Sunday, December 27, 2009

dance in america

I'm still not a dancer, and I'm not sure how much of one I will ever be. But this paragraph, from Lorrie Moore's Birds of America (a book of short stories that I adore but haven't read in a few years), makes me wish a bit more ardently that I could be.

"I am thinking not of my body here, that unbeguilable, broken basket, that stiff meringue. I am not thinking only of myself, my lost troupe, my empty bed. I am thinking of the dancing body's magnificent and ostentatious scorn. This is how we offer ourselves, enter heaven, enter speaking: we say with motion, in space, This is what life's done so far down here; this is all and what and everything it's managed--this body, these bodies, that body--so what do you think, Heaven? What do you fucking think?"

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