(no subject)
all of these are from "Dancer" by Collum McCann
(47) What monstrous things, our pasts, especially when they have been lovely.
(64)
R--
The magic of dance, young man, is something purely accidental. The irony of this is that you have to work harder than anyone else for the accident to occur. Then, when it happens, it is the only thing in your life guaranteed never to happen again. This, to some, is an unhappy state of affairs, and yet to others, it is the only ecstasy. Perhaps, then, you should forget everything I have said to you and remember only this: The real beauty in life is that beauty can sometimes occur.
--Sasha
(94) Great billows of steam were suspended above the station, hanging there as they have always hung, as if to say that most of us spend our lives breathing in our breathed-out breath.
(223) ...one of the simple rules of New York City, and Victor has over the years proved many such rules to himself, his favorite being that if you live your life without falling in love you'll be loved by everyone--one of the great laws of love and fuckery--you take what you get and you move swiftly away, no looking back...
(276) As a child, nobody had told her how the life of a dancer would be, and even had she known she never would have understood, how it could be so full and empty at the same time, seen in one manner from the outside but experienced differently on the inside, so that two completely dissimilar ways of living had to be held in unison, juggled, acknowledged.
(276) Surely that must be the key, Margot thought, to live your life freely and honestly and with love. Her love had been dance. Rudi's also. It wasn't that they had been denied access to the other kind of love, no, that wasn't it at all, not at all--but theirs was a love of a different thing, bruising and public. Love had never quite happened to her in the way it happened to others. Tito, yes. But Tito was an impossible person until he became an impossible body. Tito saw her as an elegant armpiece. Tito had warmed other beds. And then Tito had been shot and become everything he had never been before, useless and good-hearted. Oh, she had loved him, yes, but not love in the sense that it hollowed her out whenever she saw him...Loneliness, she thought, caused a certain madness. It was more of a search for that thing beyond dance, a desire for the human. But what could be better, what could top the never-ending ovations, was there anything in life that had ever crested them? And then she knew. The thought had never struck her quite so clearly. She had danced until her body gave out and now she was loveless.
(277) Dance. Cures. Pills. Sleeping pills and diet pills and pain pills and pills for life itself, pills for every illness, jealousy to bronchitis, pills in the drafty hallways where young girls sweated and wept for the roles they never got, pills for ruptured bank accounts, pills for backstabbings, pills for betrayals, pills for the broken ways in which you walked, pills for the pills themselves...She watched dancers on either side of her, tucking into their food, as they always did. Later the girls would throw up in the bathrooms.
(285) The only thing I regret is not having enough regrets.
(47) What monstrous things, our pasts, especially when they have been lovely.
(64)
R--
The magic of dance, young man, is something purely accidental. The irony of this is that you have to work harder than anyone else for the accident to occur. Then, when it happens, it is the only thing in your life guaranteed never to happen again. This, to some, is an unhappy state of affairs, and yet to others, it is the only ecstasy. Perhaps, then, you should forget everything I have said to you and remember only this: The real beauty in life is that beauty can sometimes occur.
--Sasha
(94) Great billows of steam were suspended above the station, hanging there as they have always hung, as if to say that most of us spend our lives breathing in our breathed-out breath.
(223) ...one of the simple rules of New York City, and Victor has over the years proved many such rules to himself, his favorite being that if you live your life without falling in love you'll be loved by everyone--one of the great laws of love and fuckery--you take what you get and you move swiftly away, no looking back...
(276) As a child, nobody had told her how the life of a dancer would be, and even had she known she never would have understood, how it could be so full and empty at the same time, seen in one manner from the outside but experienced differently on the inside, so that two completely dissimilar ways of living had to be held in unison, juggled, acknowledged.
(276) Surely that must be the key, Margot thought, to live your life freely and honestly and with love. Her love had been dance. Rudi's also. It wasn't that they had been denied access to the other kind of love, no, that wasn't it at all, not at all--but theirs was a love of a different thing, bruising and public. Love had never quite happened to her in the way it happened to others. Tito, yes. But Tito was an impossible person until he became an impossible body. Tito saw her as an elegant armpiece. Tito had warmed other beds. And then Tito had been shot and become everything he had never been before, useless and good-hearted. Oh, she had loved him, yes, but not love in the sense that it hollowed her out whenever she saw him...Loneliness, she thought, caused a certain madness. It was more of a search for that thing beyond dance, a desire for the human. But what could be better, what could top the never-ending ovations, was there anything in life that had ever crested them? And then she knew. The thought had never struck her quite so clearly. She had danced until her body gave out and now she was loveless.
(277) Dance. Cures. Pills. Sleeping pills and diet pills and pain pills and pills for life itself, pills for every illness, jealousy to bronchitis, pills in the drafty hallways where young girls sweated and wept for the roles they never got, pills for ruptured bank accounts, pills for backstabbings, pills for betrayals, pills for the broken ways in which you walked, pills for the pills themselves...She watched dancers on either side of her, tucking into their food, as they always did. Later the girls would throw up in the bathrooms.
(285) The only thing I regret is not having enough regrets.