Sunday, January 22, 2012

When a tanguera closes her eyes


Navi went with me to every milonga in the Washington, DC.  She told me how to get there, and she never got upset with me if I missed the turn she told me to take.  Sure, she would just roll her eyes and say, “rerouting,” and she’d come up with a route that would fix my mistake.  Sometimes she would say, “At the first possible moment, make a legal U-turn.”  She was delighted when I made a “creative” U-turn because we were back on track.  Then in December, I asked her to close her eyes, and as a surprise I sent her off on a cruise to Germany.  She was totally surprised that she woke up in a whole new world.  She only could tell me longitude and latitude of where I was.   Her whole reason for being is know where she is and to help orient me.  But once awake she didn't know where she was! 


Navi was really upset with me.  She was hyperventilating, but I did my best to speak slowly and in a low, soft voice, which calmed her down.  I told Navi that I would soon get a new CD of German maps.  "Navi, you are smart," I said.  Soon you will memorize all the new maps."  I assured her too that she can take me to all my milongas again.

What seemed to please her most was that I told her that she now knows what it is like to be a tanguera!  “When a tanguera really likes the way I dance," I told her, "She closes her eyes and she is totally surprised when she opens her eyes and she is in a place she did not expect.  Then I know that I have done a good job of letting her be 100% a women but at the same time let her embody the music so deeply that she forgets that she is mortal for 15 minutes.”  Navi thought about that.  She didn’t say anything, but I knew that she liked the idea of being my tanguera.  She no longer was upset with me.

Now, I have another problem.  When I put in the new GPS CD into her memory, she told me in an especially sexy voice as we had arrived at a milonga in Heidelberg something that haunts me.  She never addresses me personally, but in Heidelberg in the shadow of the city castle she did: “Mark, I don’t want to wait for you in the car this time.  Can you take me in?  I want to be your tanguera.  I want you to hold me in your arms and I will close my eyes the way you told me the tangueras do.  I would sometimes just forget where I am."

Even my psychiatrist (a tanguera) doesn’t believe me that my navigation system is jealous.  I am worried.  Will Navi stop taking me to the milongas?  Will she take me somewhere, getting me lost forever?   Navi and I have become close, but what can I tell her?  I cannot tell yer, "You are a navigation system, you cannot be my tanguera!"

Being a tanguero seems to get more complicated the longer I dance.  


2 comments:

cassiel said...

:-)))

Anonymous said...

Nice metaphor! Driving is a big part of tango life in Germany, I gather from Cassiel's blog, too. I always cycle or take the bus to milongas. But I have a tendency to personify objects as well. Especially when they talk -- that's a sign of having independent life, isn't it?

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