Status Updates From The Book of Revelation

There are times when the world is kind to you, when you cannot wrongfoot your good fortune, no matter what you do, but it was so long since I had lived that way that I felt as if my life had been dipped in syrup, as if it was deliciously, almost unbearably, sweet.

At the beginning of January in Amsterdam there are images of abandonment and desolation almost everywhere you look. After the New Year people put their Christmas trees out on the street. The trees lie on their sides, shedding scores of brittle, bright-orange needles. They quickly become skeletal. Clogging the gutters are the remains of all the Chinese firecrackers, another kine of foliage, faded and soggy,

While I was being held in the white room I used to think there was a place inside my body that the women could not touch. I used to see this place as a house. A house inside my body where I lived. Where I was safe. From its windows I could look out over land that was flat and featureless. I could see the women, but they were tiny figures, far away. They were always there, but they were always in the distance,

Dancers spend more time in front of the mirror than any other profession I can think of. They study every aspect of themselves – every muscle, every tendon, every line of every limb. They learn their bodies off by heart. They are exploring their own potential, but they are also looking for limitations, flaws. So they can work on them. In that respect, their vanity is a form of meditation, even of perfectionism.

There was a limit to the time that he had left. A male dancer’s career doesn’t last long – all that lifting: the body can only take so much of it – and his career would be shorter than most. His own personal history of injuries had started at the age of twenty-four. He had been born with a very straight back. It didn’t flex, which meant that it took a huge amount of impact when he jumped. It often stiffened