My dancer friend Kathy attended a week-long dance workshop in Colorado one summer when she was a young college student. Sometime during the week, a gay Brazilian dancer came up to her and told her,
"Don't apologize for who you are."
They had never spoken till then.
Kathy told me, "He just saw it in how I danced, that I was apologizing with my body for who I was. I've always remembered that."
The Brecht poem [3 posts below] has got me thinking about memory.
After I posted it, I thought, wait a minute--that's bogus. You don't forget people you've kissed. But then I paused and realized that at midlife, I have indeed forgotten the details of some people I've kissed; and there haven't even been that many.
However, I clearly remember those moments Brecht writes about: when something immense, like a high white cloud, blossoms for a moment in my consciousness.
Strangers can appear like that, out of the blue, as Kathy's Brazilian dancer did for her. That's the stuff I don't so easily forget.
"Don't apologize for who you are."
They had never spoken till then.
Kathy told me, "He just saw it in how I danced, that I was apologizing with my body for who I was. I've always remembered that."
The Brecht poem [3 posts below] has got me thinking about memory.
After I posted it, I thought, wait a minute--that's bogus. You don't forget people you've kissed. But then I paused and realized that at midlife, I have indeed forgotten the details of some people I've kissed; and there haven't even been that many.
However, I clearly remember those moments Brecht writes about: when something immense, like a high white cloud, blossoms for a moment in my consciousness.
Strangers can appear like that, out of the blue, as Kathy's Brazilian dancer did for her. That's the stuff I don't so easily forget.
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