Sunday Scribblings - Fantasy
In my fantasy, we tango beautifully. You pull me to your chest make me fly around the floor. Your hand in the small of my back, fingertips gently pushing on one side, thumb pressing on the other, giving me direction, guiding and leading me. In this way, my feet and body know just what to do - not merely what you wish me to do, but really, genuinely what to do that will please us both, in our private tango world.
In my fantasy, our dance creates a private world - something remote, viewable but untouchable. Something for those surrounding the floor to watch, much like watching the patchwork of fields, lakes, farms and towns unroll on the earth below as the jet carries you from coast to coast. Something akin to what it must be like aboard a space shuttle, watching planets and stars whoosh past. Gazing out the imagined windows of the craft, one couldn't help but wonder about the life on the planets, the history, the moment of creation of one, the moment of death of another that we will never see. This is the private world our dance creates, one with birth and death, history, cataclysmic action and reaction, all visible to the watchers, but so remote, so completely foreign that it must be understood only vaguely with the heart. It cannot be known by the intellect.
In my fantasy, our feet fly while barely leaving the ground. Our dance is slow, sinuous, serpentine, nearly appearing lazy, but with such tautness and control, strength and glide that we both, by necessity, must be fully present in the moment, fully consumed by the dance.
In my fantasy, we trace delicate patterns across the floor, round and round the perimeter. It matters not if we are the only two, or if we are surrounded by hundreds of others. Their paths are not our paths, just as the paths of the stars are not duplicated. Though they may intersect, other dancing pairs coming briefly into our orbit and passing out of it, they do not mimic the intricate path we weave on the floor.
In my fantasy, as we dance, I feel both light and ethereal as air, and yet as grounded and earthly as the very stone that makes up the fundament. I feel the flight of the birds of the air, the ebb and flow of waters on the other side of the earth, the pulsing magma at the core of our earth as it steadily progresses upwards, searching for release. In our dance, I am most fully alive, most fully connected with all that surrounds us on this planet, and most fully in my spirit. In our dance, I can see not only the thin sliver thread that connect my spirit and my body, but also the tendrils of silver that connect me to you, and you to me. From the space between our bodies and the instinctual drive to dance, we weave whole cloth. And in this cloth, woven of the dance, we wrap ourselves, blanket ourselves, together safe and protected from the outside.
In my fantasy we glide, dip, swirl, turn, spin, fly, soar, swoop. In my fantasy, you lift me and I float, you gently set me back down, and we do it all over again. In my fantasy, you, too, float, catch the air beneath your feet and soar. In my fantasy, our tango allows us to transcend time and place, and ascend beyond time and space.
The music swells, carries us along, among other dancers, in front of the rapt attentive eyes of the watchers. We know which beats, crescendos, changes in rhythm come next, and we know when this music will end.
And when the song ends, as they always do, so too our tango. A little death, this ending. But also a birth, as we drift slowly off the floor and wait for the next tanda to move us.
In my fantasy, our dance creates a private world - something remote, viewable but untouchable. Something for those surrounding the floor to watch, much like watching the patchwork of fields, lakes, farms and towns unroll on the earth below as the jet carries you from coast to coast. Something akin to what it must be like aboard a space shuttle, watching planets and stars whoosh past. Gazing out the imagined windows of the craft, one couldn't help but wonder about the life on the planets, the history, the moment of creation of one, the moment of death of another that we will never see. This is the private world our dance creates, one with birth and death, history, cataclysmic action and reaction, all visible to the watchers, but so remote, so completely foreign that it must be understood only vaguely with the heart. It cannot be known by the intellect.
In my fantasy, our feet fly while barely leaving the ground. Our dance is slow, sinuous, serpentine, nearly appearing lazy, but with such tautness and control, strength and glide that we both, by necessity, must be fully present in the moment, fully consumed by the dance.
In my fantasy, we trace delicate patterns across the floor, round and round the perimeter. It matters not if we are the only two, or if we are surrounded by hundreds of others. Their paths are not our paths, just as the paths of the stars are not duplicated. Though they may intersect, other dancing pairs coming briefly into our orbit and passing out of it, they do not mimic the intricate path we weave on the floor.
In my fantasy, as we dance, I feel both light and ethereal as air, and yet as grounded and earthly as the very stone that makes up the fundament. I feel the flight of the birds of the air, the ebb and flow of waters on the other side of the earth, the pulsing magma at the core of our earth as it steadily progresses upwards, searching for release. In our dance, I am most fully alive, most fully connected with all that surrounds us on this planet, and most fully in my spirit. In our dance, I can see not only the thin sliver thread that connect my spirit and my body, but also the tendrils of silver that connect me to you, and you to me. From the space between our bodies and the instinctual drive to dance, we weave whole cloth. And in this cloth, woven of the dance, we wrap ourselves, blanket ourselves, together safe and protected from the outside.
In my fantasy we glide, dip, swirl, turn, spin, fly, soar, swoop. In my fantasy, you lift me and I float, you gently set me back down, and we do it all over again. In my fantasy, you, too, float, catch the air beneath your feet and soar. In my fantasy, our tango allows us to transcend time and place, and ascend beyond time and space.
The music swells, carries us along, among other dancers, in front of the rapt attentive eyes of the watchers. We know which beats, crescendos, changes in rhythm come next, and we know when this music will end.
And when the song ends, as they always do, so too our tango. A little death, this ending. But also a birth, as we drift slowly off the floor and wait for the next tanda to move us.
posted by Your Style Muse at 11:54 AM
3 Comments:
Beatufully told! It makes me want to lose all my troubles in a tango.
I love your post! I love ballroom dancing but tango is the one dance I don't know how to do (and want to learn more than anything!). Thanks for visiting my site!
Lovely! I especially like the second paragraph - the idea of watching a dance being like a scene from a plane or spacecraft is intriguing. You've certainly taken the idea of a dance to the outer limits!
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