The sudden cessation of pain, and tango hangover

I debated about sharing this. It's been in my drafts for quite awhile. How much personal stuff should I share in this blog? Will it make any sense to anyone else? Well, here it is anyway. At least it will be out of the drafts box.

While dancing at the milonga on Saturday I had *the experience*, the liquid, floating, sublime experience of losing myself completely in the music and the leader for the entire song. I don't remember the song now. It was one I knew. It doesn't matter. When G. stopped at the end, he beamed at me and apologized for having to go answer questions now. I think I just blinked for a second before thanking him, grinning madly and drifted back to my chair. I was lightheaded. My ears were ringing before I realized what was happening. My blood sugar was dropping, and then my blood pressure. From the sudden cessation of the pain I had been in all day. Two days? Three days? Whenever the rain started, the pain in my joints came back. So whenever that was. My chair was mercifully very near the food so I didn't have to go far to bring my blood sugar back up. Some apple slices and cheese and the ringing stopped.

Then G. came back, looking for another demonstration partner and I was back up again. Watching the room go by, but not really watching. Just colors like tracers. We were turning around and around, twice around the room before I realized I hadn't actually learned turns yet. I think I giggled then. I think I told him, when he asked "what?" that I didn't know how to turn yet. He laughed and said, 'yes you do, obviously - you've just been.'

The music stopped. More questions from other students. Back in my chair, grinning, radiating.

The other leads were sweet and patient, some newer than me, some far more advanced. More fleeting seconds of that place I love now. One lead who seemed so frustrated by our dancing, stopped at the end of the tanda and told me I had been following very well. I hadn't thought so, but I'm glad he thought so.

I have preferences now, opinions about things. Is it too soon to have those about tango? It seems like I don't have enough experience to have opinions, but there they are.

I don't like to be rushed on to the dance floor as soon as the music starts - before we've leaned a little, moved a little together. I need a sense of my lead, and a sense of him in the music before I feel comfortable starting. Not ages - just a moment or two. I also can't talk a great deal while dancing. A few of the leads were talkers and for some reason I can't multitask very well to the music. It seems that conversing extensively is the opposite of what I want to be doing while dancing. However many years ago it was when I danced with a friend in nightclubs, I told him I wanted to dance until I didn't know my own name. Or his. Or anyone's.

Just dance.

Now, every time I leave a class, or practica, or milonga, I ask myself (and my calendar) - how soon can I come back? How soon until the next class, the next milonga, the next chance. I can tide myself over with music and videos and blogging and twittering to new-found tango friends from all over the world. But it's not quite the same. It was like this to some extent every time I would get back into the habit of dancing, but this is much more intense. That's when I get the tango hangover. The next day. Sometimes even the same night. The quiet settles in around me.

And the countdown begins to the next tango.