Juggling Baby Dragons

I was in a virtual reality last night, juggling baby dragons. An apt metaphor for life, that.

I'm helping them learn to fly, goes the narrative, conveniently calming any concerns I might have about the consent of small, adorable critters to being tossed around.

My VR-related fiction and non-fiction has made it into publication, and might well again, so I keep up on the industry, which is why I am at this showcase of VR Hackathon winners, waiting to go in to the dragon-juggling demo.

Goggles on, handsets ... handy. And: go!

I'm on a stone platform, staring out across a rock-strewn table, into an open, cloud-spotted sky. At the other end of the rock table is a amiable-looking dragon, staring off into space. The mom, I presume, since there's a line of baby dragons between me and her.

One by one they launch themselves into the air at me. I grab. I miss. I drop. I try again. The ones that go down, or get thrown clear of the platform, fade or fly away, seemingly none the worse for wear.

When I do catch them, they make the most adorable little sounds. Sort of an "oh!" of delight. Catch two at once, and they do it harmony. "ooohh!"

The juggling part is not quite as easy as I imagined. Yes, I know how to juggle. Not well, mind you, but I've managed it a time or two. For a moment.

Part of the problem is that I'm distracted, by, well, everything. The clouds. The scenery. The tree. What happens to the ones who go over the side.

They could tune this to make me seem a better juggler than I am.("Virtual" reality, after all. Not "you-suck" reality. Which I do.)

Ah, but I can slow down time! Now the babies launch slooow. But now it's also a little dull. There is something delicious about seeing them soar, and a slow float just isn't the same.

So they're coming at me -- whoosh! -- one after another, and despite my heroic agility, I'm dropping them, then looking down to see where they went, and missing more of them.

It's immersive, so I want to look around and try other things. Can I hit that far tree? Can I throw a baby dragon through the rock circle? Or two into each other? (Oooo, they make a new sound!)

I toss one high into the air, watching it flap in the sun. I'm missing more and more of them, but I'm having fun, and isn't that what it's about?

Well, it's also about sharing. I can't see it, but I'm aware that there's a line forming behind me, back in the not-so-virtual. I reluctantly take off the goggles and hand the controls to the woman next in line. I sit down to watch.

The moment she gets in to the VR, she starts hurling the dragons at the rock-strewn table. Rock by rock, she cleans the platform of debris. With baby dragons.

"No one's ever done that before," says one of the creators with a bemused look.

She wasn't there to juggle. She was there to do something else. Clean up. And she did.

When she was done, she took off the controls, and smiled at those of us watching. "I failed juggling in middle school."

What I learned last night, juggling baby dragons:

• Life is full of baby dragons. They just keep coming. I don't have to catch them all. Let some drop, and others sail on by. They can take care of themselves.
• Some people make their own rules and still win.

My muse added this: "Wait until they grow up to full-size, still thinking they're small enough for you to juggle. Then, when they launch themselves at you, you're really in trouble."

I'm a Grown-up Now

You know how when you go out to a restaurant, the server brings you a warm dish, puts it down in front of you, and says:

"Careful now -- that's hot"?

Let me ask you something. What's the first thing a kid does when you tell them not to touch something?

Yeah.

Also, I don't know what my server means by hot. Frankly, most people are wimps. So I touch it, just to find out how hot.

Typically not very. I like hot. Hot soups, hot drinks. Really hot. Most lattes are lukewarm by my standards. When I'm ordering from a Barista, I say, "make it dangerously hot. Put me at risk." Gets my point across.

So imagine my delight when, last week, a steaming, baked pesto-tomato-egg dish was put in front of me with no warning at all.

Just like that.

I grinned like a fool. I told the servers how delighted I was and thanked them profusely for treating me like an adult. I might have scared them a bit with my enthusiasm.

Oh, and the food was fabulous, too.

"Sorry" doesn't change it

I've been using email longer than almost anyone I know, thanks to an early career on the net. There are some email subject lines that I've come to view with a certain amount of gravity.

The first is a person's name. It almost always means they're dead.

The second is "Sorry." This isn't always a suicide note, but recently that's just what it was.

There's something especially agonizing about losing someone to suicide. The pain ripples out in circles around the person to family, friends, communities. It affects far more people than they could possibly have guessed.

Every time I'm touched by a suicide, I want to reach out to all the people in my circles, just in case they might be thinking that way. I want to say this:

Friend, I don't dispute your right to check out early. Your body and consciousness belongs to you as much as anything can. I know life can be some hard shit, and yes, there are times to consider bailing.

But I want you to know something first.

People will suffer. You killing yourself causes deep emotional pain in more people than you realize. Even if you're considerate and avoid leaving blood on the walls, even with your thoughtful final instructions and that nice note about how it's not our fault -- even then, my friend, suicide is a violent, shocking, and brutal act.

We take the loss of you hard. Far more of us will be affected than you suspect. We'll be angry. We'll be hurt. Some will hurt a lot. Some our whole lives.

Given that you're considering throwing it all out anyway, I'm asking you to consider some other answers first. You think you've tried it all, but a sudden exit is evidence you haven't. Instead, throw out your career, your city, your clothes, your assumptions. Shake it up. Why not?

Listen, I've been where you're standing. I'm don't claim to know your pain, but I've stood at the edge of the cliff and looked over. I found other ways.

So I ask you to look for other ways. Find someone who understands. Ask for help. Take new risks. Seek out cohorts. Even meds. Why not? You've given up all other approaches anyway, right?

It's your choice, of course. But if you decide to take your life, be very clear that you're also taking parts of other people's lives with you. Being sorry doesn't change that.

Easily Amused

"It's funny how the printer only runs out of paper when you're trying to print something," I say, refilling the hungry little bugger.

My companion was distracted by something, probably by reading the document I'd printed half of, so it took him a moment to register what I'd said.

"Yeah," he answered finally, "but at least it's in the last place you looked."

We both laughed.

Hungry Little Bugger

There are moments when I'm pretty glad to be alive. A lot of those moments seem entwined with humor and backed by laughter.

That's just the sort of comment that would have made me roll my eyes in disgust when I was younger.  I must be growing up; I'm more and more easily amused.

It Takes all Kinds

"...to make a world.'

But that's patently absurd. It doesn't take all kinds to make a world; it takes exactly the kinds we have, because -- take a look around -- we have a world.

What this is really trying to say is something more like: "I wish to believe that the world requires for its very existence all the weirdnesses that people manifest so that my own hidden (or obvious) weirdnesses might be not only acceptable but necessary for our mutual continued existence."

In other words, I'm necessary. My aberrations are of value to the world. My dark corners are positively meaningful.

Wishing doesn't make it so. But here's what I think is true: it takes all kinds to cover the permutation space and to explore the infinite variety of the many ways there are to be human.

Well, okay. Maybe that works. Now that I've rephrased it.

Guess I'm one of those kinds.

The Educated Tongue

Last weekend I went to the Northwest Chocolate Festival. I figured I'd have some chocolate and maybe even get some entertainment. Instead I was stunned. In a good way.

With table after table of high quality ("fine") dark chocolate, it's hard -- nay, for some of us, impossible -- to pass up the opportunity to educate our tongues. Educate I did. Until I was nearly sick.

Education

Yes, it is possible to consume too much superb chocolate. You just have to work hard at it.

I also learned a tremendous amount about chocolate. I had no idea it was so complicated to make or that the difference between the wealth of the cacao farmers and us consumers was so great that most farmers never even taste the chocolate that results from their work because they can't afford it.

I also understand that making us consumers feel bad for eating chocolate does the farmers no good at all. The key is to gently educate us about what it takes to make really good chocolate, get our tongues involved, and then -- as happened with coffee -- we will gladly pay for the quality we will come to demand. Everyone benefits. Even the farmers.

A little simplistic?  Sure. But Big Chocolate (Hershey, Nestle, etc.) are not interested in creating educated consumers. They know how to fill out their few percentages of actual chocolate with sugar and emulsifiers and artificial ingredients to make it taste sort of like chocolate to the uneducated. It's cheaper that way. Never mind the farmers. It's business.

Cacao fruit

And that's pretty simple. Unpleasant, but simple. That's the corporate entity for you.

While I'm at it, don't bother to choose your chocolate based on the "fair trade" certifications. Farmers get maybe a percent at best for your buck-fifty extra. It's the certification company that's raking in the bucks. I know: I wanted it to be that simple, too. It will get simpler, but for now it's just messy.

I predict chocolate will change in the upcoming years and for the better. Remember when you used to drink instant coffee every morning and now you drink fresh-brewed lattes? Keep watching chocolate. Keep educating your tongue.

And if you didn't go to the festival this year, don't miss next year's. It was seriously fun and decadently wonderful. And oh-so educational.

Ah, Life. Ah, Tango.

I'm at the dance studio coaching a woman who has only had a couple of classes. She's a bit wide-eyed at the whole Argentine tango, which is something I see fairly often, given how -- well, much of a muchness tango can be. She looks at my feet, notices that I'm wearing jazz slippers -- soft shoes with a very flat, barely there heel on them -- and she says, "oh, those must give you better balance, right?"

I've been dancing this dance for a years and her question catches me in a web of considerations. It's a bit esoteric, how dance shoes work in tango. On top of that it's individual, since those of us who dance in heels (women, yeah, mostly) have very different feet and very different movement patterns.

I asked similar questions early on, about flats, stiletto heels, thick heels, high and low high heels. I'd get a different answer every time, and my experience almost inevitably contradicted them all. Wrong for me maybe or wrong for where I was at then.

What no one told me is that what you need in a dance shoe changes as your skill and balance changes, as your style matures, and as your partners improve. Also, it depends on the condition of your feet. I never knew feet could be buff.

It depends how the particular shoe fits your particular foot (not feet, because each foot is different); the more control you have, the less wiggle room (literally) you want in the fit. But that's calculated after your feet have swollen from dancing, not before.

This is all too much to explain to someone who's had three lessons.

By now my silence has gone on a handful of seconds. She says "well, of course it's easier!" and laughs at herself, as if to admit her question's answer is obvious and simple.

But it isn't. I say so.

I explain that as she gets better, as she wants more smoothness and control in turns on the ball of her foot, thinner heels provide an advantage, because you've got less heel to get off of to make the turn. That for linear movements, the thicker and lower heel might be more stable, but for circular movements, it's the thinner heel that -- ironically -- gives you the better stability in motion.

Kinda like life, you know. We gather things to ourselves -- people, places, beliefs -- that have low, thick heels, to give us stability in our linear movements. And then we realize we want to do turns, we want to try something new, maybe wacky, with a whole different perspective. Suddenly the very things that kept us stable through all those linear years and linear concepts make it hard for us to turn gracefully. Hard to do new things.

Ah, life. Ah, tango.

Better at Me

I'm coming off a weekend of a lot of tango dancing with friends and strangers and some things have occurred to me.  It's funny how the stuff you hear over the years comes back to you in waves of meaning and applicability.  For example, what if I only took steps that were right for me at the moment, rather than pushing myself to take a step because I thought it was expected?  What if I took my time with each step, even at the risk of being late?  Would this change my dance?

Most certainly it would.  I've been doing that, more and more, and it's -- delicious.

And of course tango is a mirror for life.

Someone recently said to me between dances, his eyes wide and his tone full of surprise, "there's something about the way you dance... it feels like-- like you bring something to the conversation."

Well, yes. In tango, the woman's role -- we say "the follow" in this country, but that's sort of a confusing term -- is about listening.  As is the man's role.  But the woman's role is also about responding, about saying something in return.  About making it a conversation. Too many men -- "leads" -- don't get that part.   And by "don't get" I don't just mean don't understand.  I mean never receive.  What a shame.

I realized something recently about why I dance tango, and I've been saying it a lot lately:

I don't dance tango to get better at tango.  I dance tango to get better at me.