|  Dancer
She lives on the edge. She likes it there, watching the flotsam,
taking an occasional piece that appeals to her. Not many; when
she does she discards another from her small collection. She
only has so much room in her life.
The pieces are interesting only to her. She never has guests,
never invites anyone else into her small space. She is content
to live and watch and occasionally collect.
The edge constantly shifts: she was/is a dancer. Was a
professional, now she dances for herself and the universe. Most
times she moves slow earth rhythms, but occasionally her former
self will animate her onto a table for a drunken can can or belly
dance.
Without an audience. On the edge nobody is much interested in
anybody else: the manic shouter walking and gesturing, the
wanderer dressed in inner tubes, the curb sitter nodding and
dreaming, all float by immersed in their own private worlds.
Drugs, alcohol included, aren't the only way to reach the edge;
just the surest. It's not that human beings are born with an
addiction just waiting to be energized, it's that when you reach
a certain level you get the power to fulfil your pleasure
receptors, and our species has long since passed that level.
Sometimes you have to go to the edge to find out where it is, to
realign with the center, to reassess what is true.
Sometimes you're driven there by nameless monsters internal
and external. Sometimes the edge comes to you, catastrophic on
a bright day overflowing with promise.
She dances on the edge by choice; she lives there by necessity.
She watches the flotsam and collects an occasional piece.
1 Jun 2007; 30 Mar 1996 Copyright © 1996, 2007 Truck Smith
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