EVERYDAY A LITTLE DEATH: Osvaldo Zotto Dies at 46

Another great one has left us for the Great White Way in the sky. One of the stars of TangoX2, which I saw in D.C. when I was just learning how to dance was found dead in his apartment in Boedo of an apparent heart attack last Saturday, the same day that Tete died.

At one end of the spectrum, you have Tete, who, for better or worse, lived his life the way he wished. At the other end, a younger artist who was paving the way for the less experienced dancers. In them, one sees the old, with his lived experience of the tango's origins, and the new, with his innovation, energy, and the exportation of modern tango into the world. Both talented, and both gone.

Has the TG turned morbid on you? Well, I have had death on my mind a lot, even though I'm a goddess and all. These two events that rocked the tango world just seemed to be the physical manifestation of the metaphorical deaths and losses I experienced in 2009.

I realized for the first time last year that perhaps one of the big lessons I must learn is the art of letting go. So far, loss has only been metaphorical, but no less painful. From the moment I decided to move here, loss has been a constant companion. I've had to let go of relationships, ambitions, projects, hopes, and ideas about myself that weren't doing anything to enrich my life because they were either outmoded or rendered irrelevant, given my geographical location. Although these things were necessary for the life I had then, they kept me trapped now in who I believed I still was and/or had to be, in a life I believe still existed. So, letting go left some huge gaps that, honestly, were pretty damn scary to deal with.

But, as Julie Andrew says in The Sound of Music, "Whenever God closes the door, somewhere He opens a window." The losses and the spaces they created were accompanied by surprises and opportunities that came to fill in them, including new family relationships and friendships, and a new vocation that merges my interests in health and psychology. These new additions don't replace what I had before. I believe they are a transformation of what went before, a reincarnation of what once was, entering my life to carry me forward into 2010,and, maybe, beyond.

Of course, death and loss sucks when it happens, and pondering the inevitable--physical deterioration and death of loved ones--will either make me want to crawl under a rock, or, hopefully, make me appreciate everyday I have with them and to love them more generously.

Happy 2010!