Ball Room Carousel
We visited the St Joe’s Silver Beach Carousel while on vacation.
St Joseph is situated on a bluff overlooking Silver Beach. The beach is aptly named. Gazing west toward Lake Michigan which shimmers, a mystical presence, I am reminded of the “goodness,” to risk saying it plainly, of “the love” which is inscribed into life. The very vista dials-me-in to a unifying wavelength, synchronizing me intensively with past generations, and extensively to community. Maybe even to the earth from which everything that is alive comes?
I get carried away, a feeling similar to being “in love”… But back to the Carousel.
The magic of a carousel ride is sure to delight every small child, parent and grandparent who visits Silver Beach. Originally the site of the Carousel was an amusement park ballroom for dancing. Is there anything 
more symbolic and ritualistic, than a dance, – two moving in sympathetic harmony, palms touching, bodies reciprocating intuitively, sometimes, one leads, one’s partner follows, and sometimes the reverse? Round and round the dance floor as the music plays. Round and round goes the carousel…
You know on the grassy bluff as I look out toward the lake, I hear the music playing.
Let’s dance. Shall we?
Finally, this excerpt from East Coker by T. S. Eliot
In that open field
If you do not come too close, if you do not come too close,
On a summer midnight, you can hear the music
Of the weak pipe and the little drum
And see them dancing around the bonfire
The association of man and woman
In daunsinge, signifying matrimonie—
A dignified and commodiois sacrament.
Two and two, necessarye coniunction,
Holding eche other by the hand or the arm
Whiche betokeneth concorde. Round and round the fire
Leaping through the flames, or joined in circles,
Rustically solemn or in rustic laughter
Lifting heavy feet in clumsy shoes,
Earth feet, loam feet, lifted in country mirth
Mirth of those long since under earth
Nourishing the corn. Keeping time,
Keeping the rhythm in their dancing
As in their living in the living seasons
The time of the seasons and the constellations
The time of milking and the time of harvest
The time of the coupling of man and woman
And that of beasts. Feet rising and falling.
Eating and drinking. Dung and death.
