Crossing the border is without spectacle. Crossing Ontario along highway 17 is uneventful. I am threading the needle of my year's circle. I start to tie up loose ends.
Writing podcasts cycle through full seasons of third person viewpoints, humor as sub-genre, hiring an editor, and tension building. I scribble notes in a small notebook while in cruise control along the long, sparsely trafficked road. I stop to sleep, huddled between semi-trucks in visitor center parking areas, and once in cities, Walmart lots. I trade the hum of mosquitoes and the wild birds chirping into my morning awareness for earplugs against the rumble of sirens and trains.
I am no tourist here, experience no grand adventures, learn no history. In order to fit myself into the schedules of Montreal friends, I move methodically through a landscape that holds no pull for me.
I listen not only to the tools of writing, but to the musings within my thoughts and heart.
I understand. How does one go back to a life not totally real anymore? I don't know how I will fit in either.
"I'll be back in southern Vermont next week," I write back. "I'll be in touch. I will need you too."
My needle, like each day lived, will need to stitch slowly to close the gap. Like a slow drag of my tango heel along the sheen of a wooden floor, I will savor the drag of the needle through the fabric of another year of my life.
I don't really know what it is I want from life right now. I cling to Rilke's plea to "live the questions" since that is all we have. I let them hover around me like an aura of light. My Capricornian desire to reach goals has no place hiding within the question list—I can only allow myself to exist in the paradoxes. I have straddled "real'" life back "home" in Vermont—making decisions about the house, paying the bills needing to be paid, trusting my property manager to hold the terra firm—and my "real" life moving from place to place, person to person, word to word, awe to awe. I dance from past to present to future daily through the writing of this blog or poems. My tapestry stitching has become a lacy filigree holding all the layers of connective life tissue—the deeply held friendships grounding my heart, all the way to fleeting conversations within surprising and serendipitous experiences. At no time do I feel their weight, but, instead, their lightness stirring up currents under my wings.
What is real now? And if we can indeed create our reality, change it, move it, reinvent it, then what reality is it that I want?
1.
My small piece of notebook paper follows the top arc of my steering wheel between my two thumbs. On it are the directions to the home of my first Quebec friend I plan to visit in the city. We met on the road, two summers ago, on a work exchange in North Carolina. This is how it works—this is how the bond continues. We share a specific stitch in time and place and we will always have that.
On my note are highway numbers and exit streets—rues and boulevards. Orange construction cones and signs in French line the ramps and exits and bridges within the city web of traffic moving slowly. Those familiar zip between lanes as I scan the signs for words that match what is on the paper now getting sweaty under my fingers. I am not comfortable driving in cities. Back home along the small town roads, three passing cars means some event has just gotten out and this is the rush of exit.
I find the 15/20 and hug the middle lane since I have no idea whether my exit will be on the left or right. The 20 divides from the 15 and bears around to the left. Signs unclear, and French words not matching my paper, I don't dare exit either way. I am funneled over a bridge and start to think about getting off and going back to a point where I can try again to understand the signs. But, then, there it is: a large orange sign for exit 62 for Verdun, the section of Montreal that is my destination. Now the roads are familiar, and I remember my time here just a year ago when my Vietnam travel friend and I had crossed Vermont paths like star crossed lovers.
"I'm thinking about Montreal soon," she had said. "So am I," I had replied. I lined up a stay for us for a few days here in Verdun, and we shared a moment of road adventure.
I find my destination street, and M. and I ground our past with memories of a farm, dogs, cats, food, and conversation. We close our eyes to swim in the pond, make carrot juice, and build forms for cement pilings. We will never lose those moments of bonding.
"I was hoping for Tom to come from North Carolina for a visit this summer, but I am so busy with my studies and internship," she tells me, her French accent drawing out each English word. The three of us together here in the city would have been fun. Another time perhaps. And if not, we will always have our past.
But we also have the present in our friendship. Life builds upon itself and she and I both are no longer who we were in North Carolina. Re-inventing herself, she claims a grander purpose for humanitarian work still to unfold. She hopes to work with the homeless, maybe the elderly, as a nurse. Possibly a nurse that works with a mobile clinic since many homeless can't or won't get themselves to a doctor for care. Noble heart, my friend! I am blessed to know those with beautiful hearts. And my own re-invention ever slowly and gently transitions to what is still to unfold for me.
"Sometimes, I feel frustrated and want to quit," she tells me.
"When you do, call me up on the phone," I tell her. "I'll remind you that your heart will be greatly needed."
2.
"I am here to visit with my friends, write, and dance Tango," I say in my defense of not wanting to do touristy things. I'm stitching gaps. I catch up on writings—blog, poetry to submit this summer, and organizational plans for once I get back to Vermont when I can spread out, make a discipline, and continue with the book manuscript. But here in the city, Tango abounds. Carpe diem.
According to the Montreal Tango calendar, I can dance every day with at least four different choices each day of where to dance. This Sunday has seven options. M. texts her friend J. — "Since you dance Tango, where are the good dances this weekend so I will advise Gail?"
I start with Friday night at the MonTango studio on Rue Sherbrooke Ouest where I scan for J. to match the photo I was shown. I feel as if I am coming out in society as I am introduced to several dancers in quick succession. I have great confidence in my dancing prowess, so any new community invites me to discover their idiosyncrasies in style. Open or close embrace? Pattern vocabulary? Social attitudes?
As usual, I remain standing, perky, slightly moving to the music, and patient—just a matter of time. I wait out two tandas, and then I am asked. With a crowded floor, movement is concise and slow along the circumference of the studio.
"Bon soir," I say to each new partner. My accent must be convincing among the syllables hovering in the air, and my partners assume I am French. Now, technically, Quebec is in my maternal lineage, in my blood. M. had told me earlier that she always appreciates the language efforts of a city visitor, and that I should use any French I can. But, as each partner rattles off a question quickly in French, I have to own my limitations and ask for English. And then, we can get down to dancing. Always, after a long hiatus off the floor, my heels sigh in response to finding their voice again. Each set of dances ends with a peck on one cheek, then the other. They end with smiles and many a "merci".
"Where did you learn to dance?" I am asked many times. Unlike a larger city with so many dancing options, I offer up my small, but dedicated, Brattleboro community with its once a week Practica and once a month Milonga.
"Oh, dear. One can hardly have the consistency to learn this dance with such limitations," my partners say. "You are a lovely dancer. This says a lot for your community."
"Merci," I say again and again. But, really, Tango, like everything else in my life, is built along the edges of rebellion. I don't take it too seriously (anymore). It is not life itself, but only one facet of creative expression. The dance is no longer about "perfection" in each move, each following of my leader, but my nudge, my invitation, to what can be created in the moment for two dancers in response to the music. Some leaders create with me, some have their agenda for choreography. It's taken me twenty years to come to this place—it matters not what someone else thinks of my dancing. I am in no competition, in relationship with other dancers, or even within my own desire for fluidity.
"You are much fun to dance with, merci," several partners have said. This is the ultimate goal, the present celebration of life according to dance—to find the laughter hiding within each leg extension and twisting ocho—to find the joyous intersection of nonverbal communication. When it can happen, fireworks flair around each leg wrap, each boleo. And if not, then there is the hope that the next tanda, the next partner will smile with me.
Not that far from my other Montreal friend E., I find my way over to Parc Jarry on Rue Sherbrooke and ease the truck into a parking slot. Across from the park and up a flight of stairs is the air conditioned dance floor of Tango Social Club. Tables, comfy lounge chairs and couches wrap the room and I sit to change my walking shoes into my heels.
I hope enough dancers arrive early—between 9:30 and 10:00 p.m.—since I know I won't make it to the end at 3:00 a.m. Slowly, dancers arrive, and two dancing couples turns to four, then ten.
With cooler air weaving its way through the embellished steps of shoe and heel, leg and attitude wilting will be kept at bay. I wait patiently in my red arm chair close to the entrance, bar, food table, and coat room. Once asked for a tanda, I trust that the evening will be in my favor with enough partners to satisfy before I hear the call of my pumpkin coach, the morphing of heel to shoe, and my dress drooping damp with sweat.
As usual, I bring to any new milonga where I am not known, low expectations. And after my first tanda, lovely in its playfulness against the backdrop of a punctuated bandoneon, I remind myself that if I left now, I would feel complete. As the floor fills up, those in this "social club" reach their cheek kisses across the room, across those sitting at tables and on couches. This is "their" club that I have infiltrated, and so I will accept the evening's fate. Between 10:00 and 1:00, I dance, and I sit and wait, I dance, and I stand and wait.
"Ah, you have made your way here," says Raphael, with whom I danced the night before. "Come, let's dance. You won't know many people here."
I am relieved to have one person who knows me, and I know he will ask me again for another tanda some other time this evening. People need to see me dance, and Raphael will show me off.
Tango is a dance of sensual expression—a heart expression spreading out of leg and hip. Raphael holds me in close embrace, my left arm draped across his upper back, my left cheek against his. Our heights work well this way. His right hand pulls me close, allows me a solid frame from which to feel his lead, and from which he can feel my responses.
"Oh, so lovely!" He whispers into my right ear as the tanda finishes. "So lovely. You are such a teenager."
Raphael said this first to me the night before at Mon Tango, and he says it again. It makes no sense, of course.
"Ah, you are very kind. Merci," I say. "But, I certainly am no longer a teenager. Much older than that—60."
"No," he responds, "let me look at you. I thought you are about forty, maybe. What month were you born?"
"January," I say. "Capricorn."
"Of course, Capricorn. It is said, women of that month get better with age. Very lovely," he says as he takes me all in.
Now, tango is that kind of sensual dance. As time moves along my dance continuum, I ramp up my standards on the floor. Not in the realm of "perfection" and "technique", but in sensual attitude. These are now my tango truths:
1. If the lead is clear, I will have no choice but to follow it.
2. It is the responsibility of my leader to make love to me for the duration of the tanda.
3. It is my responsibility to be present in the lovemaking process and make
my leader look like the best lover ever.
4. The background music informs the lovemaking, and needs to be part of the equation.
5. Not all leaders know how to make love to a woman.
But, Raphael does. In his embrace, I feel like the most beautiful dancer ever.
"Ah, yes, so lovely. So, lovely!" He whispers again in my right ear, and walks me back to the lounge chairs.
In the summer, in the city, in weather fair, or not but undercover, those who wait the day, gather. They band at clothed tables, pour wine into glasses. They let wisps of sun rays filter over them, breezes flow around them.
At Parc Saint-Viateur, just up near Avenue du Parc not far from my friend E., behind the stucco arches of the pavilion centered on the grass island held close by canal water, Argentina street dance blossoms. To avoid treasured soles grinding asphalt grit, organizers lay down thin plywood sheets and tape the seams, to let a shoe fluidly drag.
But, tape lifts from the rippled sheets, catches a spike of a shoe, pulls on each carefully placed step.
"Why does he insist on back ochos along this seam?" I silently muse about my partner. My trained "neat feet" close to the floor does not work here along the seam holding all of us dancers to a different version of ourselves. Couples crowd into sheet-middles where the ocho and molinete can survive in tact. But we must share, so we must move back across sticky grid lines.
Streetlight beams reflect in the canals, dark, murky and still against the drumbeats of raindrops, and lose themselves in the remembered songs of Gardel, Pugliesi, and di Carlo. Quickly, tables and chairs, wine bottles and shoe bags are lifted up the steps and into the sidelines of the pavilion. We gather now, dry, for each last intoxicating sip of lingering beats along those seams taping us all together in the love of dance.
5. At Parc Notre-Dame de Grace, the MonTango organizers haul over a sound system to broadcast new and old favorites for dancing on the challenging concrete tiles. Experienced dancers move slow, remember the drag of the ocho for their partners. No one dances their best, but with cool evening air descending through the afternoon's humidity, we dance for the love of dancing outside. Consistency over several days has allowed me reconnected embraces with at least a few leaders, and I am held in safety against a turn of an ankle, or the catch of a heel in a tile seam. It is my goodbye to this city where a little bit of everything exists. |