Unbelonging

“Eine Raupe sitzt in der Sonne auf einem betauten Blatt ohne zu essen aber die Sonne zu genießen.” (“A caterpillar sits in the sun on a dewy leaf not to eat but to enjoy the sunshine.”)

So describes a newly acquainted friend of my presence on a festival.

That beautiful little poem makes me smile. More than ten years ago, a college roommate also said of me: “You’re like a cicada, you know, living on the dew” – in Chinese folk legend, cicadas drink the wind and dine on dew. It is somehow soothing to hear oneself being described in similar metaphors after so many years, by such different people, under drastically different circumstances.

I always live on the edge of epiphanies. It creates a strange tension between the head-in-the-clouds look on the surface and the intensity palpitating inside. And the perpetual sense of unbelonging chases me everywhere.

But on the floor of Wuppertal, perhaps just when this friend made his observation of me, while I was observing the crowd, it suddenly dawned on me that tango was about belonging – belonging to this moment, belonging to this embrace, belonging to your current self.

And only then, the caterpillar becomes a butterfly.

So I smiled to an invitation and fluttered with silky wings, in the embrace that carried me like a breeze. And when the music stopped, I became a pensive caterpillar again, sitting in the afternoon sunshine.