Samba-ing

This isn't really me, but it is a photograph of happy dancing feet, which I found myself in possession of last evening. I'd been practicing the samba with the champion Belarusian, Jean Paulovich, and last night, among friends, we performed it. Though perhaps "perform" is too strong a word, perhaps "perform" suggests glitter and glued-on lashes and fish-netted thighs, and that will never (to Jean's professional despair) be me.

What is me is only this: The music goes on, and my bones take it in. My heart beats higher in its cage. Someone waits for me to get it right, and occasionally (but never wholly) I do. Frankly, I missed a few steps last night. But I never lost the music.

It's a privilege, dancing with Mr. Paulovich. It's a happy thing, to be forgiven for less than perfect bota fogas, voltas, whisks. It's good, after a stretch of worry, to come back home, to dance.