CONFIDENCES

He sits down at the table and writes
“with this poem you won’t take power” he says
“with these verses you won’t make the Revolution” he says
“nor with thousands of verses will you make the Revolution” he says

What’s more: those verses won’t make
peons teachers woodcutters live better
eat better or him himself eat live better
nor will they make a girl fall in love with him

they won’t earn him money
they won’t get him into movies free
he can’t buy clothes with them
or trade them for wine or tobacco

no scarves no parrots no boats
no bulls no umbrellas can he get for them
they will not keep him dry in the rain
nor get him grace or forgiveness

“with this poem you won’t take power” he says
“with these verses you won’t make the Revolution” he says
“nor with thousands of verses will you make the Revolution” he says
He sits down at the table and writes

Juan Gelman,
Unthinkable Tenderness, Selected Poems.

Tango Gifts!

I had a lovely Christmas gift last week. My true gift was in what she told me as she gave me her gift-wrapped present. She said "This is for you; you make me feel the most beautiful dancer!" That was an incredibly touching comment. It let me know that I had a part in making someone feel so very special.

The true pleasure of dancing is about how we feel and make others feel. I do believe that this matters much more than how we look when we dance on any Milonga floor.

The beauty of the dance is not in the high kicks, the jumps or the death-drops or however many other well or badly executed acrobatics of "Aerial Moves". Those may easily impress many who don't know much about true expressions of performing arts - including dancing tango but like any good song it is not the numbers present in the orchestra but the melody itself that makes or breaks the pleasure of any music.

Tango is about expressions and feelings, both inside and out. Carols Gavito used to say: "It is not how many complicated steps we take to dance a tango but how we express what we feel with every step in a tango".

I took her gift and thanked her. We had soon joined to dance again some more. The pleasure of knowing how beautiful she felt gave me the feelings of having equally the best of times.

MilongaCat
The only cat who loves you back!

Contantly

My skin stretches further and further. I can't ever remember my skin being this thin. I am fearful; I watch my pulse, it rises and falls, and it is like the rhythms and sounds that one hears and sees on the surface of a hot spring lake. With every beat, the question never leaves me alone: " Would my skin burst now, this time?"

"Should I wish it to stop? " - I know I can - if only I command it, but I don't, and I enjoy the dizziness of fear which it installs with every pulsating beat. I may be ripped apart; my skin senses the slippery oxygen molecules bouncing off as they slide and skip off me.

My eyes are working hard, they burn but try and follow the magnetic fields that have now formed and exist around me and my body. The fields, they twist and turn like long ropes in unison evolving and hugging whatever they feel attracted to. I find myself in greatest affinity with the large speakers - in both corners of the room. They pull me and hold me at an equidistant but this alters with those melodic frequencies and waves, "Would I be ripped apart this way? Should I command it to stop?"

"I should take charge" I hear my mind!

The feverish pulsating hot blue veins burn my skin from inside. "What is it that I need and want? What is it that I am waiting for?"

The glass broke into millions of pieces as it fell to its death, on its side, the red wine stains spilled out everywhere on the worn out carpet and against the cream colloured wall. It is "Oxon Red", the colour of freshly cut wound, blood. The sharp sound of the glass breaking when it fell makes no indentation on the volume of the music that is being played, and the magnetic fields are totally unaware that parts of the south facing walls are now stained with some inexpensive red wine.

It was at that very precise moment - in that very careless moment, that these two Worlds swapped places. The one from within and the one from without. I now find myself continue this existence in the one that I am yet to come to know.

I never fear the unknown; it is what that I do know that constantly frightens me .

MilongaCat
The only cat who loves you back!