Life is a shuffle; life is a little dance.
Some of us take big steps, sweep around the floor, and make fools of ourselves. Or, distinguish ourselves, depending upon your point of view. Some of us are content to merely tip-toe around, distracting ourselves with the fact that we are moving at all, making time to the music that only we can hear.
Some of us are wallflowers, and we sit in the corner and stare at the other dancers, content to live vicariously through the movements of others. I think that most folks fall into this latter category, and that is not wrong. Nothing wrong about it. It’s just the way things are.
But there is a silent music to life, a sort of frequency that only we can hear, and which every one of us tunes in just a little bit different than the last person. To some the tune speaks rage, to others loss, to still others triumphant joy and pure harmony, but whatever your music says to you, you dance to the rhythm of your heart, and you do the best you can.
But, one day the music stops, the credits roll, and we are left with only the memories of times gone by and dances begun but never finished. We try to waltz around the room on crippled legs, moving to a tune grown fainter and fainter, as the rest of the dancers shuffle out of the ballroom to take up their places outside, in infinity, where the music is always the same.
We can whistle past the bone yard but can we dance past it, kicking our legs into the air to spite the dirty fingers of death as he clutches our minutes to his loveless bosom? I’m not sure that I can. My dance has petered out until all I am doing is shuffling in the shadows, counting down the minutes until the ballroom closes and the partiers are asked to split. I am trying to find my footsteps again, but it is not easy. Some say the sky’s the limit when it comes to dancing, that you’re only as young as you feel and once you get that body moving again, well, it’s just like riding a bicycle: once you know how, you never forget. I’m not sure all those people aren’t born maniacs or liars.
Because age weighs on you. Time weighs on you. You watch as, one by one, lines start to split your face apart like a road map, and the fat moves in on your body, and you are no longer young and lean and ready to take action, to take charge of that dance floor. You are old and withered and your legs barely work, and that man in the corner with the dance diagram may laugh at you and call you a few polite names but you can’t help it…you’ve forgotten where to plant the footsteps,a nd your partner ran out on you long ago.
But, no matter the music, no matter the weight in your legs or the pain in your back, you can still manage to do a little dance. To make a little time to the music. To cut a rug and show the whippersnappers how it is done. I know this to be true. Because I dance to the rhythm of a life with no music, no movement, no sound or fury. Yet I dance.
When I drink my coffee, I dance.
When I eat breakfast at six o’ clock in the morning, feeling the stuff nourish me and send me back from the brink of despair, I dance.
I am dancing while I am writing these words. It is hard to keep my fingers attached to the keyboard.
When I read a good book, it is like dancing.
When I write down a particularly vivid dream, it is also dancing.
I spin constantly in the still moments of my life. I am like a hundred dancers, all rocking to the internal beat, and maybe no one else can hear the music, and maybe everyone else will think that I am quite mad, but I continue to dance.
Without romance, I dance.
Without a future, I dance.
Even in the grip of my most intimate despair, I am still dancing, still moving to that old internal rhythm, still looking forward to that day when I will be joined, like a vision or a waking dream, by a hundred other dancers all ready to join in my particular madness.
So dance the mysterious dance of life. Because you already are, whether you realize it or not.
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