Stravinsky v. my yin

my yin came home tonight and caught me grading midterms, hair a mess, listening to Stravinsky's L'ouiseau de feu. she said it felt like walking into some strange movie, with me cast in the part of madman. she said,

"can you turn that off?"

(this is beside the point).

the point is that we ended up on the couch talking about annoyance, distraction, and diversion. the gist of the conversation is irrelevant,

(saying this is either very foolish or very clever),

but what emerged was something beautiful and profound. it seems the righteous, riotous Russian's score skulked past my yin's defenses because i heard myself saying

(to the effect of):

there is no union of two. there is only harmony. i have pondered the enormousness of equanimity. i do not confuse its size for enormity. the illusion of two experiencing a

(single)

one is a preposterous egoistic sham. listen to music. listen to your voice. there is no enlightenment. there is only the stuttering perfection of a thousand signifiers falling short of language, a semiotic garden in the pause before the Fall.

(left. left. left, right, left.)

a marching army singing cadence is union. i believe in the possibility of enlightenment, a choir singing Handel on l'île de la Cité.