![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The kidlet started ice-skating lessons today. It seems environmentally unsound to go ice-skating when it's a syrupy 96 degrees outside, doesn't it? But boy, that rink was a comfortable place to be.
The kidlet spent most of 45 minutes falling down and getting back up, and I was very proud of that persistence, but I spent 45 minutes ogling one of the instructors.
He was a stocky redhead with a beaky nose -- yes, I thought of Charlie Weasley right away; sue me -- and he was just totally, effortlessly graceful. All the time. Even skating idly alongside his ten-year-old student, backwards, on one foot, with his hands shoved into his windbreaker pockets.
I love to watch people ice-skate anyway; it's like watching someone dance and fly at the same time. This guy, though -- I think it was the ordinariness of his body that made him so striking to me. He looked like he'd be right at home hefting a keg or a bag of fertilizer on his shoulder. Stocky, as I said, thick all over, muscular, little bit of belly softness under his T-shirt.
Because, see, this culture really discourages men from being graceful in their ordinary movements, unless they're dancers or certain kinds of athletes. Men actually seem to train all the grace out of their movements, for fear of seeming effeminate.
So I don't get to see this kind of grace very often. It was beautiful.
The kidlet spent most of 45 minutes falling down and getting back up, and I was very proud of that persistence, but I spent 45 minutes ogling one of the instructors.
He was a stocky redhead with a beaky nose -- yes, I thought of Charlie Weasley right away; sue me -- and he was just totally, effortlessly graceful. All the time. Even skating idly alongside his ten-year-old student, backwards, on one foot, with his hands shoved into his windbreaker pockets.
I love to watch people ice-skate anyway; it's like watching someone dance and fly at the same time. This guy, though -- I think it was the ordinariness of his body that made him so striking to me. He looked like he'd be right at home hefting a keg or a bag of fertilizer on his shoulder. Stocky, as I said, thick all over, muscular, little bit of belly softness under his T-shirt.
Because, see, this culture really discourages men from being graceful in their ordinary movements, unless they're dancers or certain kinds of athletes. Men actually seem to train all the grace out of their movements, for fear of seeming effeminate.
So I don't get to see this kind of grace very often. It was beautiful.