Venus goes waltzing across the sun and the stove craps out, the computer slogs, the phone won't stop ringing, an ex contacts me after years of silence, the washing machine overflows, the weather is unseasonably cool, and I can't seem to finish anything that I begin.

I'm not bellyaching I'm just laying those cards on the table so better to read them, a strange hand, like pulling a tarot fool card from the deck during a game of five card stud. Makes me shake my head & want to discard all of the above.

When in doubt, dance.
The key to anydancing or bellydancing is a big vocabulary of moves to better accompany the music. Last night I put on some unfamiliar music and started an impromptu practice. It is not easy to anticipate what the music will do, and it is not easy to be thinking two or three steps ahead. The best I can liken it to is a thirty minute speech in which key phrases from some much-loved but only half-memorized poetry play an integral part. Of course the recitation is in the hips and shoulders, in the lift and drop and twist and shimmy.

I dance until I sweat and then I practice the parts I didn't get. Repetition trains the muscles, start it slow and then speed it up. Then speed it up some more. Then add another motion, layer it, find the control, follow the drum's downbeat with one part of the body, follow the high wild violin with another part of the body. Practice practice. Shake it like to make it rain.

My dance instructor has returned from Cairo for two weeks and has scheduled two three-hour workshops for the next two Saturdays. She will be hard as silver and quick and I hope I can keep up with her. As I told her, I could use a good ass-kicking and she has been speaking Arabic so much she laughed and said, "To do it, yes." This Saturday also marks the end of teaching my beginning bellydance class for three months; I am taking the summer off. I will dance a total of five hours on Saturday, from nine to eleven teaching the basics and breaking down the moves, which takes thought and control, and then one to four trying to imitate and replicate the mind boggling new things Astryd will teach in her workshop. I look forward to the challenge and the rubbery legs and the tired muscles.

I will be barefoot. Even if it is raining.

Have a delight-full weekend.