i forgot his name now but growing up, there was once a novelty singer, a word alchemist, really, who coined a slap up name for one of the sweetest pleasures in my adolescent life.
the word was a perfect pastiche of two almost diametrically opposed words: disco and all of its sweet possibilities and this confining noun, corral. diskoral. an open air dance, barn dance al fresco. and in the island i grew up in, that translated to dances held under fruitless palm trees or in clearings amid spiny thickets enclosed by the flimsiest of fences crudely made most often of stripped young bamboo.
sweetest because such pleasure was never allowed me for i was raised by a puritanical mother. "be not ye of this world." i still hear my mother now and her constant quoting of this pauline admonition.
and so while a sound system blared dance hits breaking the serene island airwaves at twilight, i brooded in my room, sullen over not being able to be in a diskoral in some remote village, kicking up dust, dancing my heart out.
today, in front of the local mikey d, a group of b-boys and a killer backflipping girl was putting up a show. with a really throwback boombox blaring mostly old school mixes, the group breezed through their breakdancing routines - coindrops, applejacks, and your basic flic-flacs.
but halfway through their set, a gnarly old woman jumped into the group's space and started doing her jig. some bouncing here and there and with a lot of hand movements as if she was plucking something out of thin air. instead of being pissed, the group made way for the saltating woman and improvised their moves around her. the bystanders went crazy.
an american psychologist who advocated the use of psychoactive drugs in the 60's claimed that the highest destiny of man was to live an aesthetic life based on the dance. but the dance of what?
walking home after this unexpected terpsichorean display, i noticed big clumps of clouds blotching the otherwise clear blue afternoon sky. one of the clumps, an unruly shape which i was never able to describe, was playing hide and seek with the fading light as if in a frenzied dance while waiting to be overtaken by night.