I take a deep, cutting, breath in as I dare to look down. I can see all of the people looking up, holding their breath with me with each step I take forward. The dim street lights strike a cord somewhere inside me that resonates with the reasons why I now stand where I am. The taught cord wriggles beneath me and a laugh bubbles out, escaping my lips. I shake my head side to side and with it goes the worry and fear and is replaced with a wide grin as I step and step and step forward. The rope wriggles less and the fear I had inside slowly dissipates and I am left feeling light and courageous, dauntless. The whoo’s, haw’s, and yelps sound like lyrics to accompany the accordion down below and I glance down to see the smiles of the crowd forming below. I look to my left and right and see the old buildings, mismatched and misshapen with the years of history bearing down upon it, pressing it further and further into the ground as the days toll by. My pink tutu bears out around me giving me the illusion that I am graceful enough to walk between these buildings, across these ropes, among these people, in this street, this city. I twirl, a spin, and a slip. The gasps from below and the rising feeling in my gut that I am no longer the one in charge of my own person slips me out of my reverie and back to the reality of here and now and the window before me with tiny ant-like people walking outside, scurrying from place to place while I sit here slipping into dreams of famous Funambolista’s and tight rope walkers in tutu’s like Degas used to keep in his brush. Sometimes I feel like the woman in the tutu hundred’s of feet above the crowd, isolated and teetering. But by choice. She chose to rest her feet on a rope above the crowd. All she wanted to do was fly and she had the courage and the spirit that led her to find a ladder to climb even if she was climbing it alone. And teetering, fearful and uncertain she still stands by her choice because even if she falls, all she had really ever wanted was to fly. So even if she only flies for but a minute, she still gets to spread her arms out wide and grin wide and laugh loud on her trip down. I think too often I find myself on the ledge, holding in the dichotomy of being both fearful and fearless. Fearless of falling but fearful of what lays ahead, of the daringness of my choice this time to be different. Because each time you step out, each time you set yourself a part and stand on a ledge you inadvertently become the spectacle, the spectacle of ridicule sometimes, yes. But also the spectacle of inspiration, for the people down below that didn’t know they had the courage to climb but after seeing the fearlessness in your step they know they have to power to climb too. And that walk, though uncertain, is liberating. Because you can make it into a dance and the dance and the turns and spins and even the slips make any fear worth dancing with, and dancing with fear itself takes the fear entirely out of it and you are left dancing above the crowd to music you make up. And though you be a spectacle, you also become a beacon because your tutu shimmers when it catches the streetlight just like the Eiffel tower does at night. You can choose to dance, you can choose to let the pride and joy of your fearful fearlessness fill you or you can choose to watch. Both are wonderful, but I find I am quite partial to tutu’s.