P o c k e t CT

This past weekend I signed up to Iron Dance. I wasn’t going to actually sign up just do the five contra dances required but Jan signed me up last Sunday and made me official. She actually didn’t sign me up so much as change me from “Jan’s Friend” to my name. What is this Iron Dancing? Is it like and Iron Man Competition? Is it like Iron Chef with folk music? Or is it like Ironing your hair while twirling?

Iron Dancing is to do five nights of contra dancing which include the Dawn Dance in Brattleboro VT. Jan and I decided to car pool for the lot of this. First up is Heathen Creek in the Scout House Concord, MA. The music was out of this world lovely. As full as I have seen this place with four lines. I start the dance with my neighbor Adam who decides he loves the floor, adores the band and celebrates by spinning me into the stone age, or maybe the Iron Age is more appropriate here. Friday was delicious. The band was Les Z Boys and had a flirtatious fiddler and a piano man with a howl that can make you just pop out of your skin with glee. That night I was popping out of my skin with a different cause, couldn’t possibly dance like that and left after break. Saturday was a two band loveliness that started you off with a pick up band and then finished you off panting and happy with Crowfoot. I danced and danced. Sunday morning was yoga and then an intention to bake treats for the night which turned into speed planting the tomatoes and going to pick up Jan two hours late. We drive up to Vermont, take a walk in AgentY’s forbidden mushroom patch, have dinner at the Brattleboro Coop and are ready to Dawn Dance.
Well sort of
Frankly I wasn’t much in the mood for dancing, my back is feeling cranky. One more too tall man yanking me around and I will be laying on the floor moaning, and not in a good way. But then it starts and the band is wonderful, the sound is good (it is a difficult space) the floor isn’t as sticky as I remember and it isn’t crowded (yet.) I try to dance three and sit out one. I try to stay hydrated. It seems like almost everyone I have ever enjoyed dancing with is here and smiling. I start sitting out more happy to be lounging on the stairs eating brownies (thanks Will) listening to the music and watching people interact. As the night gets late the band changes to a mini version of Big Bandemonium I am reinvigorated with the brass section, dance for an hour. I sit on the stairs watching people interact. Two people are talking with each other she is leaning and looking toward him, he is looking straight ahead and is noticeably upright. I analyze the body language until something else distracts me. As it is getting later the crowd is getting younger, the dancing sloppy and distracted. There is a people puddle of cuddling by the elevator, I hear there is amazing singing downstairs, everywhere you turn there are people bathed in the beauty of the music and the combined energy of the place; that energy is dwindling and hanging on into the early morning hours. I last until four and as I leave I see the first bit of morning twilight, thinking of the crepuscular creatures awakening for a romp.

Monday is sleep, wake, deal with Jan’s annoying sick dog nap, cuddle, try to find a swimming hole, listen to beautiful singing, drive to Nelson, car picnic, and then dance some more
There are 21 Iron Dancers at Nelson and we all get a medal and certificate listing the five places we danced. Concord, Greenfield, Greenfield, Brattleboro, Nelson. There is chorus jig, Jan is playing and I want to be in line with the playful girls who were behind me last time. The La la la’s down the inside are loud and everyone is jubilant. We drive to Vermont and then back down to Greenfield and I am so tired I can not possibly make it back to Wendell. I sleep on Jan’s couch and think something I haven’t in the 15 months since I started dancing. I’m tired, I think I am done for a few days.

However Big Bandemonium with their full brass section will be at the grange Saturday and I will probably be too.

Geesh

This weekend I got a message from the most awesome Delmer inquiring the origins of my last name.

Hello Christine,

Sorry to bother you, but I’m curious about your last name.

It’s a new one to me and each time I see it I find I’m spending hours and hours trying to sort out where it originated. Sometimes an afternoon will pass and I’ll realize that while I’ve glazed through six episodes of a “Sex In the City” marathon I’m no closer to sorting out where “Texiera” might have come from; I’ll typically spend the rest of the marathon puzzling over the surname “Avitable” and how it is Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda always have the correct change when getting out of a cab.

(By the way, and as Dave Barry might say, “Texiera” would be a great name for a band. Come to thing of it a Ford too.)

Anyway, I had a moment and thought I’d fire off a long-winded e-mail asking you about it. I’m leaning toward Irish (based on the red hair even though I know very few Irish people have red hair and, you know, I could have red hair if I wanted it.)

In closing, I should point out that as a “Delmer” I’m in no way saying anything unkind about Texiera.

I hope all is well and that you’ve found something fun to do with your economic stimulus money.

Delmer

I laugh reading this on my phone, Jan say what so I show her. When we were finished gushing about how great Delmer is, I started thinking on my last name and how it came to be like it is.

When I lived in Italy a friend kept calling me “Cristina Tessitura” and when I asked him over and over again why, he would say flatly “It is your name.” I thought he was renaming me, something I wasn’t keen on. It took several iterations to discover that what he meant was that my name in Italian was Tessitura. This means Weaver. When I was a kid I strung a loom on to the dowels of a deacons bench and would pull one up and one down and stuff a scratchy acrylic ball of yarn in between. I would then give the uneven lump to my mom. I saw camel hair blanket weavers in Morocco and was obsessed for a while. I looked into a loom, too big, too expensive. Maybe my fascination is all about my name. Unknown to me it had been casting a spell on me for years. Perhaps I come from a long line of cloth creators and could use this as my prime excuse to spend the space and the bucks. Apparently, I am destined to weave; my name means weaver. As an aside from prattling along about my name I did get to try weaving and am in love with the actually weaving process but didn’t much like threading up the five gazillion strings through the loom, bent over for hours killed my back. I am good at untangling the mess that was indubitably created half the time I was dressing the thing but who wants to spend so much time undoing birds nests of thread? It turned out – not me. If anyone loves these things we should chat. I have the loom getting dusty in the basement.

So the name means weaver it is Portuguese and is misspelled. Teixeira is the proper spelling but my grandmother spoke very little English when she was having all her babies she would say tesh-air-a teshaira – in Portuguese the “e” softens the x to a shhhh and the r is rolled. The nurses all guessed. All my uncles have a different spelling. Uncle Joe is the one who has it spelled properly and is proud of this. He would bring this up as a arguing point at various times – your name is misspelled. I like this. That my name is a little off is a reminder that I come from immigrant stock, working the Lowell textile mills not being entirely understood.

My name is pronounced in the US TEX-AIR-A. It is cringe style horrible to hear it TEXT-TARE-A. My brothers were all nicknamed TEX, I never was. Except that one friend calls me TEXMEX and I love her enough to let her get away with it. My sister had a boyfriend who gave her a keychain with script that said “sexy texy” and one day I had to bring her keys to jr. high school. I was teased relentlessly and for years after about my huge ego. Geeze, the nerve of someone to think they are sexy! There is a fairly famous comic artist and a baseball player with my name (spelled properly.) I think they are both Marks

So Delmer, my red hair comes from a box titled L’oreal not by dna. Without chemical assistance and a lot of sun it would end up a coppery-orange abused mass of brown. It is about as Irish as firecrackers. Although I may have a smidge of Irish in the maternal half of me that didn’t lead to a surname. That side is half Quebecois and half total mutt. If you want this red hair I can get you the color name. It is Auburn something and has a hot woman with long hair on the box. Maybe I picked it for how sexy the model was. Isn’t that funny?

I hope your Sex in the City cab fare mysteries have worked themselves out. I can not help you a lick there.

As a band name I am imagining an 80s big hair band like Styx or White Snake as a Ford I am imagining a little moped zipping slowly between cars.

So now tell me everyone… what’s up with your name?

Some funny things are happening in my speech patterns. First of all there is this odd triplet thing occurring. I love love love New England. Other things are good good good. Lately I have been all cry cry cry baby. I don’t know where I picked this up. But I suspect it is in the same place I got the other thing happening in my verbalizations. I.Know.

See if I am going to agree with you now I will not just say I know. There is a certain inflection in it that makes the know and I the exact same length. There is a swing and staccato end to know. I have noticed this, can not stop, and can not stop noticing it every time it flies off my lips.

I may be actually turning in to Theresa, one phrase at a time.

If I get to spend any time with someone, I will pick up bits of the speech. I can’t help it and it happens fast. One more day with Karl and I would’ve had a slight Dallas drawl. Fifteen minutes with an Aussie and I have gotten two new words and funny way to say “day”. I still have a slightly North Carolina way to say the word “out” from a romance with a foxy writer in 2000. You can still tell that I am from Boston’s northern suburbs. If I have had a few drinks you may be able to tell that to the extent of mammals have fouah chambahed haaaahts but my accent is tempered by the other places I lived and people I have gotten close to.

This all works very well when trying to pick up another language. I lived in Rome for the summer of 1995. It was entirely out of spite that I learned Italian. My friend who I was staying with (and for longer because a job fell through) got it in her head that I was copying her by going expat for a summer. She informed me the day I arrived that she would prefer if I didn’t glom onto her friends. Being a very social person, her friends could be defined as everyone in Rome who spoke English. I think well fuck you, I will just learn Italian. Here I should admit that I failed French in school, was totally miserable with sentence structure verb conjugations and the like. I thought myself language stupid. So I set out anyway, spiteful and pissy with an I’ll-show-her attitude that could do anything. One hour a day with the Prego! book and then to my study plan, I sat in the park. I would plop myself down near Piazza del Popolo and wait until a boy came by to chat me up. This being Italy, me being foreign and therefore appearing much easier than Italian women, took usually about five minutes. I would then proceed to completely butcher my newly learned words, thumb through my dictionary, stall, struggle and um a lot to this person. This person thinks that if they are patient enough they may get smooched, eventually their patience with my pathetic attempt at communication is thin enough to try for that contact. I at this point look at my watch, explain I have to go but would love to continue this later and then take their phone number down in my Italian-English dictionary. I would then move to another bench somewhere else say a little ways away near Museo Borghesie.

I did this all day long for about two weeks.

In the end my dictionary’s initial and ending blank pages were full of telephone numbers. My friend who was at work most days, had no idea what I was up to all day long. i think she thought I was doing touristy things. One evening we were walking out from this little pub she and her friends frequented, and at this point she had calmed down about me not going near any of her buds. Then someone said something a little rude to her and before she could say anything I sort of told him off. In Italian.

“Where did you learn all that?” my friend asks, “In the park” I quickly reply.

What is interesting is that I learned Italian, I was pretty good at making things sound right. This is good because I hear from the Italians that Italian with an American accent is about as nice sounding as a car alarm symphony with a crow cackling chorus. I had a necklace with a parrot on it that I wore all summer to help with this. In the end it paid off that only my clothes gave me away as a little American. Toward the end of the summer I even went on a date with someone who spoke no English at all. I was to meet him at the restaurant he worked at near Termini. He was running late so I walked down to visit some friends who live by the forum. I walk down via Cavour* the few minutes it takes to get to their house. 4 cars stop on the way to say odd things to me, mostly men asking if I would like to go to a disco. No I am going to visit a friend I say, now fairly confident I understand what is going on around me. I visit with Ian and Nicolas for a while and then make my return back to the restaurant at closing time. As I am walking the car stopping thing keeps happening. A total of eight different cars stopped to ask me little things. Where are you going, where are you from, do you want t ride, but mostly do you want to go to a disco? “No, thank you, I prefer to walk, I am meeting a friend.” I am pleased to use the gerund properly. I get to the restaurant and Giorgio is almost done. I go sit on the steps across the street where there is one of those interesting phallic statues in front of a pretty lit basillica. Yet another car stops this is a young man in a Panda who starts to chat. From my Italian lessons in the park, I still will pretty much talk with anyone who can put up with my pathetically small conversational capabilities, but at this point I am a little tired of the attention. Please let me alone I am waiting for someone. Come on don’t you want to go to a disco no go away. Where are you from? You must be German, because the German girls act like this and it isn’t pretty I look away. He drive around the traffic circle again, pulls up to me rolling my eyes in disgust gets out of the car to tell me he isn’t dangerous. I tell him I don’t care a lick and go away. At least he couldn’t tell I am an American.

During my date we talked about the restaurant, Romania, the similarity in language of the two cultures, Dracula, and then the incessant car stopping. He is laughing at first a little and then a lot. I have no idea why until he explains that the street I took the get to my friend’s house is commonly used by prostitutes. I guess the Italian equivalent to “Wanna Party?” is “Let’s go to a disco.” So although I could say something in a passable accent it really didn’t mean I knew what was going down.

* I may have the street dead wrong so if you are going to Rome looking for prostitutes you may want to ask someone where they are.

Last night I was lying on the couch Facebook chatting with a dancer friend and I kept hearing thump thump thump on the picture window. Ah it is Junebugs making the intermittent tapping. Years ago when Rebekah and I shared this house we had a summer of the best answering machine outgoing messages.

Here is a sample as I remember them

You have reached the Wendell Junebug Flight School. Preregistration for your junebugs is now open. If you think that these little creatures fly like they are drunken distracted fools we can help. Please leave a message.

Wendell’s own cicada symphony is performing nightly, loud enough to keep you awake these tiny bugs are working all afternoon and evening to make summer sound special. Leave a loud message so you aren’t drowned out by them.

You have reached Christine and Rebekah at 3060, if you are calling to report the first firefly sighting in town please let us also know where this was and your prize will be delivered in person whenever we figure out which free store item to give away.

Rebekah’s name is still on my voicemail prompt even though she has been gone well over a year. Today, as in right now I am going to remove it as a magic spell to get her back to Massachusetts. I need her you see.

I am thinking about that specifically to brush off this early morning. It involved a dream and waking up crying. There was a contra dance and my mom was there, I was outside and up rolled Ryan in red car with two friends (young, obnoxiously waiting for me to get out of the way so they could get off to their mid 20s hijinx without ms. boring around.) They are all drunk and manic and I am immediately happy to see Ryan and disappointed not be be able to get through the mania and connect. I invite them in, I tell Ryan he can see my mom. I get inside and I have missed her. I wake up crying and starting adding any other rejection or disappointment to my mental mix. I start to wonder what the fuck I am doing, look at the calendar and wonder is this pms? It feels like it, but is too early. So what do I need here? I think of things to mitigate ways I feel vulnerable but don’t want to take them on just yet. What I’d like is morning coffee with Rebekah, her mimicking my mom and making me laugh and cry, even her scolding me up one side and down the other for taking risks that I said I shouldn’t and then heading off to fiske pond for a dip and some sun. I picture her flight from Japan and it’s continuation right to my living room.

hope hope

Apparently Uncle Sam gave me $600 bucks in effort to “stimulate the economy.” I don’t really believe that giving everyone a sack of cash and tell them to blow it will resolve anything in the country’s financial universe that won’t erode like cotton candy in the rain.

So what should I do with this cash?

Here are my ideas so far.

A. Go to Montreal and spend it there. I could probably even take someone with me with that much loot – Do you want to?
B. Put it in savings
C. Give it to some nice peacenic organization
D. I would add pay off loans but I am mostly debt free, maybe I can give it to someone I love who isn’t in that place.
E. Burn it in protest of ridiculous money schemes.

What do you think I should do with it? – please feel free to split it between some if you can’t decide.
any other ideas?