Leap, soar! You priestesses of grace.
For in you the Dance is embodied now, Heroic and remote. From you we learn, Queens are made of distance and grease paint.
- Edgar Degas, from 8 Sonnets
I understand what he is not saying - that riches do not come to the poor girls of Paris by way of honest laboring. And so, my feet numb with cold and soggy boots, my skin soaked through to my knees with grit and filth and wintertime, I spin a tale. A small house by the sea. A roof of thatch. A garden. Sunshine spilling down. Him, his freedom won, with a hoe. Or maybe a fishing net. Yes, a fishing net. And me, a settler's wife, cooking up those fish all but jumping into his tiny boat. Page 219 - 220
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