Tranquilo

Debbi http://an-ever-fixed-mark.blogspot.com/2008/03/tango-blessings.html wrote a nice piece about her growth in tango. Is there a day for all of us who have worked so hard at this or at any challenging thing, when we say to ourselves, "I am fine where I am now, I need not grasp, and I am calm in this journey.."?

A friend asked us last night about our dancing, how is it now. We both just sort of shrugged, and we each tried to say, that although we don't know how we stack up in the big world of dancers, we are fine, just going along. I said I realized that no matter how much I accomplish, there are always much better dancers, and much to learn. There is a calm to it, just lately. This does not mean complacency, because we are both workers, and enjoy finding ourselves at a new place. Our friend looked at us and said, "you are just enjoying the ride." Amen.

Now I find myself invited to dance, I am not so nervous. I am going to be able to follow his lead if he leads well, and if not, I have a new person in my life to dance with anyway, to work on things with. And people grow. A guy I might have been reluctant, for whatever reason, to dance with a year ago, might be quite a good partner now.

I like to dance with a guy I was in classes with two or so years ago. I dance with him now once every week or two, and we just stand back at the end of the music and marvel...how we have progressed together, as dancers, as humans. It is pretty great. I don't know where else you find this space, between the music and another person. It is not so much that we are rating ourselves on a scale from bad to great, or from beginning to advanced. It is that we recognize our beings as they are in the moment, bringing forward all that has been gained, as we continue to enjoy the ride.

In my career in art I went through some of these growth phases, but I was/am singular, with very little feedback in the immediate sense. Art is a lonesome business. A fun thing is evolving whereby I start a painting, and my friend (pictured painting in the garden in the post above) works on it for awhile, and then I finish it, and maybe he does something else to it. He is a professional and so am I, but at this point neither one of us has to prove anything, and no one cares who signs the painting. We do a little painting tango together. Tranquilo. At least for today.