from my favorite

TO DANCE

We, all of us, have a need to identify
our bodily rhythms with those of the cosmos.

The wind in a forest of fir.
The spilling of grain in the fields.
The migration of bird and seed.
The trek of atom and star.

That is why we dance.
Dance began as a co-ordination of motor impulses
with universal energies which man only instinctively perceived.
It developed into a playful Dionysian rite
designed to help man get outside of himself,
or rather,
to get outside of the ego so that he might discover the self.

Dance is a fundamental human need.
To deny that need is to become hostile, neurotic and menopausal.

Everyone should dance every day.
Dance at a discotheque.
Dance in your living room.
Dance in bed.
Stick flowers in your typewriter and dance at the office.
Dance at the supermarket with a smoking banana in your teeth.
Dance in the streets.
Dance in church.
"Dance beneath a diamond sky with one hand waving free."

Shiva danced to release the countless souls of men from the snare of illusion.
The Hopi danced in the desert and made rain.
Muhammad Ali danced at the Houston induction center in his shorts and socks.
To arrest a human being for dancing is in itself an immoral act.
A law which prohibits dancing is a crime against man and a sin against God.

--TOM ROBBINS, 1967