2519  Tango etiquette, newbies, myself, disgust, etc., etc., etc.

Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2004 13:43:41 -0700
From: Carlos Lima <amilsolrac@YAHOO.COM>
Subject: Tango etiquette, newbies, myself, disgust, etc., etc., etc.

Yes, yes, yes, but tango itself is beautiful. Does it not happen often enough
to you? Everything falls in place: a tango, a river of people and feeling, a
smile, a miracle of movement ... and you are in it, it could not happen
without you. For that magic minute, or hour, nothing else matters: neither
your loves nor your hates, nor your lingering ambitions, or growing
indifference.

World War I was raging, and the first international tango craze had recently
subsided. A certain Fernando, in "Come sit with me Lidia by the riverside"
said (but I would not have listened even if I were alive then):

> Without loves or hates or passions that raise voices
> or envies that make one s eyes roam too much
> or cares for if it had them the river would still run
> and it would still reach the sea.

(He does not mention pettiness, or cant, this is as far from moraleja as it
gets.)

Perhaps it will all end one day soon. Do not think "I do not deserve it". Do
you deserve anything being the way it is? I will still have the rest of my
life, and I will still have all other little devilish ways of warding off
disgusting thoughts about my world and my kind, and all the tiresome
obligations they impose upon me without my permission. Oh, I can hear you
now, I know you so well! "They will say that I do not understand, that I am
shallow, a runaway from reality, and all that is important." Well, do what
you can, and can think of, and to yourself be true. If you help anything
change ... in yourself or around you ... and it may very well be for the
worse, mind you ... it will be because you do what you believe, and believe
what you do. Meanwhile the old sayings go on holding their trite truth:
"Seize the day"; "Better to light a candle than to curse darkness"; and one
more, a fairly new one, by some anonymous tango master. "Tango dancing is a
frivolous pastime". Remember it, because that is what makes tango so
important to you.

@ bientot,

PS - I am only talking to myself.