State of Mind

So I said to Jean today, I said, "Jean." (We were about to step onto the dance floor to take on our Broadway/fox trot/Charleston/Quick Step/Lindy Hop/Jive. I was delaying the inevitable.)

"Yes?" Jean asked. (He raised one of this fantastically elastic eyebrows and gave me his best Belarussian stare.)

"Do you sometimes just feel like..." (I stopped inside my quandary, did a little run-around-my head in search of the right words.)

"Like escaping yourself?" he asked. (He lowered his one eyebrow then, in favor of his other, which did a little mathematical dance up high, right along his hair line.)

"Yes. That's it. Like escaping myself." (My eyebrows are not complicit with my moods. I would have raised one, if I could.)

"Yes," he said. "I have felt like that. Except that escaping yourself can't be done. You're always with you."

"I am always with me," I acquiesced. "Always." (For what he said was true.) I shrugged then, and then I stood. Sometimes it's just easier to dance.