Prompt 27: A Picture of You Last Year and Now and How You Have Changed Since Then

This picture is of me and Phish on Valentine's Day last year at blues.

That pictures is of me and Brock at graduation.  We managed to run into each other both days!

Obviously, the biggest change is that I am graduated.  I am not as skinny as I was then.  I don't go dancing quite as much.  My hair is longer.  That's about all I've got...

Prompt 3: My Idea of the Perfect First Date...

I suppose I should link to this blog post on my tinder profile...

Let's see...what would be my perfect first date.  Aside from April 25...

Ok, so, to begin with, let's be honest, the perfect date must obviously start with the perfect guy.  A high-seas adventure in piracy can't save a night with a guy you just aren't in to.  Conversely, getting arrested by a Honduran drug cartel could be the best night of your life if you have the right partner in crime in the cell with you.  Strangely, both of those scenarios involve crime...

That being said, this is the best I can do without a specific guy in mind:

First, all major activities of the night would be disclosed in advance.  Surprises are well and good, but elephant rides and swing dances require very different clothing and I am very big on dressing for the occasion.  The only time this rule is negated is if you are Logan Huntzberger and can simply supply ballgowns  etc, in correct sizes, as needed.

Second, and this is especially important since it is the first date, the guy may strive to take me out of my comfort zone if he's big into that, but I have a comfort zone of out of comfort zone and he best not take me out of that.  Which is to say, rollercoasters: ok.  Haunted houses/horror films: not ok.  Awkward and absurd social interactions with strangers: ok.  Sports: not ok.  That last one is entirely to preserve my dignity and nothing he says or does will change my hatred of him if he tries to force me against my will.  He can deal with it.

But enough of what shouldn't be done.

Ok, I'm imagining the best night I can...and I think it begins with him picking me up and taking me over to his place where we would cook dinner together.  As this is a fantasy, we're going to make him a non-college student without roommates and with a decent, taken care of place.  Cooking together (I have no patience for sitting awkwardly whilst he cooks) will give us something to talk about to break the ice and by the time we sit down to eat we are comfortable with each other.  If we're trying something new and exciting I want it to be new and exciting to him to.  I don't want him to be doing that patronizing "let me share my world wisdom with you" thing.  If we both hate it he doesn't get embarrassed, he just laughs with me and we go get fast food or something.

After that we could go see a movie if there is anything good showing.  This is important not for the sake of the movie, but because after the movie we go get ice cream for dessert and talk about it.  And I mean really talk about it.  He never tells me that I'm over thinking things or that it's just a movie and I should just enjoy it.  Nor does he sit there with no opinions of his own, nodding dumbly while I talk.  He listens to me and he also shares his own ideas.  We have an actual conversation.

Now, since this is the perfect date, not just a pretty good date, the evening doesn't end here.  Instead, after our ice cream and conversation, we finally go blues dancing.  This gives us both the opportunity for some physical connection, but also a bit of a respite as we mingle with everyone else at the dance.  Blues is nice because I am more and differently at ease there than anywhere else.  And since I'm fantasizing, the two of us will have a really great dance connection.

After blues dancing we shall excuse ourselves and he shall take me home.  Since this is a first date by no means should he kiss me at the end of it.  But a nice, solid hug would be quite lovely.  Having hugged me, however, he then mustn't linger because I hate when I can't end a social interaction and it gets drawn out into pure awkward.

And that is that.  Somewhat uninspired, I'll admit, but it really does sound nice to me.  Really nice.  I think I nailed this prompt pretty solidly.

Stay tuned tomorrow for Prompt 4: My Favorite Photograph of My Best Friend

In Defense of Earnestness

How long has it been since I wrote a blog post likening dancing and life?  Too long, I think.  So I think I'll just fix that right now.

So I have this friend Spencer who is known throughout our local dance community for his rather...flamboyant dance style.  Words like "infamous" or "melodramatic" might be used to describe it.  And certainly Spencer's dancing does have more drama than anyone else in our scene--involving a lot more sweeping hands and passionate embraces than you'll see anywhere else.  And much as we love Spencer, I don't think that there is anyone that hasn't made at least one good-humored joke about, or attempted over-dramatic parody of, his style, myself included.

But say you're a person like me who gets the occasional song obsession.  You know, where you hear a song and it feels like it had to have been written specifically for you at just this moment in your life.  You listen to it over and over and when you even try to listen to something else it just feels wrong.  Well, maybe you don't know that feeling.  But it's a common enough experience in my life.  And I just happen to be in the midst of another iteration of it right now.  With this song:


In the midst of my obsession comes ULX, and I get to play my current favorite song during one of the dances.  Dancing a favorite song is serious business because you want someone who will do your song justice.  Who do I want to dance with?

The answer is Spencer.

Why would I want to dance with the drama queen of our scene?  Isn't he just going to turn my song into a big joke?

The thing about watching Spencer dance is that that is exactly what you're doing--you're watching him.  You're not dancing with him.  And from that outside perspective it is hard to take him seriously when every dance looks like the same.  There's the hands.......there's cheek to cheek connection......there's sharp turns......yep, it's all there...  It's one thing if you see someone who dances "normally" most of the time dancing like that.  Clearly they're having some serious connection and something intense is happening.  But when every dance is like that?  Well they can't all be serious and intense right?  No one has serious intense passionate dances every time they dance.  So he must just be putting it on...

Now I can't know for sure because I'm not in Spencer's brain.  But if ever there was a person who really was having (or at least trying to have) the intense passionate dance every time he dances, it is Spencer.  Or, to put it another way, he is willing to commit himself 100% to any given dance and to feel it with no fear of looking stupid or...melodramatic.  He is earnestly passionate in his dancing.

And that is why I wanted to dance Favorite Song with him.  Because when I dance with Spencer I get to be earnestly passionate, too.  When you know your partner will match you moment for moment, no matter where you go, it is one of the most liberating things you can experience dancing.  It gives you a level of safety and confidence in your dancing that elevates your movement beyond your actual ability.  It makes it possible to have exactly the dance you wanted to have to your favorite song (and anyone who has ever experienced "expectation vs. reality" disappointment will, if they take a moment to think about it, understand how significant that actually is).

Now, I want you to reread that last paragraph, but replace all the dancing words with relationship words:

And that is why I wanted to date him.  Because when I'm with him I get to be earnestly passionate, too.  When you know your partner will match you moment for moment, no matter where you go, it is one of the most liberating things you can experience in a relationship.  It gives you a level of safety and confidence in the relationship that elevates your emotional vulnerability beyond your actual ability.  It makes it possible to have exactly the relationship you wanted to have with your significant other.

It works pretty well, doesn't it.  Try it with anything at all that involves any sort of relationship with two people and I suspect it will still work equally well.  Because the core of why I love dancing with Spencer doesn't actually have anything to do with his specific dancing.  It's about who Spencer is as a person, which is a person who is earnest without fear of judgement.

 Earnest.

When you hear that word you probably think of the delightful Oscar Wilde play "The Importance of Being Earnest".  You should.  It's a great play (the movie with Colin Firth and Rupert Everett is also great).  But that play is actually a satire about the lack of earnestness (earnesty?) conveyed by people of the time.

Because western society has actually been suffering a drought of earnesty (I'm gonna go ahead and use it cause the OED says it's a word...albeit one that hasn't been used since the 1500's) that has gradually been intensifying since around the turn of the last century.  In the wake of the first and then the second Great War society was faced with a crisis of philosophy, culture, and identity.  Faith came under fire as people wondered how any god they had ever heard of could have let these atrocities happen.  Institutions and authority that had previously been inviolable were questioned.  And the continuing progression of time and events has only reinforced the trend.  Looking at all the "isms," from Modernism to Post-Modernism, including absurdism, existentialism, and nihilism, you can see the decay of western society's moral convictions.  That is not to say that morality was lost; rather the infrastructure of morality was lost.  We didn't stop believing that there was a "right" and a "wrong" (well, sort of...) but we lost our conviction that we understood what they were or who made that decision.  I've said before that World War II is a war that could never happen in today's Western World.  We lack the conviction for it.

But as we lost our conviction and our ability to definitively know things we found a great big gaping hole in our collective world view. And as a society we've come up with plenty of things to fill that hole.  You have the rise of the cult of rationalism--"I believe only in what can be rationally and verifiably proven".  You have the obstinately faithful--"the more archaic you prove my beliefs to be the more desperately I will cling to them".  But most of all I think society has filled the hole with apathy--"It was too hard to decide what was right and what to believe in so instead I simply stopped caring."
*Disclaimer: At this point my brain is seething with counter-arguments, exceptions, tangential points to make, and a million other things...but as this is a blog post, not an academic paper, I'm resolutely going to ignore them all.  I just had to acknowledge that they're there*

Somehow caring about things has become unfashionable.  I can think of no better way to describe this than, somewhat counter-intuitively, to invoke this infamous quote

Nerd culture has become strangely in vogue over the last couple of years as people have, much like the quote above declares, realized that it is a society in which it is still acceptable to care about things.  But I can't help but notice a few things about that.  First...why on earth do we have to be told that it is ok to care about things?  Why do we have to proudly (or not proudly) label ourselves "Nerd" before it is ok to be enthusiastic?  Second, even within the world of nerdly enthusiasm we have adopted a sort of reflexive, self-aware lexicon that allows us to distance ourselves from our enthusiasm.  If you're feeling brave, take a brief trek through the wilds of tumblr, imgur, or reddit fandom communities.  Nerds don't talk about feelings, they talk about their "feels".

You don't get excited, you "squee".

You don't care about a relationship between two characters, you "ship" them.

It's like nerds have to prove that they're aware that they care about these things more than they're necessarily supposed to.  Or like their feelings for their nerd-topic of choice are separate from their real, more reasonable emotions about real life.  And lastly, is the compartmentalizing of enthusiasm to "nerdy" things just another attempt to strip passion, enthusiasm, and conviction from the rest of our lives?  If nerds are the ones who are allowed to be "unironically enthusiastic about stuff", then what about the rest of the world--the ones who don't self-identify as "nerds".  Are they not "allowed" to be passionate?  Or must their enthusiams be cloaked in the ubiquitous coping mechanism of our post-modern world: irony.  Things you can't like openly you can like "ironically".  I can't decide if irony is the bane of modern society or its saving grace...

And now...are you ready for it?  Now I'm going to bring us full circle.  Back to my friend Spencer.  Who dances passionately every single dance.  I described him as being earnest.  Because I think that earnestness is the opposite of apathy.  It is certainly the opposite of irony.  Spencer does not dance ironically, though when we watch him we suspect that he does.  He is earnest.  In his dancing, in his conversation, and in his interactions with life and people.  And though I am a part of this nerdy, ironic, post-modern world of apathy and cynicism, when I dance with Spencer I get to let go of my protective shell of never being too invested in anything and be unabashedly passionate.  Not passionate in a nerdy way, that makes fun of itself as it revels in its feels.  Passionate in a completely authentic and up front way.  A way that we can't help but make fun of when we see it because we can't imagine that such simple, upfront and un-nuanced emotion exists anymore in this world.  That is earnestness.  And even if I make the occasional joke at its expense, and I don't think I'll ever be able to claim that I am a perfectly earnest individual, I have to stand up for earnestness.  Because when I dance earnestly with Spencer I am completely happy.  And I think that has to count for something.

Some thoughts on a Saturday...

My friend Jenna posted this video today on a friend's wall

I have so many thoughts about this video.  So many.  And, as the good Humanities major that I am, I am sitting here writing all those thoughts down in a blog post.

First and foremost is just...dang.  It's straight up funny.  I mean, completely and unequivocally funny.  Go ahead and laugh and don't feel bad.

Next, this video brings back all my fascination with the human impulse to exhibitionism.  How many videos or pictures have you seen of someone doing something crazy simply for the sake of being seen?  So many I can't even begin to count.  What is it about human nature that so craves attention that it is willing to do bizarre things like dance around in front of people nearly naked to get it.  That almost diminishes it, though.  To say that some of these people are just seeking attention.  Sure, some truly are.  But others, like this gentleman here I think, or like Amanda Palmer in her street performing days, or like certainly many others...some of these people are seeking connection, or love, or truly just to make people happy.

I'm referring to just the beginning of her talk here, but please listen to all of it as it is wonderful

Or perhaps they simply want to express themselves and themselves is an exuberant, demonstrative person who simply cannot be contained in one single self but must bubble over in dance and song and action.  Whatever the reason, I am constantly fascinated by these impulses.  Trying to decipher those reasons, trying to understand why this expression, simply enjoying their moment...

Then I think about this specific man.  Regardless of his reason, he was brave enough to display his, shall we say "less than ideal", body quite fully.  In fact, it seems as though he makes rather a habit of doing so.  You could say that, for this specific gentleman, clearly it does not actually require courage to dance around in a speedo.  But I disagree.  Even if this man couldn't care less about parading his physique naked in public...that doesn't change the significance of the act.  It doesn't make him any less brave.  It remains inspiring to me.

This is where it comes back to me.  It's my blog so I'm allowed.  Anyway.  Remember how I've hinted a couple of times at a project I was thinking about for a while that didn't work out?  This project I was thinking about was to become a model for the art department for the drawing classes.  For those of you who don't know what that entails, it would boil down to me striking various poses in front of rooms full of strangers for a couple of hours at a time...wearing nothing but a bikini.  Anywhere but BYU it would be completely naked, but we gotta maintain our standards here at the Lord's university.  But the point is that I would be stripping myself down almost completely and exposing myself to people.  Nothing between them and all my imperfections, my fatness, my awkward shape and movement, and my blemishes.  I literally cannot think of any more socially terrifying activity.  It didn't happen in the end, not because I chickened out, but because I'm not taking enough credits this semester to qualify for a campus job.

I just have to remember that it's ok that I don't look like this.  This is
a profile picture for this model

I wasn't going to strip down just to satisfy my own exhibitionist impulses.  I don't really have many of those.  They got lost in some box with my mob mentality.  I thought it would be good for me.  I have a couple of friends who do this and they've told me a little about the experience.  The people drawing you are not evaluating your attractiveness or relative levels of physical fitness.  They're viewing you as an art.   They are de-personing you in the best possible way.  In the process of drawing your body simply becomes a thing, neither good nor bad, to be captured on paper.  And the end results can, and often are, beautiful.  Letting someone draw you and then looking at that drawing is a way for you to dissociate from your mental filter and see yourself through someone else's eyes.  Not to mention, you're standing there in front of them for several hours...I can think of no more effective means to metaphorically throw your body image and self-confidence into a lake and let it swim or drown.

Which leads to my last thought about that man.  Yes, we're getting back to the rotund dancing fellow in naught but a speedo.  Scroll back up and watch him again for a few minutes.  Look at how happy he is.  Feel the confidence that flows out of him.  You watch him for a while and suddenly....you forget that it's funny cause a fat guy is dancing naked.  Suddenly you're watching a happy, wonderful man be happy and wonderful.  His physicality is peripheral.  His enjoyment of the moment overwhelms our impulse to judge and in the end we love him, even think he's beautiful, because we see happiness and vitality rather than a contrived social construct of beauty or ugliness.  You don't care that he's "gross".  You don't care that he keeps missing the changes and doesn't know the moves.  How could you care?

This is the best lesson this video teaches me.  Simply be happy and be confident.  No one cares if you screw up while you're trying.  No one cares if you aren't perfect.  No one cares about any of those negative things. What they care about is that you're happy and you're sharing that happiness with everyone around you.  Because you are happy, they have become happy as well.  If you can give that to people then no matter what you look like you will be beautiful in their eyes.

So I shall endeavor to stop worrying and simply dance.

Sometimes you just need a little perspective...

Cliche as that is.

It's been another one of those days weeks months.  The ones where most nights the only way to stop your panic attack is to force yourself to fall asleep.  Where you have a constant headache because all your anxiety manifests itself in relentless tension in your shoulders and neck.

Where the careful balance of your life, perpetually held on the edge of the abyss, finally seems to be tipping past the event horizon of your control into full chaos.

When I first started dancing I remember a conversation I had with Chelsea.  I told her that sometimes when I'm dancing it's like my body gets over excited and rejects my supervision.  My spins start going crazy, my feet start flying all over the place, and I simply cannot keep my balance.  It's like I'm trying to go everywhere at once, and so, of course, I maladroitly go nowhere at all.  Chelsea advised me that the next time I noticed this happening I should stop dancing for just a moment and recenter myself.  Pull myself inward, either mentally or literally, and focus on my core.  Be still a moment.  Off the top of my head, I would be willing to claim that as the most helpful advice I ever received about dancing.  It certainly has stuck with me and proved its usefulness and truth repeatedly.

But tonight I realized that it is not just good dancing advice.

Today, even if just for this evening, I was able apply Chelsea's dancing advice to my life.  I was able to stop for a moment and recenter myself.  I was able to pull myself in and focus on my core.  I was able to be still.  It began with one of the most considerate and generous things anyone has ever done for me (the beauty of perspective is how something can be just a simple "nice thing" to one person, and yet mean the whole world to another).  I think one of the greatest things you can ever do for someone is find a way to make them feel sincerely and deeply cared about; that is what was done for me.  Then I came home, still thinking about this experience, hoping to have some time to myself to mull it over.  However, a friend needed to talk.  I am ashamed to admit that my first reaction was annoyance at the theft of my time.  But the annoyance faded as I listened to my friend tell me about some of the private trials she is struggling through.  We discussed the way people will sometimes, intentionally or otherwise, deny you the right to suffer--that is to say, they claim that your problems are not important enough to cause you real pain.  Certainly, I can look at my friend's life and be grateful that I did not have to live it.  And knowing that I would not trade my problems for hers helps me to feel better about mine.  But it doesn't mean that my problems are easy; it just means that they're mine.

So tonight I will go to bed centered.  The problems aren't gone and I'm still not sure that everything won't tip over the edge some time, but it won't be tonight.  I have pulled myself back into my core--I know that people care about me and I know that I am dealing with my own personal issues that fit me.  Tonight that seems to be significant.

Gratitude and stuff...

Things for which I am grateful:

• My hair
• That I have it

• That it is long enough for me to braid, both in the French style and the notFrench style

• That it is in moderately good condition and doesn't look like Yetti hair

guys, the Yettis had warrior's wolftails!

• My car
• It does run….most of the time
• It plays the music
• It gets gas mileage
• My laptop
• The fan no longer makes an angry noise
• The internets
• Pinterest
• Blogs
• webcomics
• The technologies
• Paper
• For to draw
• For to write letters
• For to make origami
• For to light fires
• For to make into a wad

• Massages
• Do you really require more words about this?
• Food
• Sleep
• Sometimes it happens
• Sometimes it doesn't
• My job
• My boss
• That he's one of my best friends

• That he has a very generous concept of personal property

• That he is very very good at bossing and usually doesn't get impatient or annoyed (visibly) with me

• That he willingly helps me with projects like fixing my laptop
• My coworker Zack
• My ever-so-flexible schedule

because sometimes all you can do is lie in a puddle on the floor
but really....this is how flexible my schedule is

• The money I make

• The fact that I don't ever have to deal with anyone but Caleb and Zack…no customer service whatsoever!

• That I have one
• The innumerable perks of working in a house
• Kitchen
• Laundry
• Daylight
• Climate control
• Walk-shoveling opportunities
• Laundry
• The opportunity to drive and not feel guilty
• The SCIENCE!
• My house
• Roommates
• My own room
• Crazy dance party!!!

• Bathroom shared with only one other person
• House!
• Very reasonable rent
• Roommates!
• Ward
• People are my age
• Nice people
• New people
• Dancing
• Connection

fun fact: I know these people!  sort of...their names are
Ben and Gretchen and they're phenomenal dancers
(this picture was found here...yet again this guy is blowing me away with his
blues photography)

• Activity
• Connection
• People
• Music
• New music
• Happy music
• Cathartic music
• Life soundtracks
• Moment appropriate music
• Books
• Always and forever in every way

• Movies
• To pass the time
• To entertain
• To inspire
• To stimulate
• Fall
• The intoxication of crispness
• Winter
• Snow
• Playing in it
• Sitting inside watching it exist
• Hot chocolate
• Delicious food
• Scarves

one of Gingerhaze's feral sweater boys

• Hats
• Christmas!
• New Year's!
• Life

no, a wholelife

• People
• Family
• Moms, dads, aunts and uncles, nieces, grandparents, siblings, cousins
• The friends
• Roommates
• Old!

• New!

• Perpetual, regardless of actual location
• Pseudo-boyfriends
• So. many. of. them.
• Ex-boyfriends
• Not mine

can't let these things go to waste

• Domestic goddesses

• The slightly damaged (most often in the brain, but I'm not picky)

• The listeners

• Smarts
• Not being in school
• Independence
• Memory
• Real
• Not as real
• Eyes
• Even ones that work as poorly as these ones

• Things that make my defective eyes work correctly

• science
• Cars
• Airplanes
• Microwaves/ovens
• Toothbrushes
• Teflon
• Google

for science!
please look at all the other things here

• Beauty
• Silliness

because ridiculous word play is what makes life worth living

• Feelings
• Humor
• Privacy
• Singing
• Writing

Birthdays and Blues

It was my birthday this week.  I am officially on the downhill side of my second decade.  I find that I am not especially perturbed. I mean, I had that disturbing moment on WebMD last year where I realized that I was no longer in the 18-24 age range, but since then I've been pretty much fine with my advancing years (and everyone knows WebMD is just a disturbing place anyway).  But then, I've never had a problem with the idea of getting older.  Mine is not a lifestyle that I will struggle to sustain into my old age...

it's all about the sustainable lifestyle!

If you know me very well at all then you know that I dig birthdays in a major way.  Why wouldn't you?  Once a year, having a day set aside simply to celebrate the fact that you exist and that you are you, I can think of nothing better.  If I can get away with it, I actually like to stretch my celebrations out over a week, or at least a weekend.  This year, however, my birthday fell on a Monday--a circumstance I find that I rather dislike.  Birthdays should always be on a Thursday or Friday.  They just should.  Nothing so anticlimactic as wrapping up your party with a prosaic "well...I have to go to work tomorrow so I should go to bed..." 

screw Disneyland.  Everyone knows this is the happiest
place on earth.

Regardless of the unfortunate day upon which it fell, I had an absolutely lovely birthday.  Until now, my birthday has always been an excuse to get the day off of work; however, so much do I love my job that going to work seemed like a perfectly acceptable way for me to spend the bulk of my day.  Helps that my boss also happens to be one of my very favorite people.  Then I came home from work just in time for my self-organized birthday party.  While I appreciate the idea of a surprise party I've ultimately come to the conclusion that I prefer planning my own party.  Because I'm a control freak?  maybe.  Anyway, when you organize your own party you get to make fun stipulations.  Last year I requested that everyone bring me a present, any present at all, provided it was wrapped.  I love unwrapping things! This year I decided that all I wanted was flowers.  Initially I wanted fresh flowers, but upon further reflection I decided that since fresh flowers can be expensive, not to mention I love when people get creative, I would take any sort of flowers.  Except the nasty fake silk flowers.  Because those are gross.

these flowers are an insult to real flowers everywhere.  

I received some really beautiful flowers, predominantly fresh or made of paper.  Though there was one knitted one for me to clip in my hair.  But even better, a whole bunch of people who I love very much all came to my house and talked to me and each other and ate this cake that was made for me by my lovely roommate Callie.  And then we played the What If game, which is one of my absolute favorite games ever.  And then, though I wasn't originally planning on it, I had a mini blues party in my kitchen and danced with Griffin, John, and Caleb.  It was delightful in every possible way.

technically this is John dancing with me last year
but I very lamely forgot to take pictures this year...

And that is going to be my super smooth segue into the other half of this post.  Which is going to be about blues.  Which is why this post is called "Birthdays and Blues".  Should I continue to elaborate on this?

I went blues dancing tonight.  I didn't go last week because blues has been somewhat....less than fulfilling lately.  And I just didn't want to go and pay $5 to be less than fulfilled.  But this week there was a competition that I was maybe almost going to compete in.  Not to mention it is that wonderful time of year known as BIRTHDAY JAM!  Alas, I neither competed nor did I get a birthday jam (maybe next week?).  But what I did get was some absolutely marvelous dancing!  

aw man...homemade bread and jam!  Want!

My "on" nights are fewer and farther between these days.  I have been dancing long enough that I rarely get compliments any more.  So when both of those things happen it really makes my night.  And tonight I had both.  I realized I was going to pull John off at one point and actually managed to gain my balance and push him back on his so that we just kept right on going.  It was a beautiful moment and we both gave each other the "ohmygoshthatwasawesome!" face.  Mike Dymond said that he is always impressed at how "good your direction changes are! Dang!"  And Spencer asked me if I was in a good mood or if I was just feeling creative because the move I had just done (a backwards dip I've never in my life even thought about attempting before) was a "stroke of genius".  

I adore this picture!  Found here, this is more or
less what I did with Spencer

I don't list these compliments as a sort of litany of vanity.  Ok, maybe a little bit.  But I was proud of that moment with John, dangit!  But more importantly, I'm attempting to convey the feeling a spectacular night of dancing will give you.  If you have never experienced it it is very difficult to appreciate the joy that is connecting with another person and sharing a physical conversation in movement with them.  The ability to communicate is one of my favorite and most prized, and words are the joy of my life.  But to set words aside and find a line of communication underneath is thrilling and beautiful.  When you can feel you and your partner creating the perfect compliment to each other--feeling the movement and intention of his body and your body somehow moves you with him--the two of you are living, dancing, art.  As corny as that may sound. 

As someone who has little to no physical contact with people in my day to day life it's almost impossible to overstate how much a night like tonight means to me.  It reconnects me to the world.  After a week of lurking in my bedroom staring at my computer, going out and connecting with three or five or ten people at blues reconnects me to life.  It brings me out of myself.  

That's what will always keep me coming back for more.  

Dancing holes in the soles of my shoes...

Ages back my mom and I concocted a plan.  In this plan I was going to go home for a weekend sometime towards the end of summer and I was going to teach a dance workshop to the youth in my home stake.  Then I was going to DJ a dance for them and suddenly the kids would go to stake dances and they would dance and everything was going to be awesome.  It seemed like a good plan except for the part where we completely ignored that we're talking about a bunch of kids between the ages of 14 and 17 and who are we kidding? The day they dive into a dance workshop and learn to dance is the day Snooki buys herself some pearls and joins the DAR.

so much class happening here!
(photo courtesy of People.com)

That is what I thought about during the bulk of the two hour drive up to Pine Valley.  Lured with the promise of a good time (yes, sometimes I lie to people...I had no idea if it actually would be a good time), I had convinced my friend Mike to come with me to help teach.  As of our arrival in the parking lot that was to be our dance space we still hadn't agreed on what style of dance to teach.  I wanted to teach west coast so that the kids would be able to dance to the regular music that would be played.  Mike was doubtful that was going to happen.  I was forced to agree with him when I was finally confronted by over 150 kids huddled in front of me.  There was no way we were going to teach these kids west coast.  Blues it would be!

I then proceeded to give the most rushed, un-inclusive, non-helpful lesson of my life.  In my own defense, it was enough of a challenge just getting the kids to alternate boy/girl/boy/girl and touch each other.  But Mike and I, in about 25 minutes, went over very basic connection, pulse, and taught them how to do a basic, a right turn and a left turn.  With my mother gesturing me to hurry up every few seconds in the background, we wrapped up the pathetic excuse for a lesson and got the music started.  

The rest of the evening, however, was great fun.  Though I played almost every request I got, I also tried to gently broaden musical horizons.  Of course, this had mixed results as, towards the end of the night, a girl pleadingly asked for a "fast song".  Bemused, Mike and I questioned her what sort of fast song she wanted since we had played quite a few fast songs, including two lindy hops, several country swings, and even some line dances.  She looked at us like we were slow and said "I mean some normal music!"  

I really like that knife...
obtained here

For me, however, the entire experience of the Stake Dance was redeemed.  

When I was in mutual I would go to dances and awkwardly sit off to the side.  Rarely, some intrepid young man would tremblingly approach and ask me to dance.  We would rock back and forth, one sweaty hand slipping embarrassingly between shoulder and waist whilst the other encircled my own in a clammy whisper of a grip.   For three minutes, as our eyes circumnavigated the ceiling, the walls, the floor...anything but look at our partner, we would tamp down a tiny circle on the dance floor.  At last the music would end, releasing us, and we would mumble thanks over our shoulders as we hurried back to our respective places. 

Some intrepid boy just like this one...bless his heart
photo from here

But there I was, on a Saturday night, back at a stake dance.  Only I am now 26 years old.  I know how to dance now.  And best of all, I had a partner there with me who was both willing and able to dance with me.  And dance we did.  To the insufferable and eternal Cottoneye Joe we danced the Polka.  When Open Arms was requested we waltzed.  We even threw in some Cha Cha, though I don't remember which song that one was.  And of course, there was blues and west coast (and some very westified lindy).  It is amazing what a difference those small changes can make in the same event...

We danced the whole night and our post-dance energy buzz completely confounded mom.  I think just listening to us talk was making her and dad tired.  

The next day me, dad, and Mike drove up to go shooting.  Walking across the rock pit to set up targets I realized the full extent of my fun the night before.  

Yes.  That's right.  I danced a hole in my shoe.