More tango, and random minor updates

In my attempt to keep this updated at least once a week, here's this week's entry. Not much, but I've thought of another relatively deep topic but will need some time to process my thoughts on it.

Meanwhile, I've had an energy-rising weekend: Among other activities, I walked for about seven miles at Fresh Pond on Saturday just after lunchtime, and then went to Providence Tango's penultimate LongaMilonga (an all-nighter dance) and danced almost nonstop for six hours, from 10pm to 4am! Luckily I had a cool carpool going with some good conversation and laughs, which helped me stay awake for the drive. I got home just before sunrise and woke up just in time to get ready for the three-hour tango practica in Cambridge.

Can't wait for tango/camping this weekend!

Oh, and perhaps the sudden increase in Argentine tango in my social life lately has helped me to lose more weight. Just today a woman at the practica said that every time she sees me, she thinks I've lost more weight. Tonight I stepped on the scales (before dinner) and was surprised to see it pointing to 180 pounds. That's a far cry from the 210 pounds in 2000, and undoubtedly much more in 2002, a year after college graduation (I didn't really pay attention to my weight since then, until now). Woohoo.

For the most part, I'm generally happy lately. It's a nice change of pace.

Ramping for camping, and partying like a 2-year-old

On Labor Day weekend, I plan to go to a tango/camping weekend event, so this weekend I went up to my mom's house to grab some gear. I set up my tent this morning (Sunday), which I haven't used in a few (maybe four?) years. I also wanted to see if two people and a dog could fit in it. Luckily I had volunteers to help me see if I could.

"Wait. You want us to do what??"

"We need to figure out if two people and a dog really can fit in this thing."

"Uhh... you want me to go in there? I don't know -- it looks small!"

"Oh, all right! Here goes nothing!"

(She would only go in, if someone was already inside, when there was a treat waiting for her.)

Plenty of room for another person! Sweet. Good to go.

* * *

Later in the day, we all went to my nephew's birthday party. Met up with some from my brother-in-law's side of the family, whom I hadn't seen since my little sister got married. Anyway, the little tyke got a whole bunch of presents. It was almost like Christmas, except he was the only one with presents.

I love and appreciate women

This came to me as an e-mail forward, but it's good enough for me to share here.

Whatever you give a woman, she's going to multiply.
If you give her sperm, she'll give you a baby.
If you give her a house, she'll give you a home.
If you give her groceries, she'll give you a meal.
If you give her a smile, she'll give you her heart.
She multiplies and enlarges what is given to her.

So - if you give her crap, you will receive a bucket full of shit.

Love and appreciate all the women in your life.

:-)

Dear Dad

Dear Dad,

Happy anniversary. Ten years ago today you stepped into something good in the great big dairy farm in the sky. How is it going? Are the cows healthy and well-fed? Do the milk tanks still have its divine shine, or have you been so successful that there's no denying the wear and tear?

I imagine you must be happy. I imagine you in overalls, shoveling shit and looking up at me with the proudest grin, from ear to ear.

It's been a decade since I last saw you. A decade. A DECADE.

I rarely think of you anymore, but because this is the big one-oh I've been thinking of writing you this letter. (Did you get the one I wrote a couple of years ago? I was planning to write a book about you, but... oh well. I got as far as writing two pages worth of memories, one for each line in my journal. Turns out, that was good enough for me at the time.)

So yeah. I rarely think of you anymore. That doesn't mean never, though. You were a tremendous influence on me, for better or for worse. I am always aware of how I am, how I react, how I overreact. I am aware how much of that had been molded by you, and how much I have grown on my own in the last 10 years.

A decade!

I remember how you often said that sometimes I need to get burned in order to learn a lesson. Not literally, of course. I need to experience life's joys -- and its consequences. (Yet, instead of following through on that philosophy, you continued to shield me, to protect me. I never understood that. Maybe I will when I become a parent.)

To be sure, I have grown a lot in the last year, and especially in the last few months. I realize I needed to experience both joys and its consequences in order to learn what I am capable of, how far I actually go to please people and how disastrous that can be.

I know you were unhappy the last seven years of your life (almost a decade). You're happier now, I hope. Unlike you, I choose not to free myself of self-doubt and pessimism by death. It's too bad you did not realize you could be happy with life while you had a life to live.

Because you see, it's not enough to hold on to a lifelong dream and be discouraged when things do not go your way or how you planned it. Sometimes disastrous consequences are not so dire when you step away from them. And when you step far enough away, you start to realize how unnecessary being caught up in the drama (that you create for yourself) really is, because all that you have to make yourself happy is within yourself. You don't have to travel the world, you don't have to seek sanctuary in others, you don't have to die first before you find true happiness.

Sometimes you need to let go, and go with the flow. ... Be happy you're still breathing in and out, be happy that people can be your friends if you let them, be happy that you alone have the ability to know what is right for you at any given moment, no matter what anyone else says or does. Be happy you're moving in the right direction.

Because sometimes, you do end up getting what you want.

Love,
STASIU

... thunder. ... Can't you tell? ;-)

The other side.

I'll be on the other side in about a half hour

Secret passage to Fresh Pond

Graveyard shift

This week has gone by so fast, yet last Sunday, or even Monday, seems like it was on the other side of the universe.

Events that were once a supernova of negative energy are now just a small blip, a dim twinkle of light among many, something pleasing to appreciate and admire when a glance is thrown in that direction.

Nevertheless, the future is uncertain, and that can be scary.

When I told someone this week about an opportunity that had seemed to present itself, and my small twinge of anxiety surrounding it, the guy got excited. He gets that way when he is about to give sage advice.

"You know, that's fear," he said of my anxiety. Then he told me how he conquers fear.

Find a graveyard, a really old one. Find a really big gravestone that has a description of what the person was like, preferably a firefighter or officer or someone similar who was heroic or otherwise lost their life before his or her time. And then think, what would this person say of your troubles? What advice would this person give you?

"They would tell you that what you fear is so insignificant," he said. "They would tell you to live your life. You know, you look at their gravestone and think about what they accomplished. But they're dead now! They'd say, take those risks! Live your life!"

Interesting.

I live close to Mount Auburn Cemetery, so I decided to go there. It's a big cemetery, so at first I thought the burying ground on the intersection of Mount Auburn and Arlington streets in Watertown was part of it. I went there and soon realized it wasn't. It must be a family cemetery. A really old one, too. Not many BIG gravestones, other than one tall and proud one for the only Watertown soldier to have fallen in the Battle of Lexington. There were many old slabs from the 1700s, the 1600s and even the 1500s. So old that the typography of the letter "s" looked more like the letter "f", and abbreviations for some words were unfamiliar (although decipherable).

Back in the summers of late high school through early college, I worked at the local church doing maintenance, including burying people. A backhoe would remove the earth and place it on a pile close to the grave on the morning of, or the day before, the funeral. A concrete box would be lowered in, to house the casket. After the funeral, my supervisor and I would shovel back in the dirt, packing it in as much as possible. Somehow, more often than not, all the dirt impossibly fit back in place.

And here, in this family plot, where there were no concrete blocks, these slabs were commemorating those who had not lived for 300 to 500 years. They were dead. They were no more. They were dust.

But I am not. I am alive. Upon reflection, the anxiety I had was just laughable. It really was insignificant. Had I let it get the better of me, I would have continued to rot in pessimism. Because I shifted my perspective and was able to shrug the anxiety off, I was able to enjoy the rest of the week. And take a risk. And live.