Zydeco Nights.

ooh la laa!

what a fun, fun time. so much better than double-entry bookkeeping.

It's 1 beer and 2 wines later. It's hot, and it's sweaty, and it's out of breath, and it's very well held and danced. It's happy.

I just went to Zydeco night. It has been awhile, but Etouffe and thinking about you got me up and going. Step, touch, quick-quick, Step, touch, quick-quick.

Scott, who really did seem to enjoy dancing with me, couldn't quite get that rhythm, because he's one of the swing dancers. He kept putting the "one" in a different place, so I had to do the womanly thing and follow him. Ken, who is notorious for usually having to navigate a dance floor occupied by at least two, if not more, of his former lovers, has a very insistent knee. He definitely knows how to Zydeco.

I think that's a really interesting aspect of dancing - the lead/follow arrangement. I'm part of a generation that dissed the value of that too quickly. There's a lot to be gained by learning how to follow. You learn a LOT about leading by following. You learn what a leader should do, because you learn what makes it easy to follow. If the leader does something that's easy to follow, and it's fun, and it gets you through the song gracefully, without accident, to the end - with maybe even an artful fluorish or two painted in - then that seems like a good thing for a leader to do.

I wish more politicians would take dance lessons.

You mention Zydeco in some of your Frenzy letters. Do you really dance Zydeco? I like it. I like how strong a partner gets to be. One of the teachers tonight reminded us of the importance of shifting weight into the steps when dancing Zydeco - something that's opposite of swing, where your center of gravity stays pretty much in one primary alignment.

By shifting weight fully into your steps, it becomes a much more down-to-the-ground stance. Then the man can push his weight strongly toward the woman and, when both peoples' centers are in their pelvis (what's the plural of pelvis? pelvii? That just doesn't sound very good...) and thighs, and their bodies are moving fully into the steps, she can reciprocate with just the right amount of permission and resistance, and they find a place that really fits the name "groove".

I'm not a great dancer, but I do like it.

Driving back here tonight I was thinking some more about you. I couldn't wait to get home and start writing, and this has rarely happened to me before. I think that it may be due to meeting you, in part.

Since you're very quiet, and don't do a lot of connecting, I have to play it somewhat safe (remember, I said I was practicing non-projection, outside of the projection I craft as an art form, and don't slip into thinking that it's truly representative of *you*) and I have to assume that your interest in me comes nowhere near to matching my interest in you.

I can temper that well with the words you *did* share - "I hope you didn't equate my silence with indifference. That would be entirely incorrect. I am anything but indifferent with regard to you." I can take you at your word, which I will. I can believe you, which I do. Those are choices - they would be choices if I didn't believe you, and I'm at a stage of my life where, given the choice, I choose what I want.

Yes, there's a part of me that does hold back, and watches, and waits - somewhat reserved. "Wait and See," you say. Part of me does. But there's another piece of me that I love so dearly that recognizes juice when she feels it.

How can I put into words how hard it has been to keep this place in me alive? Lesson after lesson says that this intensity of passion only has a corresponding deep note of pain.

"Fools run in where wise men never go,
but wise men never fall in love
so how are they to know
when we met, I felt my life begin
So open up your heart
and let this fool rush in..." J. Mercer/R. Bloom 1940

But I see good things in my act of writing, and my reaching out, and so I don't begrudge a minute of it. Just imagining you in my life, even if only peripherally, has given me a lift that I very much need. Dancing with you that night, and kissing you in that soft and so gentle way, made me feel that there was a "beyond" from here. Writing to you keeps me feeling that way.

And one of the main and tangible benefits I see to this writing is my act of carving out time. I have been a very busy person. I have been preoccupied with external things. I would like that to change. I'm not sure how that can be when I'm in such a time of transition, and the shifting externals are so great in number. Their saving grace is their vagueness of direction.

And yet, several times I day I pause and reflect. I write to you. I share what I'm thinking and feeling, as if you were here. I take the time, and I realize that someday - by taking the time, now - I will have a life that has a space firmly carved out for someone. And, with the risks I take with you, I will have made room for someone, for how can I share my life if I haven't yet made room?

*glow*

Another lovely, thought-filled, work-filled, music-filled day.

Wednesdays are always my Little Breather days. And Saturdays. The rest of this time its pretty much on, on, on. But I keep these little holes in my week, and spend a little time in the cosmic flotation tank of my mind.

It's all so good.

Wish you were here.

-- Anonymous, October 11, 2001