When I was about six years old, my mother came home one day and found that I had collected half a dozen babies of the neighbourhood-all of them too young to walk-and had them sitting before me on the floor while I was teaching them to wave their arms. When she asked the explanation of this, I informed her that it was my school of dance. She was amused and placed herself at the piano. She began to play for me. This school continued and became very popular. Later on, little girls of the neighbourhood came and their parents paid me a small sum to teach them. This was the beginning of what afterwards proved a very profitable occupation.

My mother took me to a famous ballet teacher, but his lessons did not please me. When the teacher told me to stand on my toes I asked him why, and when he replied "Because it is beautiful, " I said that it was ugly. and against nature and after the third lesson I left his class, never to return. This stiff （僵硬） and commonplace gymnastics which he called dancing only disturbed my dream. I dreamed of a different dance. I did not know just what it would be, but I was feeling out towards an invisible world into which I guessed I might enter if I found the key.

My art was already in me when I was a little girl, and it was owing to the heroic and adventurous spirit of my mother that it was not prevented, I believe that whatever the child is going to do in life should be begun when it is very young. I wonder how many parents realize that by the so-called education they are giving their children, they are only driving them into the commonplace, and taking away from them any chance of doing anything beautiful or original.

The subject of Jay Owens's new book has long been trying to kill me. Like millions of people around the world, I am allergic to dust. I have long considered it an enemy. But Owens is out to broaden our perspective.

While each particle (微粒) of dust may be tiny, together they have outsized consequences. Approximately 2bn tons of dust are lifted into the Earth's atmosphere each year, Owens tells us, both absorbing and reflecting the sun's energy and seeding clouds — therefore directly affecting global temperatures and climate. Like water, dust is part of an essential ecological cycle.

Owens's own fascination with dust started in 2015, with a road trip through California. Owens was transfixed by the story of Los Angeles, whose growth and modern existence was only possible through the systematic theft of water and the creation of a dust desert to the east.

Early in the book, Owens unpacks the history of hygiene (卫生), exploring how dirt and our relation to it has changed over centuries, and cleanliness — or the pursuit of it — defines our modern lives. After the Industrial Revolution, emerging ideas about the relationship between dirt and disease made dust something to be fought against- a responsibility that fell on women. The poorest people tended to have the least time and money to clean a house; often, their jobs were to clean the houses of others. "The history of 20th-century cleanliness is, thus, a history not only of the making of sex and class distinctions, but racialised inequalities."

Perhaps the most emotionally stirring chapter in the book is that in which Owens retells the story of the nuclear age not through mushroom clouds, but through the radioactive dust they left behind. One study estimated that the effects of atmospheric nuclear testing would eventually result in the deaths of 2. 4 million people from cancer, a threat "that has gone substantially unnoticed because radioactive dust is such a delayed killer".

One reason to think about dust, Owens writes in Dust, is "to challenge ourselves to try to see the world beyond our easy imaginings".

I'm 52, and as surprising as it may seem. I'm a gymnast. In a sport for young girls, I have found an unlikely path to joy. When I enter the gym, no matter how much stress I might be feeling, my mind clears and I forget my life. I think of nothing but what I am doing.

When I was 9, I went every Saturday to a gymnastic academy. The coach had gray hair and wore ballet shoes and had boundless enthusiasm. He would say, "You are going to be a gymnast." And I believed him. I vividly remember the first time I did a round off back handspring by myself, the weightlessness of it. I lived for Saturday mornings. I only ever did gymnastics recreationally — I didn't even know real gyms existed — but I always loved it.

That longdormant love came roaring back in my forties. It happened in an instant, at parents' day for my daughter's beginning gymnastics class. The bars were just sitting there, and I had this overwhelming urge to grab hold and swing. But I couldn't make it through the warm-up at the first adult class I went. I felt bad during conditioning. I was the oldest person there. But that spark of memory glowed with possibility. I went back to class again, and again. It was hard and it was humbling. But soon I was doing back handsprings like I used to.

There is nothing like the thrill of getting a new skill, that combination of speed, mechanics, timing, muscles, and bravery. There is an indescribable (不可言喻的) element, too, something like faith. By the time we reach middle age, most of us have had to deal with our fair share of unwelcome surprises, like illness, family crisis or the death of a beloved parent. But gymnastics has brought the most delightful surprises — I keep getting better, overcoming what I thought were limits, amazing myself by what I can do. At a time in life when many things feel like they are sliding down the slope (斜坡) towards old, gymnastics is a gift of fluency and competence in motion. I'm in the best shape of my life. I'm a better gymnast now than I was at 16.