the Vertex

From Paulo Coehlo’s “The Witch of Portobello” pg. 49

On Sunday afternoon, while we were walking in the park, I asked her to pay attention to everything she was seeing and hearing: the leaves moving in the breeze, the waves on the lake, the birds signing, the dogs barking, the shouts of children as they ran back and forth, as if obeying some strange logic incomprehensible to grown-ups.
“Everything moves, and everything moves to a rhythm. And everything that moves to a rhythm creates a sound. At this moment, the same thing is happening here and everywhere else in the world. Our ancestors noticed the same thing when they tried to escape from the cold into caves: things moved and made noise. The first human beings may have been frightened at first, but that fear was soon replaced by a sense of awe: they understood that this was the way in which some Superior Being was communicating with them. In hope of reciprocating that communication, they started imitating the sounds and movements all around them- and thus dance and music were born. A few days ago, you told me that dance puts you in touch with something stronger than yourself.”
“Yes, when I dance I’m a free woman, or, rather, a free spirit who can travel through the universe, contemplate the present, divine the future, and be transformed into pure energy. And that gives me enormous pleasure, a joy that always goes far beyond everything I’ve experienced or will ever experience in my lifetime. There was a time when I was determined to become a saint, praising God through music and movement, but that path is closed to me forever now.”
“Which path do you mean?”
She made her son more comfortable in his stroller. I saw that she didn’t want to answer that question and so I asked again: when mouths close, it’s because there’s something important to be said.
Without a flicker of emotion, as if she’d always had to endure in silence the things life imposed on her, she told me about what happened at the church, when the priest- possibly her only friend- had refused her communion. She also told me about the curse she had uttered then, and that she had left the Catholic Church forever.
“A saint is someone who lives his or her life with dignity,” I explained. “All we have to do is understand that we’re all here for a reason and to commit ourselves to that. Then we can laugh at our sufferings, large and small, and walk fearlessly, aware that each step has meaning. We can let ourselves be guided by the light emanating from the Vertex.”
“What do you mean by the Vertex? In mathematics, it’s the topmost angle of a triangle.”
“In life too it’s the culminating point, the goal of all those who, like everyone else, make mistakes, but who, even in their darkest moments, never lose sight of the light emanating from their hearts. That’s what we’re trying to do in our group. The Vertex is hidden inside us, and we can reach it if we accept it and recognize its light.”
“I explained that I’d come up with the name “The Search for the Vertex” for the dance she’d watched on previous nights, performed by people of all ages (at the time there were ten of us, aged between nineteen and sixty-five). Athena asked where I’d found out about it.
I told her that, immediately following World War II, some of my family had managed to escape from the Communist regime that was taking over Poland, and decided to move to England. They’d been advised to bring with them art objects and antiquarian books, which, they were told, were highly valued in this part of the world.
Paintings and sculptures were quickly sold, but the books remained, gathering dust. My mother was keen for me to read and speak Polish, and the books formed part of my education. One day, inside a nineteenth-century edition of Thomas Malthus, I found two pages of notes written by my grandfather, who had died in a concentration camp. I started reading, assuming it would be something to do with an inheritance or else a passionate letter intended for a secret lover, because it was said that he’d fallen in love with someone in Russia.
There was, in fact, some truth to this. The pages contained a description of his journey to Siberia during the Communist revolution. There, in the remote village of Diedev, he fell in love with an actress. According to my grandfather, the actress was part of a sect that believed they had found the remedy for all ills through a particular kind of dance, because the dance brought the dancer into contact with the light from the Vertex.
They feared that the tradition would disappear; the inhabitants of the village were soon to be transported to another place. Both the actress and her friends begged him to write down what they had learned. He did but clearly didn’t think it was of much importance, because he left his notes inside a book, and there they remained until the day I found them.
Athena broke in:
“But dance isn’t something you write about, you have to do it.”
“Exactly. All the note says is this: Dance to the point of exhaustion, as if you were a mountaineer climbing a hill, a sacred mountain. Dance until you are so out of breath that your organism is forced to obtain oxygen in some other way, and it is that, in the end, that will cause you to lose your identity and your relationship with space and time. Dance only to the sound of percussion; repeat the process every day; know that, at a certain moment, your eyes will, quite naturally, close and you will begin to see a light that comes from within, a light that answers your questions and develops your hidden powers.”
“Have you developed some special power?”
Instead of replying I suggested that she join our group, since her son seemed perfectly at ease in the room with the dancers, even when the noise of the cymbals and the other percussion instruments was at its loudest. The following day, at the usual time, she was there for the start of the session. I introduced her to my friends, explaining that she was my upstairs neighbor. No one said anything about their lives or asked what she did. When the moment came, I turned on the music, and we began to dance.
She started dancing with her child in her arms, but he soon fell asleep, and she put him down on the sofa. Before I closed my eyes and went into trance, I saw that she had understood exactly what I meant by the path of the Vertex.