In between

There’s a quote I remember from my dancing days that I can’t seem to locate in its original context, but the gist of it was that what dance really is is the movement between the steps—it’s how you get where you need to go, how you fill the space.

The other day, I re-read a short story of which I am particularly fond. The beauty of this story is that no matter how many times I revisit it, I get something different out of it. The words don’t change, but my mental state does. Different plot points or descriptions or dialogue exchanges will stand out depending on where I am emotionally. On this reading, it was a gift given by one character to another. The gift was an artwork crafted from pieces of the characters’ relationship—pieces that one of the pair found after their partner packed up and left.

“The background was an immense thicket of branches. Not forming any particular shape, but spreading outward from a single swirled point. Woven within the branches were pieces of things, all different shapes and sizes and colours. … A piece of pipe, a ticket for a show, a key. Shreds of printed paper next to a piece of handwritten paper, carefully folded into an origami star. A scrap of flannel and a scrap of brown leather pinned together with a bent nail. A piece of yellowed glass, a rubber bracelet, a condom packet with a picture of a pizza on it, labeled ‘I Like Pizza, You Like Pizza, I Am Bad at Poems, Let’s Bang’. Torn fragments of photographs, the label from a bottle of beer. In the center was a miniature sculpted thing that looked like a seashell made of cake, nestled next to a sculpted piece of bread.”
--Trolley Problem, Marginaliana

What really got me this time around was the depth of feeling and thought and passion and love behind this piece of art. It had always been a touching moment in previous readings, but this time around it hit deeper than it ever had before. Because there is something about the things that are left behind, the little bits and pieces of a person who meant something to you, for whatever duration of time, whatever the basis of the relationship. You tend to forget about those infinitesimal scraps of soul when you have the whole picture in front of you—you take them for granted, if not necessarily intentionally. Of course, this is a fictional gift, born of one character deciding that the relationship they were in lacked the depth they were seeking, and the other character only realizing what the problem was when they started finding all those bits of memory in the wake of the first character’s departure. The movement between the steps. Filling the space.

I realize that this is a highly romanticized version of ‘it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey’, and I promise I will vomit at my own saccharinity later. It’s also about rewiring your brain to acknowledge that things that may seem banal and pedestrian can be so much more than that, if you look at them the right way. You’ve heard it before; slow down, look around, take a breath. You’re leaving your story in every broken earring, every Post-It found behind a desk years after you wrote “Don’t step on the Mome Raths” on it, every bar coaster you’ve surreptitiously slid into your pocket on your way home after a really great booze-up. I’m not suggesting that you should become a magpie and obsessively stockpile mementos. I’m suggesting that these are the ways the space has been filled, is being filled, will be filled. The movement between your steps. Sometimes these need to be acknowledged as much—or more—than all those traditional life milestones.

Let me give you one of mine.

It’s the autumn of 2006. I’m studying abroad for the first time at Royal Holloway, University of London. The campus is outside the city of London by a 45-minute train journey in a little hamlet called Egham. Across the road—the A30, in fact—from campus is a pub. It’s called The Monkey’s Forehead. It does amazing business and is always full of students. It’s lunchtime, and we’ve just finished our morning lesson. A group of us, ten at least, decide to go ‘over the road’ and have something to eat. In the front, right-hand corner of the Monkey’s is a booth tucked into the wall. It has a burgundy velvet bench seat surrounding a large table on three sides. We get lucky—it’s available. We cram into the booth and take it in turns to go to the bar to order. We bitch about our morning tutor. We squabble about nothing. We banter. We laugh. We share our food, our thoughts, our secrets. When everyone is done eating, a couple of people light up. (This was before the smoking ban, after all.) The afternoon light is buttery yellow as it filters in through the window. The smoke creates a gentle haze as two of our cohort engage in what will ultimately be a failed attempt at blowing smoke rings. It’s a warm press of bodies. A meeting of minds. A cacophony of joy.

It’s the first time in my life I feel like I truly belong somewhere.

I will never be able to describe that moment in a way that will express just how much feeling there is associated with it. I could describe it to you for ages—how Alex sat at the open end of the table in a backwards chair, eating his cheesy chips with gravy. The line of Tom’s throat and the up-tilt of his chin as he tried to blow those smoke rings. The feeling of Anna sat beside me, just to my left, her right half matching me from shoulder to shoe. How precariously I was balanced on the edge of the bench because there were so many of us trying to occupy the same space. I can still see it when I close my eyes. Feel the warmth. Smell the smoke. Taste the gravy-covered chip Alex let me steal. It hits me directly behind my sternum every time. A warm, wonderful pressure.

A small moment, yes. But its worth to me is infinite.