Walking the Spectrum of Light

Ein Traum, ein Traum ist unser Leben auf Erden hier.
Wie Schatten auf den Wogen schweben und schwinden wir.
Und messen unsre trägen Tritte nach Raum und Zeit.
Und sind (und wissen's nicht) in Mitte der Ewigkeit.

A dream, a dream, is our life here on earth.
Like shadows on the billows we float and vanish.
Measuring our steps in space and time,
we are (and know it not) in the midst of eternity.

Johann Gottfried Herder


I used to dance in a large, open room, sunny and mostly vacant. I danced with The Man on the Wall, gazing at his smiley face. At the opposite end of the room, his brother Q shone in gold on the spine of a book. These were my practice partners.

Now when I practice--threading my way among someone else's furniture, stacks of books and magazines, boxes of things to sort through one day soon, area rugs, my briefcase, the cats--now in place of The Man on the Wall is a vertical slit of light.

The light does not come into the room. It lies beyond the length of the dining room, the living room, the yellowed sheers veiling old glass, the deep front porch, the dainty hedge of flowers, the lawn, sidewalk, street.

There in the space around Old Katya’s house, the light enlivens grass and leaves still green with summer, chrome details of a neighbor’s car, warm brick and dull gutters.

I can’t see this clearly; the distance and curtains obscure my view. But I take it on faith, or on this shred of evidence: Where the yellowed sheers are meant to meet, they part just a bit. Through the vertical slit I see brightness.

I stand at the far end of the dining room, my back to an antique pie safe. Inside is the commingled miscellany of generations: switchblades and dried flowers, abandoned address books, champagne flutes and stained hankies.

The doors where they meet form a vertical crack. If you peer through the crack, you see darkness. But it is not dark; it is only less light. If you were to stand inside the pie safe, looking out, through the crack you would see the relative brightness of the dim dining room.

If you were to crawl into the safe, sift through the things that you carry—testing the sharp edges, tasting the dust, pressing dried tears to your cheek—you would not be lost. No. You would remember the crack in the doors, and the enlivening light.

The safe is solid and large, deep with age. Sensing it near aids my balance.

When I practice, I start near the window and walk backward until I bump into the pie safe. Then I shift into forward and walk toward the vertical slit of light.

Last summer, Corina de la Rosa taught me to move my weight from the front to the back of the ball of my foot when I walk backward and forward. In all of tango, this tiny adjustment is my favorite.

I play Canaro. There are two tracks I like for this. The phrasing is perfect: 2 steps back, collect and shift on the and-beat, then forward 2 steps. I like the change of direction, the rhythm and speed of the and-beat, the tiny adjustment, the way the whole thing fits with the phrasing, the front melody and the back one.

This practice has no forward momentum. I do not move down the floor; I do not progress. I doubt it improves my dancing. And yet it is the highlight of my practice. Like a floating stick I bob in the current, there in the dim dining room.

I like the symmetry, I like giving each one its due. Two steps to the dark things I carry, two steps to the enlivening light.