TERPSICHORE'S FIRE
EPILOGUE
Yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they're here to stay
Oh, I believe in yesterday
Suddenly, I'm not half the man I used to be
There's a shadow hanging over me
Oh, yesterday came suddenly
Why she had to go I don't know
She wouldn't say
I said something wrong now I long for yesterday
Yesterday love was such an easy game to play
Now I need a place to hide away
Oh, I believe in yesterday
John Lennon and Paul McCartney of the Beatles
Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows
What are those blue remembered hills?
What spires, which farms are those?
That is the land of lost content
I see it shining plain
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again
From "A Shropshire Lad" by Alfred Edward Housman
The night had fallen, and I have reached the end of my story. It was a long dark deep night brought on by a feeling of total emptiness with cold bleak winds of desolation blowing through my soul. No greater disappointment have I ever felt in my life, neither before nor since. I feel so sad when I think about what could have been; the life I had, the life I wanted, the life I lost. Whether I liked it or not, it was the end of an era, the world moved on and forgot about Nikki Vince. A generation of teenagers and twenty-somethings have long since grown old and most probably forgotten what they saw, what they were witness to, and what once awed them; a dancing prodigy like no other. But I never have. I know I never will. With the passage of time the years have turned to decades and the decades into a new century, and she exists now only as a memory in my mind. But I wish to make it known that there really was a real life Dancing Queen once, long ago and in a different time and place. The memory of her lingers on in my heart like a glowing ember in a fire that just won't quite go out. She remains my Shangri-La, my Camelot, my Eldorado, my Blue Remembered Hills, my lost city of Atlantis, but most of all; my Paradise Lost.
Could such a thing ever happen again? It seems very unlikely. Was it all just a fluke? Or was it providence? If so, then what was its' purpose and meaning? It is said that everyone has their day, their once-in-a-lifetime experience, so I guess that this was mine. When I get to heaven this obsession is the first matter I intend to raise with the Man upstairs; and I intend to tell Him that there is still some place, some part of a distant dance floor somewhere that is forever ours.
