Life's Simple Pleasures

'Dance, that's what I'd do.'

She laughed because she knew it wasn't the answer the interviewer expected.

'If I had just one day in my life over again I would dance for the whole day. In the sun. No. In the rain. I would dance in rain that was cold enough to make me feel alive. I would be twenty one, every muscle in my body perfectly supple, every joint flexible, I would have no pain, no fear of failure. Perhaps I would dance alone, perhaps I would follow someone else. I would have nobody to please, nobody to impress.'

She smiled a rare smile, because the world she was creating could only make her content.

'At some point I would spin round and round until I fell over, and then I would lie on the floor, with my arms and legs spread like a starfish. I don't think it matters what's on the floor, it could be sand, it could be grass, it could be a gymnasium floor, a dance studio. No, not a dance studio, I would not want to see my reflection. I would laugh. I would stare up at the falling rain and I would scream so hard the raindrops would be pushed back into the sky.'

She flung her head back and gulped the air.

'I am dancing and I know I am happy and I know that the dance I am dancing is the only dance I want to dance. It's coming from deep inside me. There is no scent on the air whatsoever. I would be dancing on the thin line between the sand and the sky. You know that point where everything under you is the colour of tea, and everything over you is zinc. All you see are blocks of colour, like a Rothko. And as I stretch my fingers up into the sky, into the rain, I feel the stream of drops sliding over my wrist, down the back of my arm, around my shoulders, and down the groove in my spine where my backbone is twisting and turning.'

And then she stopped and leaned forward slowly, taking time to regain her posture.

'It's simple really'.