#669 Acrobatique- John Keene
Reading a short story about a trapeze artist, you immediately think of Kafka. Whether this is an homage or merely a wink at the old master is of no matter, the seed is planted in your mind. Like Kafka’s artist, the acrobat here is tragic performer, trapped in her own success. She feels the glamour of attention and accolades from great composers, statesmen, and painters—but she also feels keenly the seedy stares and gropings of drunken stalkers. Her fear is not of falling from her high-wire act but of losing the freedom of the act itself.
“How am I to exceed every limit placed on me unless I place it there, because that is what I think of when I think of freedom, that I have gathered around me people who understand how to translate fear into possibility, who have no wings but fly beyond the most fantastical vision of the clouds, who face, death daily back out into the waiting room, and I am one of them.”
Great writing.
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