What Time is It?

We returned right after Christmas from a week long party of California sunshine and embraces.We came home at midnight, dropped our bags, fell into bed, and now, what is it. January something and the week is a blank. Sleeping off a flu and too much travel and the emotional weight of a significant birthday and the rewinding of decades.  There are some interesting challenges to energy in having so many people to love. And a bit of drinking and indulging to boot.

The power had gone out while we were gone, and all the clocks were wrong, all the gadgets confused.  We just left them to decide for themselves what time it was.

Somehow during that time I signed up for a workshop, bought some green tennis shoes online? And wrote three very cogent course proposals, meeting a strict deadline for art classes to be taught in springtime.

Both of us were, and are about as sick as you can be at our age without going to the hospital I suppose.  We were thankful for a warm home, cozy cats, chicken soup also made in a stupor. Down comforter, movies. Robitussin. Hot toddies.  We survived. Survive. It seems quite unacceptable, especially to one who has not been even slightly sick in years.  But enough of it.

Went back to checking on the news, email, FB friends yesterday.  With heart dropping like a black rock I read, and had to re-read, in Spanish, then in English hoping I was wrong.  Andrea Misse, the brilliant, and now forever young, always joyful dancer, has died in a car accident.  Her family including her mother, husband, and baby were all in the car.  Reports were sketchy, but initially baby and husband were in critical condition, and now are thought to be improving....

I did not know her except as an inspiration, the one I only knew by how she expressed her self through the music and partner.  Let's say there is a day (and isn't there always?) when one is not sure how it is going, and why keep putting in the nights of miles on the floor, always and ever to be not quite there...and on that day one would, as I did, find a video of Andrea, usually with Javier, but with others too.  Her inner LIGHT was always on.  It came from the inside.  The calibrated elegance along with the down and earthy.  I could see it, and then could remember why.  And go on, and think of every hard practica or disappointing lesson and just another chance to be here, to just own the joy and tears of tango.  To be happy that the music lives in our hearts. She demonstrates the reason.

To her family our deepest condolences.  To her partners, and to her students, to her friends all over the world, a light has gone out.  We have her gift though, a gift that knocked you over with the generosity, elegance, and talent.  A Goddess setting the air on fire.

I won't post a video, they are easy enough to find online.  I can't watch now.  May she rest in peace.

So we put the clocks back on to some version of time.  The time though, it seems, is Now.