There is a song, sung often, that I cannot sing. I cannot make out the words. The chorus is something like, "Me too. Yes, me too. I am like you. I feel that too." Everywhere people gather in clusters to sing the song and to dance the dance and I cannot join them. One at a time they step, in no order I can discern, to the center of the circle for a verse. All around they sit or stand, smoking cigarettes or holding cocktails in perfect casual repose, and they sing the basic things of life, foundational things, the fabric. They love, it seems, the pattern of it all, and they all sing in harmony. None of them notices, it seems, the deep communion of their participation. They are simply living an organic life, touching one another as intimately as the circle allows, pulling ever closer. You cannot notice all of this and still join in, I think. Their eyes are closed as they live and your eyes are opened, observing and describing from outside, from the edge. They talk in perfect rhythm and you only measure the meter. This is me. I am like this, a wallflower on the dance floor of everywhere, the voice of a director's commentary breaking the flow of their romantic comedy, criticizing their drama, analyzing their terror. Maybe I'm a different sort of animal, only half human. Maybe one parent was some faithless fallen angel, condemned to write the story her fate, doomed always to notice where he was not. From time to time my human blood wants to sing or to dance, but you cannot join into the middle of the song. You have to wait until it ends. And it doesn't end. It never, ever ends.
