Salsa dancing is awesome.

I don’t know how, and I don’t know why, but somehow I have become completely obsessed with Latin dancing. For the last month, I’ve been attending a twice-weekly salsa class, and I think I’m finally starting to get the hang of it.

Social dancing is something that’s becoming increasingly a thing of the past. It’s either considered anachronistic or misconstrued entirely. Most people seem to automatically translate the phrase “going dancing” to “going clubbing.” Mind you, I have nothing against people who spend Friday nights at a club. It’s their way of letting off steam, but I’m not the kind of person who finds grinding up against total strangers enjoyable. I also have a problem with $35 door fees, an intense dislike of expensive watered-down drinks, a profound hatred for rooms full of people who are drunk or drugged out beyond comprehension, and a general disinterest in clubbing fashion. To each their own, I suppose. [Aziz Ansari has a wonderful bit that sums up my view up clubbing. Check it.]

Latin dancing, particularly salsa, is a whole different ball game. It’s got a rich cultural history, and it takes a lot of practice to master. Contemporary salsa dancing began in the 1970s in New York, drawing on cha-cha-cha and mambo influences, but the tradition goes way farther back. There’s actually an argument about whether or not mambo and salsa are the same dance, and there’s also a raging debate about who actually owns the dance. Some people trace it to the turn of the century, when American soldiers did stints in Cuba during the war and got a taste for Latin rhythms. The Spanish claim it through a tenuous linguistic link, the Dominicans feel very strongly about it, and others view it as a cornerstone of Latin American identity. It’s a very flirtatious dance, and several of the moves are easily translatable to other dance genres, like the merengue and the bachata.

(While we’re on the subject, tell me bachata isn’t the most beautiful and intimate dance you’ve ever seen!)

Fact: salsa isn’t easy. It may not take a lot of effort to learn the basic steps, but mastering them, uniquely styling them, and performing them with another person is a whole ‘nuther story. I will never forget my first time dancing it. Despite his past failures at dancing, one of my friends was kind enough to humor me and accompany me to a class in West Oakland at a local salsa studio. I picked up the footwork pretty easily, but adding another person into the mix made things ridiculously complicated. (It didn’t help that he was hopelessly clumsy, but he had a great attitude about it all, which is all that really mattered.) I didn't step on any toes, but I definitely did not like what I saw in the mirror.

A salsa dancing couple has two components: a leader and a follower. Purely through pressure on the shoulders and hands, the leader communicates to the follower what steps to take. Gaining the confidence to lead another person through a set of super involved and intricate moves is quite a feat, and it takes a special skill to for the follower to be able to successfully anticipate where on earth (well, the dancefloor) the dance is going. Put all of the complex moves over a song that’s anywhere from 160 to 220bpm, and you have a recipe for disaster. Mis-stepping, getting off the beat, kicking your partner in the knees, and accidentally elbowing somebody are all common plights of the beginner.

Personally, I’ve found the challenge to be quite engaging and very rewarding. Among other things, it’s a great way to get to meet new people. As somebody who recently graduated from college and had most of her friends move far, far away, this is a draw. By nature, salsa dancers are a very friendly breed -- a characteristic that may have something to do with the difficulty of the dance. Partners are frequently rotated, and nobody frowns down upon you for being a beginning dancer. It’s also a great character study. You can tell a lot about a person from their dancing frame -- ie, are they confident? Do they hold themselves upright? Do they trust themselves enough to lead, and do they trust you to know how to follow? Sometimes, you’re partnered with somebody who’s there with the sole intention of having a good time, and it feels great. Other times, you’re partnered with a diva who feels the need to show off and ends up slouching and sulking when they make a mistake (something that’s bound to happen). Depending on the character of your partner, you either never want the song to end, or you can’t wait for the dance to be over.

It’s a disciplined kind of enjoyment. You have to invest time into learning the steps, you need to stay with the rhythms, and you have to feel confident about yourself and your skills to be able to dance with a partner. A drink or two may help you loosen up a bit, but you cannot go out to a club, get mindlessly drunk, and expect to rock the dancefloor. It's one of those endeavors that gives you back exactly what you put into it. But who wouldn’t feel good being able to dance like this?

I’m not saying it’s for everybody, but I definitely enjoy it. Come dancing with me?

The Marriage of Sticks

With the end of 2013 came the end of my career as an undergraduate student. Due to my being Slavic Cultures major, my last few semesters of school were entirely consumed with reading up on Russian Imperial history and the Soviet era. With this came reading through reams and reams of 19th and 20th century literature -- something I enjoyed immensely (to be honest, it was the sole reason I opted to declare a second major in the absurd and highly impractical field of Slavistics). Over the course of my studies, I discovered a bunch of authors whom I came to adore, such as Ivan Goncharov, Andrei Platonov, Venedikt Yerofeev, Andrei Bely, Aleksandr Blok, Vladimir Mayakovsky…

I could go on and list for ages.

As many bookworms know, Russian literature (well, Slavic literature in general) isn’t typically the most cheery genre in existence. It tends to be full of suicide, existential angst, and disillusionment with the world at large. I have fond recollections of the conversations I overheard in the hallways of the Smolny campus of St. Petersburg State University during my brief stint as a student in Russia. They all went a bit like this:

Student: So, how does the story end?

Professor: He dies.

Student: What? Him too?

Professor: Yes. Eet ees a very Russian ending.

Novel upon novel of doomed characters and unhappy endings naturally take a toll on one’s optimism and cheeriness. So as not to become the most glum person in existence, I made a pact with myself to refrain from reading Russian books for a while after I graduated.

Well, …

I made a conscious effort.

Russian literature is following me around, man. In an attempt to break out of the existential black hole of Slavic cynicism, I picked up Jonathan Carroll’s The Marriage of Sticks. I had encountered Jonathan Carroll before -- years ago, when I took a Gothic Literature class during my formative years in community college. I knew him from his The Land of Laughs, an adorable yet terrifying book about children’s stories coming alive. I sort of knew what to expect from him; he writes literary themed stories that are tinged with the occult and classic gothic-style nightmarish terror.

Exhibit A: Author Jonathan Carroll. Obviously a very cheery person. What was I thinking?!

All things considered, The Marriage of Sticks is an absolutely phenomenal book and a must-read for any former English/Comparative Literature major or used bookseller. It’s a story about a highly successful used bookdealer who never manages to have a successful romantic relationship, and it’s full of paragraphs like the following:

Just this morning, right before you arrived, I was thinking about a picnic I had with the Hemingways at Auteuil. Lewis Gallantiere, Hemingway and mad Harry Crosby [sic. I can’t emphasize my love for the Oxford comma enough.] Why those two men ever got along was beyond me, but it was a lovely day. We ate Westphalian ham and Harry lost three thousand francs on the horses.

At college I had read a poem by Whitman about an old man in a boat, fishing. He has lived a full life, but is tired and now peacefully waiting to die. Until then, he’s content to sit and fish and remember. Even as a kid, full of pepper and brass, I was enchanted with the idea of living so fully that at the end you had nothing left you wanted to do and were willing to die. Years later, Frances Hatch became a living example of that and her influence on me was profound.

It’s like intellectual porn, masturbating the readerly ego as one recognizes all of Jonathan Carroll’s artsy fartsy references. (He’s brilliant. More about him here.) Did you recognize the Whitman poem?

It’s also got a bunch of witty paragraphs geared towards self-reflection, ie:

In the end, each of us has only one story to tell. Yet despite having lived that story, most people have neither the courage nor any idea of how to tell it.

It’s too easy to turn your best profile to history’s mirror. but history doesn’t care. I have learned that. Mirrors and treasure maps. X marks the spot not where a life begins, but where it begins to matter. Forget who your parents were, what you learned, what you did, gained or lost. Where did the trip begin? When did you know you were walking through the departure gate?

The main character is middle-aged Miranda Romanac. She’s afraid to become emotionally vulnerable to people, so she has a slew of one night stands and generally unsatisfying intimate relationships. In order to try to get herself through the dreariness of everyday existence, she holds on tightly to the memory of her high school romances. The book is full of colorful characters, such as quirky modern art dealers, crazy artists, Hungarian psychic gypsies, and ghosts of lovers past. Here’s where the Russian literature comes in: there’s a crazy book editor that runs around the streets of New York breaking the hearts of men with a line of Mayakovsky tattooed on her wrist -- “Hope gleams in the idiot heart.”

If you’re looking for a cheerful read, I wouldn’t really recommend this title. It’s far too Russian in nature. I never give spoilers, but it doesn’t end well. If, however, you’re looking for something that will engage you and make you think, pick it up. It doesn't disappoint.