On standing when the ground is slippery. Sometimes you have no choice but to pick yourself off the ground, no matter how much in tatters you happen to be and how hard it is to move a single limb; and this is no minor task. Worse yet is when you’re asked to perform this impossible feat precisely when you are least confident that it is worthwhile to stand up again; perhaps the ground, you think, plays tricks on you, and would stay stable just long enough for you to come to your feet once more, only to break the foundation and pull at its own seams as soon as your heel is firmly planted on the turf. So just when you intend to stand and to stand tall, the ground itself makes you quake with its own quaking, shake and bend over as though to take hold of a railing that is not there, and dance about like a novice dancer, whether in front of anyone else or not it makes no difference–the sole difference is that you are now dancing when you wanted most only to stand and to stand still and straight.
What else is one to do at such a time than become a jester of one’s own legs along with the earth itself, mocking at all attempts at uprightness with willing and contortionist-professional moves, bending and twisting whatever way the wind shifts, or against the wind. What else is one to do but, as soon as you take a stand again, go down, all of your failure in standing and flaying about full of laughter and the playfulness of children playing together in the park, in which it is the task of the dreamers to make it from one end to the other without so much as stepping once on the mulch? Everything is boiling hot or everything is shifting in a carnivalesque parade, so the children spend most of their time writhing in the greatest pleasure, precisely on the ground, like proud worms. You might attempt to pick up these worms of yourself, too, and use them for bait to catch a creature more stiff; but lo, these worms are slippery–good luck taking any determinate hold of them!
Love the Dust 