You know I’m on vacation when I have enough energy to go to a morning capoeira class, two afternoon tango classes and then take a firedancing class in the evening.  That’s exactly what I did this past Saturday and much to my surprise, getting eight hours of sleep and having virtually no stress means that I’m well rested enough not to need a nap in between activities, which is good since I scarcely had time to eat and sip a glass of wine.

I, like some other capoeirista participants, was initially confused as to whether the “fire” aspect of the dance was interpretative or literal. To be on the safe side, I brought my five-finger shoes since I knew we wouldn’t have real fire inside the capoeira studio. What I had not anticipated was the handicraft portion of class. Coupled with the fact that the workshop started thirty minutes later (Brazilian time!)  than it should have, we were still finishing up on making four torches each when the workshop had been scheduled to end.

Using clothing that capoeira and crossfit students had left behind and placed in the lost-and-found box, we cut strips out of the clothing and tightly wrapped them around the wooden sticks that we used during our maculele choreography. To secure the cloth strip in place, the mestre told us to bound it with nylon string or yarn. As anyone familiar with my handicraft skills could have predicted, I made the “nonexample” torch as we politely call “incorrect” in the educational world. Of course with my luck, I sat beside a capoeirista who’s known for her creative handicrafts.

Although the mestre only spoke a pocketful of English and I spoke even less Portuguese, I asked him questions about my torch in Spanish. At least we both understood enough of that language to communicate. He undid my first torch since the cloth and string were too loose, which he assured me would fly off the stick and create a fire hazard.

Throughout the workshop, the mestre would periodically give us safety tips. At one point, I just laughed to myself about all the safety concerns that the two graduado (high-ranking) capoeiristas were translating for the rest of the group. As straightforward as the fire considerations were, I wondered if anything was being lost in translation.

At the time when the workshop had been scheduled to end, we all stood up, put away one pair of our torches and practiced some basic firedancing moves. After ten minutes, the mestre told the two graduado capoeiristas to divide up the group and work with a small group. Instead of doing a 1-2 count off and having all the 1′s work with one graduado and the 2′s work with the other, the graduados selected groups using the ol’ kickball method of picking group members by name. Never in childhood had I ever been the last one called since I’ve always been a fast runner. So at least that minor humilation didn’t tap into any bad childhood memories. Fortunately, I really liked the choreography that my group came up with; so I was well placed.

After working on the routine for twenty minutes, my favorite part of the entire workshop occurred. We formed a semi-circle, the mestre distributed small bottles of water and we practiced spewing water into the air. I cannot remember during my happy childhood ever being allowed, much less asked to spew water into the air that would wind up on the floor. Even though we were simulating how to spew fuel into the air, pure joy shot out of my mouth.

Once we cleaned up the floor, we took our torches and some safety support such as damp towels, a couple of buckets of water, and  out to a nearby courtyard. The mestre confessed that he had never used the tiki fuel that we were about to use. The fuel came in two varieties–purple and yellow.  I’m not sure if the color designated any significant difference, but both contained citronella.

The mestre thoughtfully tested out a couple of the torches. We discovered that the ones that had been made from a green sweat shirt were fire-resistant. Also, the nylon string was fire-resistant, but if the cloth was flammable, then the torch still lit. The  yellow yarn burned pretty well.

Once that experimentation part was over, the mestre asked capoeiristas to dance and spit fire individually.  Another capoeirista and I were the only two who refused to put the fuel in our mouths. We both stated that next time, we’d bring something like 151 rum to use for fire spitting. I figure that I’ve got enough problems without adding accidental poisoning to the list. Besides, I didn’t want to have any throat/voice problems the day before I was to host the Austin Writers Roulette.

However, I practiced dancing with fire, mainly for the photo op. Then I practiced the choreography with my group, using unlit torches. My refusal to voluntarily put poison in my mouth worked to another advantage: I was able to give the verbal cues to my partners.

Miraculously, none of us got burned although I nearly slipped with all that spewed tiki fuel on the tile. One woman in the other group had problems controlling the fire on one of her torches because the stick had been wrapped with a flammable, decorative tape.

After both firedancing choreographies had been completed, all sense of safety brokedown as more people grabbed lit torches, danced and spit fire. Those few of us who remained spectators, grabbed a blanket, got near the fire extinguisher and/or yelled out “You’re dripping fire!” to the firedancers. I took this as my cue to leave. I’d pressed my luck enough for one workshop.

All in all, I’m still interested in practicing firedancing–I’ll just have to bring the rum.

Although I was not planning to go listen to Walter Mosley, I’m glad a friend encouraged me to do so. He’s a prolific writer and of course a fantastic speaker–very down-to-earth and entertaining just like his books. I arrived at the bookstore early enough to get a good seat and briefly talk with a woman who had been on the Austin Writers Roulette once, back when it when it took place in the capoeira studio.  My friend and her family came just before he started speaking and I teased her about being “Black,” that is, coming to an open event just before it began and expecting to get 5 seats altogether. She and her husband sat with me, their daughters sat together in the row in front of us and I never found out who the 5th person was. I learned to my grief that my friends were making plans to return to South Africa, both because of the public educational system here in Austin and the financial offer they’ve received to finish their latest production back in South Africa.

I showed them the latest picture of the painting that I’ve been working on and my newest brainchild of having the paintings represent the work of the main character in the book rather than making the story part graphic novel. I even told them of my upcoming photoshoot on Sunday to compose the second painting in the series.

After a rather long and rambling introduction by one of the bookstore employees, Walter Mosley finally took his place behind the lecturn. Here are the notes that I took during his wonderfully inspiring and humorous talk:

1. He initially killed off one of his most popular characters, Easy Rawlings, because writing those stories began to get stale for him.

2. Out of all of the struggles in the writing process, he finds PUBLISHING the most challenging–mainly because every publisher wants to lock him into writing just one genre.

3. He has been criticized by many black women about not having a black female lead detective, but he defends himself by stating that he’s one of the few black men writing about a black male detective; so he wants to write as many as possible to make up for that.

4. He believes in the saying, “If you’re not happy today, then you’ll never be.” Meaning that if you cannot find something to be happy about now, why should you expect tomorrow to be any different.

5. He set out to write six sci-fi novellas where black men destroyed the world in six different ways.

6. He feels that for a writer, social media is like working in a rice paddy. He doesn’t bother with it since that’s one of the reasons why he has a publisher.

7. One of his favorite characters is a sociopath because Mosley believes in order to function in this world, one has to be a sociopath, but one still has to have understanding.

8. Initially, Mosley had a hard time getting his first novel published because the publishers told him that white people don’t read about black people, black women don’t like black men and black men don’t read.

9. Once during an interview, Mosley was asked what does every black man need. His flippant response was “a white man in his basement.” Soon after, he wrote “Man in My Basement.” (Which I checked out of the library this past Saturday!)

10. He claims not to research anything because he’s a fiction writer; so he feels at liberty just to make everything up.

11. When participating in a critique, Mosley advises not to listen to other’s opinion about your own work, but rather to  listen to how you critique others and what other people say about another writer’s work.

12. He doesn’t bother to teach writing because teaching uses the same energy as writing and he doesn’t have enough energy to do both.

13. Mosley stated that by the time he started writing in his mid 30s, he was already a failure in life; so he figured whatever became of his books would be extra.

 14. He expressed an interesting theory on racism: Before people came to “the new world,” “white” people did not exist. Mosley said that if someone went up to a Viking and said he was the same as a Greek, he’d cut his head off. If someone said to the Greek that he was like the Viking, he’d cut off his d*ck. Yet, when they came to America, in order to steal the land and enslave Africans, they all had to agree to be “white” to make the arrangement successful.

One of my favorite upscale grocery stores that has weekly live music groups and performances also sponsors a weeklong special, featuring foods from a particular country.  In the past, they’ve had the spotlight on France and Argentina.  This year, they highlighted Brazil. 

I sacrificed a yoga workout in order to rehearse on Monday and Tuesday for the Wednesday performance. I knew that I wasn’t going to play capoeira, but I still needed to learn the latest maculele routine and practice singing the lyrics for “Puxada de Rede.”  One silver lining I had while proctoring the science TAKS Wednesday morning was going over the choreography and lyrics in my head.

So by the time I left school and went straight to the venue, I felt pretty confident. Of course, one oversight was that I forgot to pack my capoeira pants. Small detail…at least I had plenty of time to enjoy my Brazilian-style thinly sliced beef sandwich, a glass of malbec and as few fries as I could stop myself from eating.

I thought we were a little unfortunate that on the coldest day of the week, we were outside dancing in sports bras and a grass skirt. Yet, that was refreshing during our first performance.  The second performance was a little colder, but just as exhilarating.

Afterwards, five pizzas and some huge salads were promptly brought out for us. I’d originally thought that I wouldn’t be around in order to eat any of it, but the guy in charge was on top of things. The food was fantastic and I had to restrain myself from going treasure hunting through the salad to get all the delicious cherry tomatoes.

Even though I’m not a “hardcore” capoeirista, I truly enjoy that I still have a viable contribution to make in helping share Brazilian culture.

I got up extra early on Tuesday morning in order to get to school and knock out some work that had magically collected . As I drove along, watching out for the fools in the morning traffic, I listened to the latest details of the attack during the Boston Marathon. The reporter had just read a description about the bomb when I ran over something that made a loud metallic scraping. Since I was in the left lane, I put my hazard lights on and entered the turning lane. I saw the that the driver’s back tire had a flat.

I didn’t inspect any further, but instead I popped the hatchback and started digging out the spare tire along with the tools to change the flat. As I was bent over, I heard a car pull up behind me. Without even turning around, I knew that the cavalry had arrived to help me change the flat. The guy, Carlos, took off the hubcap and reminded me that I needed to get the bolt key in order to remove the tire. He then asked me had I seen what had caused my flat. I told him no.

I could not believe my eyes. The scrap metal, which was more than likely from a recent car accident, looked just like an ax sticking out of my tire. This after hearing about the bomb and shrapnel from the Boston Marathon attack. As Carlos continued to change the tire, I texted my boss to let her know what had happened. Then it dawned on me…I’d still be on time for work! So much for coming in early.

After changing my tire, Carlos asked me if I was a personal trainer. I told him that I was a HS Physics teacher, but I did train capoeira. I handed him one of my Tribe of One T-shirts as a thank you gesture for helping me change the tire. He accepted the T-shirt and said that it was his pleasure to help me out. He also added that the black and brown don’t mess around, meaning that we have to do whatever we can in order to get ahead in this world.

As I drove away, I thought about his question about me being a personal trainer. I was wearing capri pants at the time and so I imagined the visual of me bent over getting out the spare. Once again, having a well-toned ”Brazilian butt” pays off!

Once again, the wonderful city of Austin has not let me down! I signed up to volunteer for an annual art show as a “floater,” which I prayed would not find me in the blazing Southern sun carrying a bunch of heavy shit. I got so lucky. The volunteer ahead of me was placed in the kids’ corner, which would’ve been the second worse fate and I was immediately recruited to work one of the ticket booths.

I didn’t realize that the  art fest shut down at 6pm, which was when my three-hour shift was supposed to end. Plus, my street parking would expire at exactly 6:01; so I already knew that I would have to leave my shift a few minutes later or face yet another infamous parking ticket.  Again, my luck held.

I spent the majority of my shift greeting people, taking their money, stamping the back of their hands and talking to an interesting guy who worked for the organization that ran the festival. I worked a little over an hour when he suggested that I should walk around the festival since the ticket lines had died down.

Although I had an hour and a half to peruse everything, the only thing I was truly interested in was getting some jewelry. Once I looked at all the real jewelry, I ended up buying some costume jewelry that was within my budget, but still a little pricey for what it was. Nonetheless, I needed a little “Spring Cleaning” bling to go with my attire for today’s Austin Writers Roulette.

As a matter of fact, I made sure to tell my ticket booth companion and the woman who I bought jewelry from about the upcoming roulette and gave them a flyer. If nothing else, I’m now on another volunteer list in order to rub elbows with artists, attend their events for free and perhaps expand my fan base.

This is definitely the grassroots promotions that I need more of!