Consolation

Time is the dimension for space, with space objects and people can move from place to place and also worn out. Time has a very tricky pace and it amazes me how fulfilling a couple of weeks can be and how absurdly still and empty complete years turn out sometimes. A lot depends on choices and the amount of imagination we put in them, is what we decide to do with our time and space that makes living a day interesting. Though not always. If men were meant to know and worship, we should worship Time and prey for kindness. In a fair world wise people would have the right to die and all the others will live forever.

Have you been overwhelmed with joy for nothing in particular but for the amount of information collected?; An inspiring being, a piece of knowledge that has the potential of changing our lives, a glance of consciousness or any other idealistic experience. I was walking completely awake, receptive and dangerously sensitive. I was learning to feel; something that we usually wait to happen and react. I wanted to feel everything there is to enjoy and suffer, see, taste, listen, express and was in such a state of shifting molecules and uneasiness that I could cry, laugh or become upset just too fast.

I heard a Beatles song and only one person could know how much I enjoy “Beatles” in the mornings. That was the first time I saw him, but I forgot about it.

We like other persons for what they are and yet many times wish something was different. It’s true that what we wish to change is not the person itself but the circumstances, however if our past and present is the formula behind our essence, in the end we want to change what we think we love so much. Perhaps we are just afraid of loving the circumstances as they are and choose to love an ideal instead.

It’s a new city in an old soul feeling, a city that once belonged to another era and held people from a different world. Now it’s hoary façade with dim lights in the inside and computerized surprises. I was heading to the dance studios, something I do every day of my life. I look into a new canvas and get ready to paint. I don’t think I really paint anything, I just get ready; prepare myself for the artist I one day will be. I thought I was late even though I was about an hour before class started; it was just my anticipation, my desire to start working, to tell my body what I expect from it, I need to be stronger, I want complete obedience. I want others to feel what I feel.

I love riding the subway to work. I can be anything I choose to be in the time I spend in the subway cart. People have different professions but being a dancer is, to put it in words, different. I look different, I do my hair differently, I stand and think differently. However, if I want I can become part of the daily flow of energy and occupy my space as an uncountable or a part of the statistics in this living universe. You must know…

The story I want to tell it is not about me or my dancer life no matter how interesting it is to me or how much heart I invest in it. As I was saying I was in the commute on my way to start a new day (my day doesn’t start until I find my place at the bare and start warming up my feet), when I saw a street musician playing his guitar at the bottom of the stairs I used to get out and chose because they are the closest to the building I’ll be dancing in for the next nine hours. This person has long hair; he is thin but tall and modestly strong. He wears a loose brown jacket, not the kind of clothes that stand out because they fit and blend so well with the character that they become part of their essence and skin, not the kind you remember anyway like you would remember a person trying to make a statement or pretending to be a cartoon of something else. His eyes though were the eyes of a living human being. That might be because he indeed was a living person or perhaps because under the influence of Chopin’s Nocturne No 1 everything seems to take its true shape. Some people breathe and eat and even cry sometimes but the blood streaming through their veins is not exactly alive, or maybe it is just a diamond in the rough waiting for a conscious mind to come across them eventually in time. He seemed present, not exactly happy not exactly sad, but alive in the moment he was living. It took me a couple of days to figure out what cart I should get on, to be closer to the escalator I should use, to be closer to the exit stairs I should walk up, to be closer to the building I’ll be dancing in for the next nine hours of my day. It is about economize time and energy, or just playing with the possibilities in life. So it took me a couple of days to find him, but he was right there were he was and where I had to be or decided I had to be. I don’t know what he was playing; I was listening broken hearted to Chopin and his waterfalls of words and questions. The special thing about being a dancer is that you don’t go unnoticed or at least that’s what I thought because when I walked by that place I mentioned where all the coincidences in life for both of us happened, he looked at me and did what a polite and alive person does when another of the sort shares a brief and apparently insignificant glance. He smiled.

Being a different person, I do the same things everyday for as long as I have to, to become consistent; people say –don’t do the same things and expect different results-, I say practice the same things changing your approach and expect better results. In the end what matters is how you feel about your actions and not so much the result. It might just be my consolation. Next morning I headed to the studios with the same intentions and I saw this person again, he recognized me from the day before and not only have I got a smile but also a “good morning”. I felt like I belonged to the outside scenario, my presence there had changed somebody else’s reality and my whole existence left a mark in this world, which means without me this place would be completely different!

People learn, that’s what we do, me have memory and brains big enough to think. I am afraid knowledge is not always the way to happiness or success or any other purpose we try to acquire it for. Einstein used to say (or at least people now say he did), that you don’t really understand something until you can explain it to your grandmother. Have you ever tried to explain technology to your grandmother! The point for me is; first, acquired knowledge has to be completely neutral without tendencies as much as our receptive minds should be to gather that information; then it has to make a big enough impact on us to complement our principles and values, third we are so touched by this new ideas that we crave to share then. And last it is no longer an outside element, in fact it has become so much part of us that we are able to explain it so many times in a hundred different ways until the farthest person in the room can hear us, and that would be our grandmother!

More than three weeks had past, at that point I feel that I have a new friend, we somehow know a lot about each other. I have music playing in my head almost all the time and he probably ignores where I am going to everyday at the same time, but it doesn’t matter, we see deeper, we mutter the words good morning and smile and for almost five seconds share time. We know all that there is to know about five seconds in time.  

As my days go on I learn about consequences and responsibility. Improvising is all about choices; the easiest is being alone but has a lot more responsibilities. Every move of a dancer is a statement, every effort an attempt to create beauty or a way to send love. “I could fall in love with anyone, I love all people”. But that’s not me that is somebody else.

I see him today and my routine goes on as planned by the fortune. I see him every day and almost walk slower if he is facing the wrong way just so we exchange that matinee smile. Some day´s coordination fails but we make up the next as if nothing had happened.

I learned about being grateful. There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground. I’m not sure is about being grateful all the time but I find my ways to show it. I am most bitter most of the time; but it’s not the stillness, it’s the uncertainty.

It’s my forth week, I secretly have my hand in my pocket to turn my music down when I walk by him, he thinks I’m not listening, now we have even secrets, things we keep from each other. Our relationship is turning complicated. It makes it more powerful and engaging. I like his music but I like him more, it’s a happiness that only lasts an instant and vanishes for the rest of the day. A cup of coffee kind of happiness.

In some occasions when I miss his sight I feel guilty, I feel like a meeting I never appeared, I ditch him as if he was waiting for only me all morning and I never showed up. As the days pass my work gets harder and harder, as we get closer to the performance my body is fully aware of its own tiredness and capacity, in those days when I happen to get a ride and avoid walking, I feel like I tore the flyleaves of our story.

There is a lot in a woman that is kept in order to survive, is never shared but used and eaten piece by piece until is all gone and we are helpless. Men see it; unaware of what it is they really crave about us. Attraction. A stage is full of those secrets, life is laid out before our eyes but audiences go blind and except to forget about life with a magical performance, they miss the point. They see movement, they hear music, they succeed in leaving reality out; life goes unnoticed and all its mysteries. In the stage of us I try to listen but become an actor, in the spot light that only lasts the speed of my steps I want him to know. We are both alive, we are both present, we both smile and we both vanish.

I wonder what kind of friend he brought to play with him today. He is fully absorbed by him and their new play; when I walk by, he changes my roll into the smallest part, I’m part of the scenario, I’m the crowd. When did he become the director? Why I didn’t have the chance to know. “Improvise” I say to myself, like you would do in real life. I walk in front of them, feel betrayed and go on. I know the next day he’ll know and will smile to me again. He knows.

Artists walk and eat and take subways. Effort doesn’t always lead to art. A life in dance; a ship on waves. When the storm tells you there is nothing else you can do and you will drown and your embarkation will wreck but the sun is still there and land is still somewhere, there is really no option but keep sailing, drift. He doesn’t know and he doesn’t need to know I cry inside, I have dance dreams and dance realities. All I want is to be visible.

There are a few concrete images in life and those cement dreams, those are the memorable and consistent sparks. I was walking looking for mine to assure me I was still on earth and life was happening. Something was playing in my head, I think the song that says “Someday we’ll wave hello wishing we never waved goodbye”. I approach him, perhaps it’s time to take the next step and stop, but that would break the flow and I want to come back to the same river one day, although never the same. In front of me walks another person, too close to miss, after all I’m not the only one in the subway; nevertheless I know he will notice me. Instead, he… I can’t describe it. It made me sick, so blatantly innocent. So fictitiously natural and brazen, right there before me he smiles to her!, same complicity, same warmth, same presentness. I’m ashamed, so arrogant to think I’m there. My eyes see and my mind pesters me. I’m the crowd that fills the stage; he’s the actor we all conform. He plays for us and smiles to all of us because that is his roll; he sees a great black void in front.

He might be on stage but he is blind not me.

I come back of course next day and the day ahead, but I know and it’s not the same. He smiles and I react, we now pretend to create our days.

I’m gone now and time has changed. What kind of place this world would have been without my birth? To me: the big black void that is the audience. To everyone else: the lit scenario and everlasting play in an enclosed theatre. Unknown director.

Art is a cup of coffee kind of happiness.