Learning music, practicing the difficult parts, over and over until muscle memory takes the lead, studying under the guidance of a shining teacher, advancing from the easy pieces to the virtuoso, intensity of enduring hours before holy texts, reflects the learning of life. We train the rough spots into habit, breeding a certain sureness that surges through difficult times. We learn at the feet of our elders. Yes, what Papa Chuck said. We drink of the fountain of their knowledge, we respect the knowledge the years have crowned them with, we rejoice in the transfer of energy, yes, the transmogrification of knowledge into hope.

A shot in the dark, our lives. A shot rings out, and something shatters, something which was perhaps dear to us, someone we will remember. A shot rang out, and we forget bland happiness, curl up in black despair, wonder what this world has come to. But then, but then, when the smoke sifts away, when the sand moves aside, sliver by sliver, grain by golden grain, we are left with that very tonicity which sees us slack in our chairs, dragging our backs and laughing with betrayed lips. It is a crazed laughter, it is mirth so epitomized that one wonders if is not a bit overdone, when the eyes lose their directness and roll back slightly as they relax, and the eyelids catch them, bringing them lower still, and the corners of the lips curl back and quiver on either side, so that a smile reveals cruel pain, eyes which might be bright cast tortured looks, and the dance that might have been joyful becomes unbearable to watch. A shot, and where have you been? Under the blue depths, entranced by the shimmering reflections of the flat world on the other side, twisting and twirling, sinking and rising in the undulation which beats in a slow, hardly, noticeable, rhythm.

Extension. Arms fly out and the eye traces the line to the infinity of darkness. They spin and extend, propelling us into the dimension of extension, where things grow or shrink with no regard to the conservation of matter. The space in between shrinks and grows, pushing against our bodies, holding us up, holding us down, drawing the paths in which we swim. There is no emptiness. We take the pen, imagine what grace is, then begin to make an outline of ourselves beyond ourselves, ginger bread man, woman, and the cookie cutter. Are the spaces filled with desire, with beauty, and with truth? Or is there really no space in between? Peas in balloons and all that hot air. I could do better and you aren't good enough. Cupped hands pull us into the heavens, and we rise and rise while our heels sink deeper into the dark soil, so that we see life spread out before us not as a river winding among the crags, but as a patchwork quilt spread out on the geography, rising and falling but always encompassing, full, connected. We run like children on the quilt, tumbling and falling and rubbing our backs while squealing with joy. We have extended out of our bodies and are soaring off the quilt and into the warmth of two arms, and as we are wrapped closer and closer more arms reach out from the folds and hold us tightly.

Do I love the person who pushes me the hardest. Who demands excellence. A shot. In the different silence, dust settles on the Qin. A poem is read, read, memorized, repetition leading to transcendence, the drums: beating, the heart: beating, the thought: coursing, circling, in loops, wrapping and overlapping. The string vibrates and sizzles to a standstill, voicing the poem in its wake, and now, and now, no more words are needed, no more querulous cutting oblong mouthings to tell me the story, the mythology which is brought to my ears. I understand this vocabulary, the strings binding my soul to me tremble in sympathy as we perform this night, as we perform to all the eyes and through the shots and pirouette across the broad multicolored spaces, as we perform to no one and close ourselves to everyone but ourselves, as you hold me and release me, as I set you free, as I make this movement mine and look into your lucid, dancing eyes.