764: When Derek . . .
What a Piece of Work I Am, Chapter 54 concludes
WHEN DEREK and Bud and Bud’s gangs of carpenters and plumbers and electricians were finished, Ariane spent a night prowling her new home like a cat taking possession of a strange place. For a long time, she couldn’t seem to settle into it. She was restless, always on the move from one stage to another, because she wasn’t yet comfortable in the space, and because she was enjoying the experience of it while it was still new and unfamiliar. She was amazed at the way she moved from room to room. The space she prowled seemed limitless, as if in creating this new setting for herself she had expanded her world. The openness invited a different kind of ambulation; since she was on view from every side, mere walking wouldn’t do. These spaces wanted slinking, stalking, vamping, gliding, dancing. Sometimes, the new setting made her doubt herself. Perhaps she didn’t have a self that suited the setting, no self sufficient to it. At times she thought along these lines: holy shit! I’ve built a monumental pedestal for a tiny statue, but she kept her thoughts to herself and she roamed her rooms in silence and apparent satisfaction. If she was a tiny thing in comparison to her setting, she was able to hide that deficiency, to keep it to herself, and as a cat confronted by a larger dog aggrandizes itself, fluffing its fur and its tail, arching its back and stretching its legs, to take a stand, she seemed to enlarge herself: her legs seemed longer as she prowled these large spaces, her gestures grew grander, and her voice grew stronger.
[to be continued]
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