Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Gringos know no boundaries


Here’s something to know if you’re going to Prague: the city is divided into several numbered districts.  Prague 2 is adjacent to Prague 10, which is tucked between Prague(s?) 3 and 4.  If memory serves, Prague 5 is across the river from Prague 2-3.  If this seems confusing and disorienting, don’t worry: there are two completely different numerical systems in place that make about as much sense as the one described above and are also still in use, and in practice it is often difficult for a foreigner to tell which system is in play in a given context.  So you should pretty much not rely on that stuff anyway.  Also, most houses have two numbers on them: a red one, which has to do with the order in which the buildings were constructed within that district, and a blue one that’s the postal address.  Also, blue numbers ascend or descend along a street depending on which end of the street is closer to a river.  So there’s another valuable navigational nugget to put under your cap.  

In short, Prague is perfectly easy to navigate if you are a riparian historian.

I should have known we were in trouble when we stepped off the train, exchanged some money and found our way to the vending machine for subway tickets.  There were at least seven different possibilities according to the fare structure, which appeared to depend on who you were, what numbered zone of the city you were traveling to, and how long you figured it would take you to get there.  Which is great, as long as you know where the hell you are, where the hell you’re going, and what the hell distance separates the two.  As you have perhaps intuited by now, we did not.  In fact, as I would later learn, I had somehow managed to print not one but two Google maps that, in each case, were just zoomed-in enough to cut off the subway station nearest to our destination in the city.  This meant that we approached everything – on foot and with luggage in tow – from the second-nearest subway station instead.  We showed one such Google map to a person who looked young enough to have studied English, and he helped us buy our first subway ticket in Prague – the cheapest one.  That ought to do it, he said.  (He was right, by the way – I realize I might have just created some incidental suspense, but in fact much of the ensuing debacle could have been avoided if only we could have hired that riparian historian to follow us around for the rest of the day).

Having left Berlin at 6 a.m. and made a beeline for our tango lesson (to which we arrived only ten or so minutes late, miraculously enough), at 3 p.m. we hadn’t yet touched base with our hostess.  We thought we’d find her house, ring the bell and hope for the chance to plunk down our suitcases before scoring some late and much-deserved lunch. So, we dutifully approached the second house on the right from the corner, number 28, and looked for the red button at the top of the right-hand column of buzzers that her very descriptive directions had mentioned. 

“Maybe the sun has faded it,” I said hopefully, after carefully checking each buzzer and finding them all equally dark brown.  The hubs shrugged.  I tried the street door.  It gave, opening into the cool of the apartment stairwell, so we went inside. 

The building was non-descript and indeterminately old, in the way European apartment buildings are indeterminately old, and on the ground floor were Apartments 8, 26 and 14; a panel of glossy black mailboxes; and, dead ahead of us, the elevator.  It was sleek and gleaming, made of glass and steel painted racecar red, and it had obviously been imported from the future.  Since we were looking for Apartment 11 and had exhausted the possibilities of the ground floor, we climbed inside with our three bags and pressed the button.  Nothing happened for a while.  Then, just as the hubs – a patient man – was poised to hit the button for a third time, the doors closed with an irritable little sigh and we shot off to the second floor at the speed of an old-world elevator. 

Floor two revealed Apartments 4, 18, 6, and 21, and I believe Floor 3 contained all the apartments that were prime numbers between 3 and 19 (except, of course, 11).  By this time I felt tired, sore, hot, hungry, unusually culturally intolerant and more than a bit cranky with the Czech notion of mathematics.  At least by the time we were approaching Floor 4 we got wise to the sluggish elevator door and devised a plan to leave all the suitcases on board, hit the button, and each scout out in one direction for Apartment 11.  A quick glance was enough to tell us that Floor 4 consisted of apartments 1, 2, 22 and 15, but by this time our elevator had somehow finally figured out what we were after and zoomed off toward Floors 5 and 6 with our bags, expending all the haste it had saved up during our trips from floors 1-3.

Fortunately, the building was not that tall, and Floor 6 finally coughed up Apartments 9, 23, 16 and, yes, 11.  I rang the bell.  Nothing happened for a while.  Then, just as I was turning to go, a tiny voice called out what I can only imagine was Czech for “Helloooooo?” 

“Hello,” I said.  Nothing happened for a while.  Then, just as I was getting ready to ring the bell again, the tiny voice called out again.  “Hello,” I said again.  Eventually the door opened, and a woman who was the age of all the apartment numbers added together blinked blearily at us, clearly not expecting two sweaty Americans who were pretty sure they had a reservation.  I showed her our overly-zoomed-in Google map and the address we were looking for.  She shook her head and told us something that lasted about 8-10 seconds and was, I like to think, intended to be helpful, and then shuffled back inside #11 and closed the door.

I crumpled on her doorstep, but the hubs pointed out that that wasn’t a very considerate place to lose my mind, so we took the elevator from the future back to the ground floor and I crumpled down there instead.  The hubs headed back to the street and retraced our steps against the instructions we had been provided, only to find that a. we had followed them to the letter, and b. there was a third number, etched in the glass pane above the door we had just passed through: 1701, which was neither red nor blue and had nothing to do with anything.

As I waited for my hubs to return, I examined the bank of glossy black mailboxes more closely and found that it corresponded neither to any system of counting I was familiar with, nor to the actual distribution of apartments in the building.  It was at this time – marveling at the valor of Czech mail carriers and trying to look purposeful and casual while lurking, hot and grouchy, in the foyer of a foreign apartment building – that I realized the relevance of the red/blue number system to our current predicament.  When the hubs came back, we picked up all of our luggage and walked down the block to the other #28 and rang the conspicuously red doorbell.  

Our Czech hostess was out, but eventually came home.  After showing us our room, she fixed us an espresso as we recounted our adventures.   “Didn’t you follow my instructions?” she asked, incredulous.  When I remarked the numbering system over at 1701, she said, “Ah.  Probably the apartments were numbered in a spiral, starting on the fourth floor and then going up and around.”

I still have no idea whether she was joking.

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

on grief


The texture of my grief keeps changing.  At first it feels like I have swallowed a cold and bitter stone that pulses like something radioactive.  In the ensuing days it feels as though my heart and mind and senses have all been packed in cotton batting, like I'm something carefully packed into a box in preparation for a move.  This sensation deadens the contours of things, but it can’t take the pain away.  And throughout, the moments when grief is this fierce animal come scrambling and yowling out of my chest.  This grief, I keep shifting it around, trying to get ahold of it in such a way that I can carry it.  So far it's more unwieldy than heavy.  Heaviness will come.

Flying is expensive and hard to book so close to departure time. And even though it gets you to your destination faster you can’t think how you will fill the hours until the plane takes off.  Flying would feel callous in its convenience.  So you drive, and the driving - the cramped car, the crummy road-food and the tedium of the highway register as a tribute and a lamentation.     


Now and again this weird stillness descends, a state of grace like nothing has really changed.  The anticipation of seeing loved-ones, the nostalgia that hasn’t been colored yet by loss.  Strange how the body keeps functioning: my digestive system keeps working, my lungs keep inflating, the blood flows to all my fingers and toes… my body doesn’t ask why it does all these things. It doesn’t ask for permission, just keeps me alive so that I can be a vessel for this pain.

Next come the days of non-sequiturs, a room full of people drinking coffee and exchanging commonplaces interspersed with a recognition that breaks over us in waves.  He isn't coming back.  We talk about anything at all.  We crack jokes and talk politics, grow morbid, grow silent, crack jokes and talk politics. He isn't coming back.

At last, a normal day.  We wake up, we have breakfast, we leave the house and go out for lunch, we visit an art gallery, we watch a movie on DVD.  This day is exhausting.  

A week on, and every conversation is still a minefield.  We cross it so tentatively, hand in hand, and then one of us says something and detonates another of us, or all of us.

Because language is what makes things real to me, I want to tell you these things.  I want to hear you cry when I tell you these things.  I want my speaking them to make you cry.  I want to proclaim them to everyone until everyone is crying.  And then maybe, once everyone else is crying, I’ll understand why they are crying and fully admit it to myself.  Yet in crying him, we relive him, a little.



Monday, April 23, 2012

owning tango

I don't think I write enough about tango.  Anyone who doesn't dance it and has been reading this might disagree with me, but if you really look at the proportion of my time I spend dancing tango, thinking about tango, talking about tango, listening to the music, it would be clear to you that I spend a disproportionately weensy amount of time writing about it as opposed to about other things.

Thing is, I think I may have had a bit of an epiphany this weekend with respect to my dance (which inevitably translates into an epiphany about my self - or at least I can imagine it does).  Despite having danced tango for about 6 years on and off (luckily, more on than off), I don't think I have ever thought of myself as a "tango dancer".  Tango dancers have always been my teachers, or the people who come in to teach me and my teachers, or the graceful, willowy people I see at milongas in Washington, D.C. or New York or elsewhere.   I think I've always perceived myself as an interloper, someone who hasn't been at it long enough to assert my interpretation of the music or call myself "good" enough to not have something to prove.

I'm an innate teacher; it's something that I do without even meaning to and in fact, articulating my experience of things to someone else helps the lessons imprint upon me.  So, if it's in the context of learning among my peers or with those who have less experience than I do, I'm all confidence and certainty.  Get me into a social setting where the dancers are truly good, though, and suddenly I'm a clutching, cowering ball of nerves whose walk and embrace say  "did I get it right?  Is this what you wanted?  How am I doing?  How about now?"

I mean, I danced for four years before I finally allowed myself to buy a pair of regulation tango shoes.  I felt like I had to earn them somehow, to graduate to those stilettos.  They are the most beautiful thing, by the way.  If a fire burns our house down, I will save them after the dog but before my wedding dress.  But I held that door closed to myself until I managed to meet some unspecified, murky criteria that I alone invented.

Since then, I have written about and sung the music, DJ'ed events, danced successfully with strangers far from my own cozy little community (always a big test), met some of the people in those YouTube videos and found them human, I even started learning the leader's role... yet I still somehow haven't thought of myself as an insider.  Just because I dance tango three nights a week and think about it constantly and try to get everyone in my life to do it, just because it's become my pet metaphor for life, the universe and everything, doesn't mean I think I'm any good at it or have any claim to it.  Yet I don't begrudge anyone else that ownership and pole star of identification regardless of their level of expertise.  My criteria for belonging applies uniquely but unappealably to me and me alone.

After a private lesson with teachers I respect, I now think this is a big part of what's holding my dance back.  The next frontier of learning for me is to dance without apology, but with every ounce of joy it gives me.  To turn off the perpetual evaluation machine in my head and just be present to my partner inside the music.
To concern myself less with doing exactly what's expected of me, and to be more open to the possibilities that are offered to me...then, to go boldly forward (or backward, or sideways, or around, depending), because this space is mine to claim.

Uh-oh.  This is almost certainly telling me something about my life.


Sunday, January 29, 2012

brains think the darndest things

I have heard it said (and debunked and said some more) that we humans only use some 10% of our brains. Have you ever had one of those moments when you suddenly, unexpectedly became aware of your brain and all the things it does when you're not paying attention? The fact that I'm having a hard time even phrasing that question suggests to me that I should probably illustrate what I mean. So, what follows is a list of curious things I have learned about my brain and how it processes reality, for better or for worse.

Fun fact #1: My brain thinks no one can recognize me if I'm wearing my glasses. I believe this in spite of the fact that it is patently ridiculous. I have no trouble identifying other people who normally don't wear glasses if I chance upon them with glasses on, or vice versa. Why would my brain think that my identity could be more transformed by glasses than anyone else's?

How I noticed: I had been waiting tables in a diner and some regular customers didn't know who I was. At the time I attributed this to the fact that I had stopped (started?) wearing glasses since the last time I had seen them. This situation recurred, in one form or another, for several years. In retrospect, I am forced to conclude that I am just not that memorable.

Fun fact #2: My brain perceives the wearing of earrings as a sign of competence. Whenever I am wearing earrings, I feel more self-possessed, connected to the world, and ready to confront unfamiliar circumstances.

How I noticed: Standing on a subway platform in NYC. I was a bit lost and felt like a conspicuous tourist, and then I remembered: I was wearing hoop earrings. Clearly, I belonged here and was in full command of this situation. I remember thinking something irrational like "Everything's fine. You're wearing hoop earrings. You've got this."

Fun fact #3: With the right encouragement, my brain is very good at identifying and synthesizing important pieces of information in a hurry.

How I noticed: I arrived at the train station in downtown Montreal four minutes before my train was supposed to leave. I had never been there, and it was a sprawling, bustling, multi-storied building...yet I still made my train. I told my brain "your train is here and so is the information that will guide you to it. Find." My eyes sought and found the relevant arrivals and departures board, then pin-balled from arrowed sign to arrowed sign with my body in tow until I just strolled into the right train car headed toward the right destination moments before we pulled out of the station. I've since been able to repeat this experiment in turning myself over to my brain's command with almost uniform success. This is why I am in charge of all the snap decision-making in my marriage.

Fun fact #4: My brain thinks that because it speaks two languages, it speaks all languages. I speak fluent English and Spanish, and have a smattering of French and vestigial German from minoring in it in college. My brain gets really irritated when I overhear someone speaking anything that isn't one of those languages and continues to struggle impotently to understand.

How I noticed: I was in the grocery store and heard some gentlemen conversing in Hebrew. I couldn't quite accept that I couldn't understand them, and just about wore myself out trying to make sense of what they were saying. It's a wonder that I didn't get kicked out of the grocery store for following them around and (not very effectively) eavesdropping on their conversation. I have also witnessed several situations in which people are having a hard time communicating due to a language barrier, and been tempted to step in and say "I'll handle this", only to discover that I have no better linguistic or extra-linguistic tools than the actual participants in the conversation. I suppose it's true that my odds are better than many people's, but still... seriously, brain? Who do you think you are?

Fun fact #5: My brain inherently trusts the prematurely balding. This is either a genius insight into the human soul, or potentially perilous. Regardless, combined with Fun Facts #1-2 and 4, it would make me an exceptionally crummy secret agent.

How I noticed: I have actually written about this episode before, somewhere, and maybe I can even look it up for you, although I probably won't, but suffice it to say that it's probably a miracle that I'm still alive. I was stumbling around Veracruz, Mexico, trying to overcome the previous night's food poisoning armed with nothing but a digital camera, a bottle of Gatorade and the sheer force of will, when I decided to take a break from the oppressive heat by slumping against a heavily-graffitied wall in a somewhat secluded part of downtown and laying my head against the cool concrete. A young man in a baseball cap approached me and tried to convince me to come home with him, because I was green and obviously foreign and dehydrated and lost under the midday sun and it was about 97 degrees out. This (yes, this part, specifically), I thought, was a bad idea. I spent what was left of my energy trying to get him to go away and leave me alone, when after about 20 minutes he ripped off his baseball cap in frustration. I immediately noticed that at age 27, he had lost nearly all his hair. "Oh," my brain said. "In that case." I went home with him, and he introduced me to his grandmother, and we ate pineapple and listened to the radio for a while.

Although it doesn't happen often, I really enjoy it when my brain makes itself so transparent to me. I depend on it pretty heavily because, like many people, I think for a living. When my brain declares its independence from me in these little ways, I get to remember that it and I are not synonymous. It's comforting, somehow, to know that my brain isn't always empirically correct, and that other parts of me might have the right idea from time to time.