Beyond movements of the hand, the eyes, I sometimes become aware of the electricity in the body which seems inseparable from the words on the page. “I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.”Whitman began with himself, his body, and expanded onward and outward in widening circles. Self-taught, lacking the equipment of a professional wire-walker, she makes do with the gift of her body. To let the body lead doesn’t mean that a manuscript should be jam-packed with action, fast food for adrenaline junkies. “The hardest thing to learn,” says Amal, “is stillness on the wire, or even on earth.