Dahnsin

Dahnsin -- Ghanaian for dancing -- but the kind that requires (or exhales) continuous innovation, that seems more near abandonment of self than choreography. The last two hours I spent dahnsin to Zimbabwean music complements of Zivanai Masango, a very talented and bright-smiled singer and musician who lives in Boulder, a very good friend of a very good friend of mine (Banana, the also-brightly-smiling woman in the picture). It was the sort of music which can be resisted for only a finite period of time. It was in a coffeeshop on Pearl Street and the sweater that made perfect sense given the freezing temperatures around here became embarassingly drenched with sweat by the end of the night -- but I feel so alive, so entirely refreshed, that strangers thinking me on the verge of cardiac arrest seems but a small price to pay. Since it was at a coffeeshop I was not expecting to be swept up in such an exhilerating wave of energy and joyousness, not at 9pm on a Thursday night, but such is the magic of Zevenai's gift -- and Boulder's culture, in which giving oneself up to near-spiritual joy in complete public is not only acceptable, it's contageously encouraged.

Banana refers to it as Couple World -- the strange vortex of inertia that keeps people in a relationship (particularly a marriage, of which she is a veteran) at home every night when there is so much life to be lived on the other side of the comfortably closed door. My life practically reversed in that regard when Brian and I became a unit, since pre-him I spent most of my time amusing (some would say distracting) myself with the unending stimulation of caffeine, adventure, and the more incriminating common companions of both. Part of the Couple World Vortex stems from the contentment of knowing my warm sweet loving cuddly husband is waiting to hold me on the couch, which just has to be a good thing -- but given time, that part that can only breathe on a dance floor starts to strain against another night exactly like the one before and the one to follow.

I suppose the restlessness that has motivated so many interesting experiences is both an asset and a liability. For tonight -- that pulse of life, that exhileration -- Banana, Boulder, and the entrancing rhythms of Zivanai Masango overcame the intertia that keeps my spare time in a rerun, and I could not be more grateful.