Poetry. In CHANCE BODIES, astronauts moonwalk chalk hopscotch courts in the suburbs, office workers transform into bats and butterflies, and parents raise their rocket babies to burn up in orbit. In language that is at turns deadpan and tender, Illich catalogues the shapes we take in pursuit of modern life: love, job, house, family. Illich gives us an American Metamorphoses, with imagery romantic, sublime, creepy, and hilarious, with bears lurking on the edges of newly developed lots, clowns blowing backwards into history, and deer sprouting where nothing else will grow.