Deciding on Berlin

It will be our first real vacation in three years, and it has taken us months to decide how we'll use our six June nights in a foreign place.  Budapest was high on our list, then Marakesh, then Turkey. We toyed with southern Spain, with Sicily, with Rome. We were making reservations in Croatia when we stopped: Why not Berlin?  I wrote to Paul, my friend who knows and loves Berlin, who teaches it and writes of it. Stay in Mitte, he said.

And so we will. We are, at last, going somewhere that is not here. I will take my camera; I will see. If any of you Berlin travelers have recommendations, I am all ears.

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When I dance

it all falls away—the web of bruises that I wear on the inside, the lacerations of my own self-doubt, the stutter and stall of anxiety.  I'm just there, at the studio, working with John on the tango's speed and pop, watching Kyle and Moira weave elegantly by, throwing my arms around Miss Cristina. Dance is the hardest, most frustrating, and most happy thing that I do, and even if I slide past my stops, even if I lose the pelvic angle, even if rise where I'm to have fallen, I am moving, and therefore alive—outside the reach of harm, ignorant (for a spell) of anything unright, everything cruel.

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There's just something about street puppets

They're oversized and placid.  They bob as if floated on the tide.  Down below, the crowds are scrambling.  Up above, they hardly blink.

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Street Portraits: Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts

Scenes from this day. 

Can you tell which one is my fine city's fine mayor, Michael Nutter?

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How Philly Moves: this is my city, dancing

Tonight marks the opening of the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts, and as part of that celebration, a 45-foot digital projection mural will animate the face of the Kimmel Center over the course of the next few weeks.  From the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program notice that just appeared in my in-box:

This constantly changing mural, created by photographer JJ Tiziou in collaboration with PIFA and Mural Arts, will showcase photos and video of 174 dancing Philadelphians—including 26 who will also be featured in Mural Arts' 50,000-square-foot How Philly Moves mural currently being installed at Philadelphia International Airport.

I have dreams of someday writing a book that sells, really sells.  If that happens, I will buy a small apartment in the heart of my city and live closer to the pulse of its renaissance, closer to people who dream this big and see these sorts of ideals through.  For now I'm just sending this out to you—proof that the nation's fifth largest city has a whole lot of good going on.

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