and sound. I love the deep throaty H sound of Arabic (like the sound you make when blowing on your glasses before wiping them). Such a beautiful, breathy, yet full sound coming from deep within. It's a shame the English language lacks such a sound.

Initiated

I just worked my 5th shift in a row at LC. I feel like a real barista now, especially since during this last shift, Handlebars entrusted me with making the drinks for half the time. Also during this last shift, one of the signature ceramic cups shattered and drew blood from my right middle finger. I feel initiated. Welcome to the LC baristahood, Angie Chung.

Union

How strange! I can hear my heart beating through my ipod! My heartbeat melds with the strains of Tchaikovky's Violin Concerto. This piece of music is so unbelievably gorgeous and exalting at times that it makes me want to scream or cry-- or some other form of release from this corpus cage.

Consumed

Lately, I've been struck with this fine idea that I'm spending the next few years or many years in anticipation and preparation for the homecoming of whoever I'm destined to be with. It's a wonderful idea. I'm not wondering, I'm simply waiting. The difference is the element of inevitability contained in the latter, and the lack of it in the former.

In the meantime, my study of ballet has taken on a level of seriousness that I never would have predicted not a year ago. I go to class nearly every day, practice and stretch for another hour (sometimes more) after each class, then go to my favorite gelato palace to take notes and think about ballet for awhile before cracking opening my Arabic book. It's become rather obsessive, I admit, and all-consuming. Absolute bliss.

Because of this all-consuming dedication to ballet, I am left with little time for socializing, and so find myself leading a rather solitary life of late. In another lifetime, this would have bothered me greatly, but nowadays, I am driven more by a sense of purpose than by a desire for camaraderie. It's a different sort of fun.

Fleeting Faces

A couple days ago, I ran by a figure sitting on her stoop and was momentarily terrified. I could not figure out how her head was positioned, and so what I took for her face appeared deformed, like that of a monster. I stared and stared trying to locate her features until I ran right past her and the monster became human. Just an old woman with her head twisted sideways away from me, leaning on one hand. Phew.

A couple days ago, I attended a lecture at the Kimmel Center featuring Philip Glass and Lucinda Childs-- minimalist artists of the post-modern age. Lucinda held herself gracefully, was slender as a paper doll it seemed. Her veins stood out prominently, snaking down her long, thin, wrinkled arms and ended in large, beautiful hands with long, thin fingers that gestured elegantly in the air as she spoke. Her permanently knit eyebrows gave her face a hawkish look that was softened, however, by her gentle smile. Whenever she looked toward her right, in Philip's direction, half of her hawkish face was cast in shadow, the other half lit by stage light. I took a mental picture. In hearing a reference to her "silent pieces", she amended the term, saying they weren't quite silent as you could hear the pitter-patter of the dancer's feet on the stage. I loved that.

First Sound

I woke up to the sound of rain falling. It was the first thing I was conscious of...way before opening my eyes. It fell heavily, steadily. It was so beautiful...Love mornings.

Snowballing

Sometimes, when I read the news, I get the feeling that the stability of our race is hanging by a very fine thread. It's rather like an elephant balancing on a pebble. Or a marshmallow peep stuck in the microwave with the seconds counting down. I believe religious tolerance is key to maintaining this precarious balance, but it's the smallest incident that could snowball into something horrifically damaging on a global scale.

Who (besides da Vinci and Nostradamus) could have foreseen that the actions of a tiny church in Florida would lead to actual deaths in faraway Afghanistan? That is a very scary demonstration of cause-and-effect. Incidents like the planned Qur'an burning and that infamous Danish cartoon a few years back are just small ripples in a sea that is quietly seething underneath.

So which is it gonna be, religious strife or nuclear warfare, that finally puts an end to us? Stay tuned!

Tolstoyan Euphemism

Tolstoy's preferred euphemism for "to make battle/war" is "to chop and hack at each other" (Constance Garnett translation). He's a man of 4-lettered words.

And yes (as my fellow early-riser roommate pointed out), I am spending the good morning eating challah and reading War & Peace. Shana Tovah to all, and to all a good morning.

This Good Morning

Good morning! Good morning! It's the turn of the season and of a new day, and the possibilities seem endless. Who knows what this day will bring? What people I will encounter? Could be good, could be bad, could be LIFE CHANGING. Could be the love of my life. Could be ballet...Could be a greasy, cheesy, fatty burger. Could be a new feeling or a brand new idea. An alien might sweep me away, or I will sweep IT away into the vast possibilities of my new day. Already the birds are chirping! There go the possibilities of birds not chirping into my morning. An airplane drones in the distance. It has marked the sky and my morning. A rattle of tools, voices carrying indistinguishable words, a truck starts, the birds continue to chirp, my purple curtain ripples as the autumn breeze blows softly into my good morning. It is fresh! I must go and mark my morning.

Infinite Yet Bounded

My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep
The more I give to thee, the more I have
For both are infinite.

I have a theory about love. People say that love is infinite, but I don't think this is quite true. I think it is infinite so long as all your love is given to one person. But once you start loving more than one person, you begin to realize the finite qualities of love. I think you can love each person infinitely, but the overall amount of love that you can give in total is quite finite. This theory may be nearly as confusing as the fact that the universe is infinitely huge, yet bounded.

It is 3 o'clock in the morning. I'm babbling incoherently about something that can never be pinned down, about an ever-elusive butterfly.

Rhythm of Life

I just realized that for the past 2.5 months, I've spent 6 hours a day, 3-5 days a week in a narrow 2.5-foot-wide space with whichever co-worker I happened to be scheduled with for that shift. That's a lot of hours in such a narrow space, and yet, I don't ever feel confined.

To be sharing that tiny space with another person is an interesting and new experience. It becomes essential to say "behind you" every time you pass behind your co-worker, no matter how repetitive it may seem (and I did feel like a broken record at first, but got used to it eventually).

It also becomes essential to know when to step in and help out in making drinks rather than manning the register (the business side of the job). I didn't get the hang of this until I began taking over the drink-making here and there and realized how many orders a barista can take before he or she becomes overwhelmed. Now I sort of get it, though it's not quite perfect yet.

When I do get the hang of it though, it feels rather nice because I hit a sort of rhythm with my co-worker and it becomes a partnership, or if you prefer more poetic imagery-- a dance. Working in this narrow space behind the bar has made me realize that there are rhythms to situations in life that don't explicitly involve dancing or music.

This evening, just a few minutes before closing, I looked out the window and saw dozens of naked men and women riding by on bicycles.

"Oh my god, it's the Naked Bike Ride!" I cried. Customers turned from their coffee to the windows, and my co-workers and I rushed over to the edge of the counter nearest the window and gaped at the mass of pale buttcheeks sitting atop bike seats, riding by with cheers and whoops. We gaped and gaped and I felt strangely uncomfortably at seeing strange men's dicks hanging out in the open.

The Penniless Picasso gave me another drawing today-- the 4th one so far. I love our Penniless Picasso. I still haven't told you what he said to me the other day, have I? Story for another post. Suffice to say that tonight, due to no particular reason, or perhaps due to several reasons at once, I am full of seemingly imperturbable happiness and love. As well, a piece of rabbit sits in my stomach (a consequence of dinner). I'm feeling jumpy.

Modern Jazz

Symmetry is closed on holiday for the rest of the week, and so I decided on a whim (and an invite) to take a jazz class at Koresh. I had no dance clothes-- not even a hair tie-- so I danced in denim capris and borrowed a hair tie from the girl at the front desk.

The class was lovely. I was surprised by a few things:

1) By how balletic the moves were. We used balletic arms (port-de-bras) and degages in warm-up, changements across the floor, and coupes and pas-de-bourres in the dance combination. Most pronouncedly, the teacher himself moved and carried himself with balletic grace, even when he was teaching a "jazzy" move.

2) By the lyrical quality of the dance. I was expecting jazz walks and such, but there was nothing of a sort. Throughout the class, we were continually falling into gravity, using natural momentum, never fighting against what felt natural. I think I am by nature a jumper and so I tend to spring up rather than fall into the ground by default. I had to work to fall into the arabesque instead of bouncing out of it.

3) By how much fun I had. In continually falling into gravity and using my natural momentum while dancing, I felt so utterly free. I walked home feeling like I'd been playing on a swing for an hour-and-half. I adore swings.

4) By how much of my nearly-yearlong training at Symmetry came into use in this jazz class. As I balanced on releve/high-pose, changement'ed across the floor, and simply every time I moved, I felt all my learning from the past year coming into play. What a worthwhile year it's been!

5) By how much I loved dancing in bare feet.

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.

My Island

If I had an island, I would name it "Noman". No man is an island entire of itself...

If I had a photography business, I would call it "Yellow Sky". Yellow sky. Interesting choice...You can't see colors, can you?

Shift #10 Behind the Bar

By the way, I made beautiful microfoam today. The beautiful microfoam translated into a beautiful cappuccino for an anonymous customer at LC. Love coffee. Love ballet. Love life.

Belly Button Awareness

Belly button awareness is key to maintaining balance in ballet. In this morning's ballet class, I imagined my belly button being pulled by a thread hanging from the ceiling, then traveling slowly up my spine, past the nape of my neck, all the way through the top of my head. We used this imagery to maintain our balance as we slowly rolled up from a forward cambre on sous-sous (on our toes) back into the upright position. How strange it was to see my belly button hanging above my head, rather like a perverse mistletoe.

In ballet, the line between the imaginary and real, the intangible and tangible, the abstract and concrete is crossed so often that I find myself questioning the relative importance we place on the real, tangible, and concrete. Many concepts like balance are so far above our understanding (ie: difficult to attain) that they are best explored through imagery and visualization of more easily-known concepts like mobilized belly buttons or a docked boat pulling away or moving, tangible energy. Similarly, concepts in physics and math are often only understood through imagery and mappings (to concepts already understood) because they so far exceed the functional limits of human cognizance. It is easy to dismiss the imaginary because of its intangible nature, but the preponderance of imagery and mappings in math, science, literature, dance, and in our very language even just goes to show how heavily we actually rely on it as a tool for understanding the oh-so-important "real world".

Eat Sleep Breathe

Go to ballet.

Sleep in ballet clothes.

Wake up in ballet clothes.

Go back to ballet.

A more pleasing cycle I can hardly think of! Although the Krebs cycle comes pretty close.

Philly has been blessed with the usual amount of thunderstorms this summer. Normally I would have nothing good to say about thunderstorms, but last night, while the thunder clapped and rumbled and shook the skies and rain pounded heavily on the rooftop, I was caught in a bubble of warm yellow and rose-colored light, doing slow grand plies and cambres to the strains of classical piano music. The juxtaposition of this oasis of warmth against the jarring and frightful sounds-- whose violence, however raging, cannot penetrate my ballet sanctuary-- is sublimely beautiful.

Penniless Picasso

"You good?"

"No...I think I'm wicked."

So responded La Colombe's very own Picasso, a penniless artist who's been a patron of my workplace since its inception 16 years ago. He's a fixture now, the old whiskered face framed by long, scraggly gray hair hanging from a balding dome, never seen without his sketch pads cradled beneath his arm. He walked in today, approaching the bar with a lost, bewildered, half-crazed look in his eyes. After a minute, he ordered a granita, which I poured for him, though his entire appearance screamed "homeless". He just stood there with his sketchpads under his right arm and stared at the granita without taking it, as if he both feared it and was shocked by its existence. Which is why I asked.

"Don't worry, we'll take care of it," said another regular patron of LC, who himself comes anywhere from zero to 15 times a day. He was sitting with two other regulars at the table right in front of the bar. They were clearly enjoying the show-- the crazy man's mischief and my display of naivete. Later, my co-worker informed me of the strange penniless man's history and unusual status at the coffeeshop. Everyone at LC is convinced that he is a Picasso waiting to be discovered. His artwork is purported to be incredible, though I have yet to see it. I wonder why they don't display his artwork at the very cafe where he is fervently revered, the one place where he is actually appreciated. Fame may be something that LC's Penniless Picasso will find six feet under.

One of my customers today was a former classmate at Penn, though he was more of an acquaintance, a friend of a friend.

"So, what are you doing here?" he asked.

"What am I doing here? Serving coffee, smiling at customers."

On the surface, this is exactly what I am doing at La Colombe. But in my mind's eye, I see farther and deeper, where the landscape is bigger and more spacious and crosses oceans and unknown territory. I am here, but I am elsewhere. Ooh, I kind of understand our Penniless Picasso now, that look in his eyes.

Tolstoy on War

"On the 12th of June, the forces of Western Europe crossed the frontier, and the war began, that is, an event took place opposed to human reason and all human nature." ~Tolstoy, War & Peace

Is it strange that I found humor in this statement?

At first glance, it is an anti-war statement. At second glance, not so at all, for when are human reason and nature ever the sole dictators of a decision to be made?

And oh, Natasha! The innocent and pure has been blighted. I guess it was inevitable.

I find myself liking Pierre more and more as the book carries on. A strange thing about this book: In real life, I have a general tendency to like a person when I first meet them and then slowly find out their faults and like them a little or a lot less...or even more despite their faults. In War & Peace, however, I began with a general dislike for most, if not all, of the characters, but by the halfway point (page 687), I find that I love most of them. Minus the scoundrels (stupid, stupid Anatole Kuragin).

Something I've Always Wondered

The difference between barista and barrister:

barista: Emphasis on the second syllable; comes from the Italian word for "bartender" and means a person that serves espresso-based coffee drinks; does not require an advanced degree.

barrister: Emphasis on the first syllable; comes from Middle English and in the US, is a less commonly used word for "lawyer"; requires an advanced degree...or you can self-study and pass the bar if you're a genius.

In the UK and Canada, however, the profession of legal adviser and advocate remain split, and so the former is called the solicitor (the one who prepares for trial, and takes legal action on behalf of the client), while the other is called the barrister (the one who speaks at the trial, or in fancier language, "pleads at the bar in the high courts"); the barrister is more of a specialist and is called upon to work on a case by the solicitor.

Cappuccino

Ineffably beautiful morning ballet class, from barre to reverance (the ballet equivalent of saying "from start to finish"). Followed by six hours of making, serving, grinding, and drinking coffee. Can life get any sweeter? Towards the end of my shift, I felt a sudden inclination to say to my co-worker:

"Is it weird that I actually like working here? I really like it."

"Shouldn't everyone like their job?" he replied.

"Yeah..."

"What's your favorite part of the job?"

I pondered the question for a few seconds before deciding that I most enjoyed learning how to make the different types of coffee drinks. Becoming familiar with the different roasts. Learning to make the perfect cup of cappuccino.

During my second shift, I was fortunate enough to work alongside an experienced, long-time employee who had me pull my first shots of espresso, which I used to make my first latte and cappuccino. He taught me a basic design-- the foam separated by arcing lines into three sections. I learned to loosen the brown liquid and use the foam to push it into the desired thin, curved line. My first design was shoddy; my second one was decent!

Of course, there are factors aside from the superficial design that are much more crucial to the actual taste of the cappuccino-- the quality of the steamed milk, the weight of the tamper, the weather outside. A lot of variable elements go into making a simple cup of cappuccino. But then again, I don't think most people would notice these tiny differences, even though they like to pretend to be elite coffee connoisseurs, ordering "wet cappuccinos" and other fancy nonsense.

The customers are kind and/or colorful. There are many who have been coming to La Colombe in Center City regularly for several years-- sometimes over a decade. There are several who treat it like it is their second home and play like they are members of an exclusive club. The employees know their customers inside and out. Above all, one thing is clear: the servers behind the bar are beloved by those they serve, and every day, hour by hour, minute by minute, the tip jar grows steadily fuller and fuller...

At the end of my shift, I made my 3rd cup of cappuccino and proudly showed it to my co-worker before destroying the design with a spoonful of brown sugar and taking a sip. On the way home through Rittenhouse Park, I tried to describe to Sarah the different elements of the morning ballet class that made it so so lovely, but generally failed. For one, I am unable to do justice to Kip's amazing choreography skills; and for another, memory sucks, and sometimes you just gotta be there and accept the fact that often, beautiful hours will fall by the wayside and be forever forgotten. How ephemeral these moments are! And how utterly undependable is human memory.

Ballet fact of the day: In the precipitee step (kick-kick really fast), your feet are supposed to touch the ground. Sometimes, it's hard to tell if Kip is walking or flying.

Energy

Heaven is a beautiful ballet adagio. Earth is bowling a 40. I did both tonight!

The longer I dance ballet, the more I believe that energy is a palpable thing. On the surface, dancing seems to be purely about controlling and manipulating various parts of the physical human body. The part that we don't see, however, is the control and manipulation of energy. Striking a pose and striking a pose with energy could mean the difference between losing and keeping one's balance. As well, the way the dancer chooses to direct his or her energy could mean the difference between a captivating style and a distasteful one. Dancing ballet is as much about containing and releasing at will this invisible energy as it is about moving and positioning the visible body.

The longer I live, the more I believe that energy is a palpable thing. I am most convinced of this truth when I share a deep, private connection with another human being. What has become of me? I speak of Providence, purpose, and now energy. I swear I still have one foot in the real, rational world.

It's true that the province of ballet is in the air, but there's no doubt that it comes from the province of the ground.-- Kip, in critiquing our manner of jumping like marionettes with no solidity in landings. And in fact, to emphasize the point with a demonstration, he did dance like a marionette for us.

Romeo & Juliet

Today, I saw the Romeo & Juliet ballet performed by the Pennsylvania Ballet. Overall, I found the experience boring except for when Romeo and Juliet danced together-- then it was breathtaking. I was surprised by all the character/folk dancing and pantomime involved in this production, elements which I'd read were a major part of 19th century Romantic Era ballets.

Paris' buttocks were gargantuan. Like slabs of concrete dressed in white tights. Attached to these slabs of concrete was a pair of big hunkin' thighs. How was he able to close his fifths with such big hunkin' thighs?

As the story unfolded before my eyes, it suddenly occurred to me that Juliet is a pretty ballsy teenager. It takes balls to take a scary potion that's supposed to bring you an inch away from death. Stupid!-- but ballsy. I wondered how many in the audience had loved with the intensity that Juliet loved, and whether they thought she was stupid or ballsy. During intermission, I browsed the program and found the following dedication from one principal dancer to another, her husband:

My bounty is as boundless as the sea
My love as deep; The more I give to thee,
The more I have, For both are infinite.

He had proposed to her onstage after one of their performances together.

It was a curious experience to be a part of the audience after 9 months of being the performer for an imaginary one. I was now the conscious observer that gave directional meaning to the dancer's movements and poses. She set her arabesques, croises, effaces, and ecartes with respect to me and my fellow audience members. As I'd learned in class, ballet combinations can take on an infinite number of pathways, but logic dictates that only a few of those options will actually work. The observer (the audience member) is a key driver of that logic.

I love this about ballet. On the one hand, it's full of ideals that dancers strive for like the perfect first arabesque, or creating perfect lines and circles. Ideal beauty. On the other hand, it is a heavily observer-dependent art. Without a conscious observer, the movements take on meaning only up to a certain point-- positioning various parts of one's own body in relation to each other-- and past that point, positions cease to be defined. To maintain meaning, the dancer must also position her body with respect to an external viewer separate from herself, who maintains a separate, opposing perspective. In this way, ballet does not exist in a vacuum like Platonic ideals; rather, it is firmly grounded in reality. It is a human experience.

But I must say, it is a lot more fun to do ballet than to watch a ballet. It bothers me that I can't see things up close, like the facial expressions, the veins on the neck, the abnormally arched feet, the sweeping hand. Everything was just so minuscule and that much less impressive as seen from the distant crowd.

Two Sets of Kids

I love teaching. And I think I like my job. Today, I convinced a kid to get on his feet and climb the stairs to his classroom. He is a particularly troubled kid that I've spent all my brief time at the school developing a rapport with, and so this tiny feat meant a lot to me-- that I was able to convince him to get up from his obstinate crouch when no one else could. Later, I passed by him as I was going up those same set of stairs, and he wrapped his arms around me and kissed me on the cheek, saying that he loved me. I was so mentally thrown off by the kiss that I drew my head back in surprise and knocked it against the wall. I am fairly certain that "I love you" was not a phrase that this kid regularly tossed around.

To think that yesterday, I was ready to quit my job. I was suddenly so sick of being at the receiving end of all this bitchy behavior from a bunch of 7-year-olds. Why was this my burden? I asked myself. But later I was reminded of where these kids were coming from, and it was enough to keep me on board for the time being.

Today, after a super-challenging ballet class, which was more like a counting class, Sarah and I sat at Capogiro's until nearly midnight talking about ballet, teaching and work. During a lull in conversation, I heard MGMT's "Kids" playing and the song reminded me my kids in Kurdistan. Suddenly I missed those kids so much. I recalled the way they were so openly affectionate with me, and so happy in general. Then I thought about the faces of the kids I teach now-- mutinous, angry, sullen, and insolent being the base-level expressions of choice for far too many of them. Today, though, I drew a smile from one of the especially insolent faces, and it meant a great deal to me as ephemeral as it was.

I realize this now that I have something to compare it to: My kids in Kurdistan knew how to love and laugh easily, and their hearts were unbelievably pure. My kids in West Philly on the other hand are apparently hardened to feelings like love, their laughter is mean-spirited more often than joyful and childlike, and their hearts are prematurely sullied by the grime of their much less sunny reality. One needn't look very far to find an explanation for the disparity between these two groups of kids. One set grew up in wealthy homes with overbearingly loving parents in the isolation of Erbil, Iraq; while the other set grew up in entirely different socio-economic and cultural circumstances in West Philly. In the first set, it is the parents who suffered by the hands of Saddam, while the kids grew up in relative peace; while in the second set, it is the parents who suffer, and the kids continue to suffer with them. The two sufferings are also of an entirely different, incomparable nature.

An "I love you" from Liya in Kurdistan is an entirely different beast from an "I love you" from K***** in West Philly. Both are equally heartwarming, but one is given freely, while the other is earned. Hugs on the other hand are easily doled out by both sets of kids. I was amazed at how quickly the kids in West Philly started throwing their arms around my waist. Strange for someone like me...when I was young, giving a hug was the biggest fucking deal.

Spectrum of Behaviors

I am learning early on that the kids at my school have the capacity to be very good, but they also have the capacity to be very, very bad. One minute a little boy is giving me the sweetest hug; the next minute, he and another boy are about to pound each other on the playground.

Thinking While Dancing

Adam once told me that for an interview, you should go dressed as the person you want to be. And that I wasn't trying to become a photographer, I was a photographer! And that I had to 'sound like a Russian' when I'm trying to speak Russian phrases. Now, thanks to him, my Russian accent has improved, I go around telling people that I'm a photographer, and I go to interviews in a tutu and toe shoes. Did he turn me into a liar with a guttural laugh and perpetually unemployed by reason of inability to dress in proper office attire? Perhaps...But! On the bright side, I carried this philosophy of pretending to be what I want to become with me into the world of dance, and it has served to solidify shaky holds and straighten bad form on more than one occasion.

The Dark Age continues

I took a class at the Rock School this evening. The teaching at this supposedly reputable dance school was awful. I learned three things from this class:

(1) that it was possible for a dance studio to be too big (so that the instructor spends half her time running to and from the music and cannot focus her attention on the students)

(2) that it was possible for the music during a ballet class to be played too loudly (especially when the instructor turns it on early in order to save herself a walk across the huge room, and then gives out the combinations over the blasting music), and

(3) that I could actually hate ballet.

It depressed me to watch the other students perfunctorily and clumsily carrying out the steps which were too advanced for us; it was an insult to the art. The teacher's own form was utterly uninspiring. Where were the exquisite lines? The hypnotic grace? I could not bear the disappointment any longer, so I left early and trudged home in the foulest of moods. If I were a cow, I would have shot a cud right into the face of anyone who crossed my angry path. Luckily, no one crossed my path...and I was not a cow.  Little did I know that the end of this Dark Age of Symmetry was fast approaching.

The Renaissance

I took a bowl of strawberries up to the rooftop and ate them mournfully. I was mourning for the "tragedy" that was the Rock School experience, and I was mourning for our ballet instructor who was going through real, genuine tragedies. Sarah sat in a picnic chair next to me with a bowl of salad and joined me in mourning and eating. We were a really mournful pair up there under the stars, but at least we were eating healthful foods.

We talked, we ate. We gazed upwards and spotted one of the Dippers. That made me happy. Spotting constellations has a knack for lifting my mood. I thought of my friend Orion, who would be in hibernation until next winter. Eventually, we picked up our bowls and headed back inside. I stopped by my room, checked my email, and squealed. EEE! An email from the Symmetry listserv! Classes were "definitely" on next week! Unbelievable! Etta James crooned from my laptop as we read and re-read the email, unable to believe this sudden turn of events.

What do you think about when you're dancing?

--A question asked by a non-dancer friend of mine, which I passed on to my instructor. Rather than trying to recap our e-dialogue, I'll leave you with direct quotes:

K: When you learn to dance, an intense amount of focus and conscious effort is involved...But one thing interesting about dance is that it is an ultimate expression of a moment; there is no real conscious thought, it is a feeling, it's intuitive and emotional.  So the further that one moves along in dance the more the actual thought process changes.  It becomes less about thinking about each movement consciously than a pure kinesthetic response.

A: ...Now that I think about it, it's a lot like learning a language: in the beginning, you learn all the grammar rules and memorize a lot of vocabulary, but even with all this knowledge about the language, it doesn't imply that you're fluent in it. The fluency comes only once you've been immersed in the language and speaking and thinking in it for quite some time, and at first, this requires a lot of mental exertion and conscious translation from English to whatever language. My Spanish teacher once said that you know you're on the verge of fluency when you have your first dream in that language...I guess because conscious thought has no place in the average dreamer's mind.

Summer Sweat

Though all my days-- no matter how great-- are tinged with sadness as of late, today is a beautiful day filled with Persian verbs past and present, the youthful feelings of Rostov in War & Peace, and a foamy cappuccino from La Colombe.

The evening, by contrast, wiled itself away in tango fashion, only in reverse. I offered to be a leader for this class because there were way too many women as usual. I realized I loved learning how to lead, how to use the connection between my left hand and her spine to "convince" her to carry out an ocho, to use my spine and not the force of my hands to lead the ocho.

Through ballet and tango, I am learning that no matter the dance, the true source of movement and balance is the spine; arms and legs-- though they are the most visible, freely moving features of the human body-- are more often than not auxiliary. Learning to lead and alternatively being used by Andres as a follower during demonstrations gave me a great sense of what is expected by and of both sides. If I were ever to teach tango, I would make everybody learn both the leader and follower parts.

After this great lesson, I came home, stuffed myself with carrots (I think my metabolism is still kicking strong from the race yesterday), then slowly made my way up the stairs. As I approached my room on the third floor, the damp, musty smell of summer grew stronger and stronger, and I welcomed it. It's the smell of freedom, of college, of Korea even.

I am sad because of the sudden vanishing of ballet at Symmetry from my life, and this makes me nostalgic. Though there is still hope, even the tiny possibility that it might never come back leaves me with a constant ache. However, I'm slowly, forcibly coming to terms with this worst-case scenario, and am currently making plans to either go abroad again or start a Master's program this fall.

We shall see where this goes.

Broad Street Run

This morning, I was one of 30,000 people to run the Broad Street Run. However, I can state with certainty that I was the only one to run this 10-mile race with a key attached to my shoelace, and 2 subway tokens and a tampon nestled in my sports bra. One of the tokens was lost somewhere along the route. Throughout the race, I splashed water at my face at every water stop and ran through sprinklers to keep cool from the rising heat and humidity. For the first 7 miles, I felt as if I was running and dodging people just to get to the start of the race. Before I knew it, the race was more than half-over, and I was averaging something like 9.5 minutes/mile. Then, around mile 7, I knew I was slowing down because I started running with the crowd, rather than steadily passing up my neighboring runners.

It was around this time that I had to pull up my Reserves-- a pile of tricks that help to keep me running even though all I want to do is lie down on the pavement or jump in a pool. First, technical advice like "keep your knees up, Angie" or "lean forward, let gravity do the work". Then around mile 9, I had to dig into my Special Reserves: "You're Sydney Bristow, chasing after yet another nemesis! Don't lose him!" "You're at the end of ballet class, and the last thing you want to do is another set of royales, but he says to do it again! Just keep jumping!" And etcetera. Any strange or embarrassing fantasy to keep me going.

Finally, I saw the finish line. The sight of it was enough to push me past whatever I was feeling and just pound it. However, 5 steps before the finish line, an annoying lady got in front of me and was not sprinting so victoriously to the finish. "Get outta my way!" I thought to myself. Unfortunately, she failed to read my thoughts and continued to toddle on across the finish line. Hence, my finish was not as victorious as I had wanted it to be, but overall, it was not a bad race! I'm glad I did it.

Best sign from the crowd said "Run fast Carl! Beat Steve!"on one side, and "Run fast Steve! Beat Carl!" on the flip side.

Race Results: 96.5 minutes and seriously stiff knees. Ouch.

Rare Book Find

When I have money to burn, I will buy this. First edition of Jean Georges Noverre's "Letters on dancing and ballets" in its original French. For now, I will read the free pdf.

No Word

No word from Symmetry for a disconcerting number of days. Life feels empty. It feels like someone died. This morbid feeling crept up on me for the first time as I was doing my plie warm-up this morning. Pathetic...I fell in love with a dance. Can't even cuddle with it.

It's that damned ship's reel! That ginormous antique reel that's embedded into the wall at the new studio, right where the barre is supposed to be! That's what's causing this hold-up. They've been trying to remove it for days!

And days...

and days...

Da Vinci & the Age of Reason

This is just too cool!

I've been taken by a certain season
in the life of mankind called the Age of Reason
When all that was sacred lay
not in catechisms and cathedrals
But in the world around us
And in the bodies we've been born into
Naked
Wrapped in circles and squares
Giving birth to the proportions of temples,
those very cathedrals, and of humbler homes
A microcosm
within a microcosm
within a micrososm
of what makes things tick with clockwork elegance
and ineffable beauty
Now made comprehensible by our liberation
from self-induced minority
A fall from grace implies not a fall from ideals
The pursuit of ideals still runs strong
But they be ideals of numbers, stone and living line
Rather than of Heaven or Hell
Not afterlife but Life:
the Affirmative,
the Here and the Now

Moving Day

Yesterday, Sarah and I took a break from studying at Capogiro's and wandered "nonchalantly" over to the old studio. (In truth, we were so terribly excited about the move and were looking for any opportunity to help out.) We wandered up the stairwell and heard shuffling and shifting sounds coming from the top. Symmetry was moving at last! We popped in, offered our services to the two girls-- Fang and Nancy-- who were working within, and ended up spending the rest of the day helping them to pack up the entire room into boxes and haul them over to the new space.

It was fascinating to find out just how much stuff was actually stored into that seemingly empty, minimalistically-decorated space. Our instructor was more of a pack-rat than I had imagined, though I got the impression that much of what lay in the room had been gifted to him. I couldn't see him going out and buying an ugly garden gnome, for instance. And yet, there it stood, small and hideous. Rummaging through all this stuff felt like exploring a great-great aunt's attic. Only instead of finding say 19th century antique dresses, we found dance photos and paintings, a bamboo lantern and white glass vase, incense, dusty bottles of perrier and other drinks, a red microwave I never noticed before, mugs and pots- mostly empty but one inexplicably filled with a white powder, and another with a tennis ball inside, an electric guitar, the ugly gnome, old flyers, bundles of used-up class cards, tools, and my personal favorite, a trove of cleaning supplies hidden in an alcove in the dressing room.

"Woah," I said to myself when I pulled aside the thin, pastel-floral fabric veiling the alcove and discovered the profusion of cleaning supplies behind it. He had a rather robust interest in cleanliness, I thought. I boxed up the smaller material, then ripped apart the pink curtains that covered the dressing room partition he'd built with his father (twice over because it had come out crooked the first time, and they couldn't find a crooked door to go with it). Through the newly-created openings, I passed the heftier equipment through to the other girls-- poles, mops, a jet pack vacuum, a regular vacuum, and so on. I learned that he had inherited a lot of the supplies from his father who'd been in the cleaning business. In the earlier spectrum of his life, he'd been a military photographer and had met his wife while on duty abroad.

As Fang told us a little more about his parents, I felt a twinge of regret at never having met them myself. Later though, as I walked into the foyer leading to the new dance studio, I found a small button-style picture of his parents hanging from the handle of one of the black-laquer Korean-style cabinets, along with two tiny, careworn teddy bears. I studied this picture and saw the familiar structure of our teacher's face in his father's, and the same smile. The ears though, he had inherited from his mother I think, for his father had ears of an imposing size.

At the new studio, after the last boxes had been hauled up the mountainous staircase, we set up only the equipment necessary to hold class: his desk, the barres, and the music. I crouched in the corner fiddling with the cords until at last, I pushed the power and play buttons and set the CD spinning. Violin voices resonated throughout the room, mingling with the new-building smell and the gold light emanating from small, rotatable spotlights suspended from the ceiling. Sarah and I consecrated the new space with a plie warm-up, facing each other like mirror images. Soon after, we turned off the music and the lights and headed home, full of anticipation for our first session in the new space.

Sacrilege!

Sarah: I forget, is this an ankle bracelet?

Me: Um, no those are prayer beads.

Playing With Dirt

Yesterday, I dug my hands in good old dirt for the first time since childhood as far as I can remember. When was the last time I potted a plant? Had I ever potted a plant before? I couldn't recall, but as I sat on my haunches like a kimchi lady outside the photo studio where I work, using my bare hands to scoop out old dirt and replace it with the new soil from a pot of ivies and some pink flowers, I felt incredibly happy. This is what humans were meant to do-- work outside, work with the earth, use our bodies-- not sit in offices all day.

"I know you didn't go to college to do this type of work..." my boss said apologetically.

Stop right there, Faith! This is exactly the sort of thing I love to do. I spent an hour or more sweeping out the shattered glass, dead leaves and dirt from her back lot. Together we lined up all the trash we found there: garbage cans full of the leaves, dirt, and glass; a random bucket of sticks and old frames holding antique-looking artwork; a giant piece of glass; and a giant window frame with shards of glass still lining the inside rim of it. We propped a piece of dirt-clogged cardboard within this frame, and stood back, admiring our work.

"It's like art," I said, giggling. "Very Avant-garde." I wanted to take a photo of it, but resisted going inside and retrieving my camera. Instead, I moved on to gardening. I learned more about gardening that day than I had in the past nearly-26 years. The damp dirt underneath the dry surface dirt felt soft-- not quite like flour, but just as nice-- and looked so like crushed oreos that I felt mildly tempted to scoop some right into my mouth. Successfully resisting this strange urge, I immediately thought of the book, "100 Years of Solitude", because there was a girl in that story who only ate dirt. Oh Magical Realism. Other random thoughts floated around in my head as I crouched in the warm sunshine playing with dirt.

Leading An Anti-Emersonian Life

It's been awhile since I've thought about God (or whatever "higher being"). I've become so immersed in worldly activities that He's become a non-entity for me. Is this a good thing, a bad thing or no thing? The most spiritual I've felt in the past few months has been when I'm doing plies at the barre. It's been awhile since I've immersed myself in geography that is overwhelming in both size and beauty, like endless mountains, oceans, forests, or canyons. Instead, I've been caught up in noticing the miniscule, human-scale elements of beauty. I need to go camping.

Killer Calves

I own a pair of denim capris that I've worn three times so far since the sun came back. Each of those times, I've gotten a comment about my killer calves, which apparently "bulge" out of the pant legs when I'm standing on tippy-toes at the gelato house counter, or dancing tango, or even just walking. My killer calves have become the talk of the town! The third time, I was walking home in the dark with Sarah, when a biker rode up behind us exclaiming, "What did you do to get those killer calves?!" I turned around and stared because I thought she said something about killing cops.

To answer the biker's question, it's in the jeans. I mean genes. My dad has killer calves, and they ended up on my legs. Aside from nature, these sons of guns have been nurtured: I've spent many hours for the past 5 months balancing on my toes. My killer calves will only get more killer (killest?) since I've begun training for the Broad Street Run. By the end of this month, my killer calves will probably get stopped at the airport security checkpoints because they'll be considered a weapon.

Eating Flowers

Homecooked Indian food is as much a treat for the nose as it is for the tongue. Cumin, cinnamon, cardomom, coriander and countless other spices suffuse your olfactory senses with each bite, like biting into a bouquet of ultra-exotic flowers (containing chunks of chicken).

Tango Marathon

On Saturday, Sarah and I completed this tango-rrific week with a twelve-hour tango marathon at our Fishtown studio. Being the studio's unofficial in-house photographer, I spent most of the time with my camera slung around my neck and my eye behind the viewfinder, trying to find innovative tango pictures to take. One would think that this would get increasingly difficult-- I mean, how many different angles of couples wrapped in each others arms and doing boleos can one find? As I found out though, it's amazing the different angles, lights and moments one can encounter in a given tango event, and even in this one large, rectangular space that houses the Philadelphia Argentine Tango School.

The studio is the first floor of a three-story building standing outlandishly tall in a flat, open space, just as rectangular and nondescript as all the other buildings in Fishtown. To its left is a large yard of sorts-- a flat, unkempt grassy area randomly scattered with the most absurd objects: An abandoned truck streaked with pepto-pink paint in a camouflage pattern, a giant, red icosahedron-like object (never actually counted how many sides it has) with white numbers painted on each surface, a sign, and a couple bare, scraggly trees, utterly dwarfed by the adjacent building. Behind these objects, the blue sky stretches like a misplaced backdrop.

Fishtown appears to be a hair away from being deemed an Abandoned Town. At first, second, and third glance, a passer-by would assume that nothing much happens here. As Sarah and I followed the river painted on the whitewashed wall to the studio, we passed by a large fenced-in yard of sorts, overgrown with weeds and dead grass. Low crumbling brick walls formed the far border of the yard. A spare tire sat idlely in the center, sunk into the grass. It's so ghetto that I could only compare it to a city in a war-torn nation.

"I feel like I'm in Erbil," I commented to Sarah. We giggled.

"Is it...the run-down walls...or the random tire...or..."

In fact, it's shady, ghetto and rundown...but it's not quite abandoned. The tango studio is there now, and there are a couple nice cafes and art galleries. One only has to look beyond the forlorn exterior of the nondescript building that stands like a giant stone block on 5th street to see that in fact, a chunk of the soul of Argentina had broken off and landed itself haphazardly in the middle of this ugly town just outside of Philly central. Even before the evening milonga, workshops were taking place since 2pm, during which the guest instructors taught us how to insert boleos in all the wrong places and how to hang from your partner's arm and spin in circles until you had to center your hand between your eyes to re-steady yourself.

I emerged from the studio in the late afternoon for a break before the last workshop, and was struck by a change in appearance of the Field of Absurd Objects (FAO) next door. Under the late afternoon light, the Objects sparkled and glinted gold, and in this new light, the FAO actually looked beautiful in its absurdity. I found myself thinking that light can transform the mundane into the most extraordinary sight-- how true this was in reality as much as in photographs.

After a snooze at the corner cafe, and a few pages of Tolstoy read aloud in a British accent-- because I can't do a Russian one-- Sarah and I returned to the studio for the musicality workshop and at last, the milonga. As the dance commenced, I alternated between my camera and various dance partners, but eventually, I lost myself completely behind the viewfinder and witnessed some really beautiful tango moments from there. The sources of light were 5 or 6 small spotlights set along the walls on the dance floor and aimed toward the ceiling, a bright lamp in the corner housing the jazz quartet, a few candles along the windowsill, and a cheap, red-orange disco-globe near the entrance.

These various light sources created the most extraordinary effects within this room. An alien green light shone on the walls near the entrance, fantastically complementing the red light from the disco-globe, and the spotlights aimed at the ceiling created larger-than-life shadows of the jazz quartet along the wall opposite the mirrored one. As the room became packed with couples whirling around to tango music, the high ceiling came to life with their shadows, continually playing and morphing into each other for the entire night. The play of shadows was utterly mesmerizing.

Below the shadow theater, men and women danced in close embrace, in more-or-less counter-clockwise motion “in the line of dance“. The women are especially lovely to observe for the creativity they put into their outfits, their make-up, hairdos, and sparkly heels. One girl donned a dress that matched the entire room, including all the different colored lights and the paintings hanging from the walls. It was a beautiful moment when she passed by the blue-and-green painting with the far wall near the entrance glowing pinkish-red behind her.

 As an aside, sometimes I find it unbelievable that so many gorgeous women gather in this room, and the young men who prefer clubs and bars have no idea that tango is the place to go for the classier sort of ladies. It seems to me that tango attracts three kinds of people:

-the older crowd, men and women;

-the younger, nerdier men

-the younger women seeking elegance, romance, and an excuse to play dress-up every week.

In truth, tango attracts some really strange people, I have found. But maybe humanity in general is strange and off-balance, and I never noticed this until I had to dance with them in an intimate embrace and smell their sweat and breath.

I stood in a corner of the room with my eye to my camera, watching couple after couple passing through my viewfinder-- an arm, a back, a face, clasped hands-- over and over these body parts weaved in and out of my sight. One couple lingered in my corner for a while. The girl's large, expressive doll eyes peered over her partner's shoulder, her thick lashes casting shadows around her eyes.

Eventually, they moved on, passing out of my viewfinder.

At midnight, Javier and Kara, the guest instructors performed three numbers for us. Their style appeared to me to be more traditional-- and much more complex according to Meredith. The last one, though was performed to a more poppy song, and I watched transfixed as Kara's plum-colored skirt billowed in and out of my viewfinder, visually matching the lyrical mood of the song. Their strength lay in their hands-- both had strong, sturdy-looking hands, and placed them firmly and deliberately wherever they needed to go, with fingers splayed out and full of energy. Kara's pale hands glowed almost translucently against Javier's dark brown jacket, her nails painted to match her jet-black hair. 

Towards the end of the night, I wandered to the entrance and saw a baby carrier chillin on the floor next to the check-in table where Carolyn sat awaiting new arrivals. Inside was the tiny tango baby I had seen before in the studio, buried in his blankets and fast asleep as always. Itsuki and I cooed over the adorable boy until he awoke. If eyes said anything about the person, this baby boy would grow up to be a remarkable human being. Such serious, solemn eyes I had never seen on such a tiny face. He stared up at us without crying, only curious and alert, then delighted as we tickled its feet and played that ever-engrossing game called “Peek-a-boo”. Babies laugh so easily. They will laugh just by seeing you laugh. They laugh without even knowing why. Of course, adults may do the same.

Prasad, the tango baby stared out into the dance floor as his mother held him in her arms. Another woman came over and embraced his mother, sandwiching the baby as he continued to stare out with his large, solemn eyes. Eventually, he was carried over to the check-in table so that his mother and father could change him.