(36) Rehearsing with Ariel 36

By closing the gate
The conclusion is empty.

Sometimes the Muse may intrude on the day-world too much by crossing the society's taboos. When she or Krishna cross the boundaries of the Dog's or the Mockingbird's ethics they will end the dream.

Rehearsing with Ariel

After watching the trains in the switching yard, I got my horns out of the car and hauled them upstairs to rehearse with Ariel. She would be at the top floor of the White Swan Warehouse which, at one time, was part of Dallas' red light district. We had been meeting there practically every day for several months. As I topped the stairs I could see Ariel lying still on her marli dance floor. She was listening to the trains and had probably been lying there most of the day. She liked to go there to escape.

I imagined myself in her place, listening to the trains as if I had been there all day. I could hear myself opening my cases with clicks that answered the wheels rolling on the tracks. As I wetted my reed I saw her starting to move. I slid the mouthpiece over the cork of the sax and it gently rocked as her pelvis rolled back and forth on the floor. We had started. We had started before I got there. A blast of the train's horn got a response from my soprano sax and Ariel was on her feet, her hands hanging loosely and reaching for the warm spot left on the floor by her body.

The trains were so active that day that I didn't need to make very much sound. But they weren't alone as they accompanied our movements. An airplane flew over us as I moved my arm slowly from where the floor meets the wall, across the ceiling to the where the floor meets the other wall. A whole ocean of rush hour traffic seemed to come from between Ariel's elbows and she shimmied across the floor.

The setting sun filled the room with bright orange. Large torn sheets of paper in pastel colors hung irregularly around the gray floor that reflected only the orange. Large pillars stood in perfect geometric positions throughout the warehouse. They moved us like electromagnets alternating positive and negative, attracting and repelling us. Sometimes we would be caught in a force that pulled us together, tempting me to move across some hidden boundary that remained between us. My shirt came off. Her breasts appeared and then disappeared. The thought of her husband threatened to change the mood. Our hands touched and together they moved, being much lighter than each one of them would have been alone.

I don't know how long we stayed together with our hands touching, floating weightlessly -- causing our bodies to sometimes follow them across the space; but, eventually, that trance was broken by an attack from a much more playful spirit. Much of the colored paper was torn down to make a fort like everyone has built sometime when they were a kid. We got in and looked at our world through its colors and textures. Our bodies moved across each other, bringing our sound-making to a climax by the loud rustling of all that paper. We could still hear the trains and our environment responding to us. I found my head between her legs and, after sliding that thinnest part of her leotard to one side, I mimicked and miniaturized our dance in the movements in the tip of my tongue. That minuteness was, again, magnified by her rolling pelvis, causing me to follow her with the whole upper part of my body. Certainly, I could follow her movements better than her husband could. With that thought, the trains loosened their connection with us and we were more isolated in that crumpling paper.

We crawled out in pursuit of the trains but again our bodies merged. I, still in my jeans, and she, still in her leotard, stood holding each other, our centers moving together weightlessly just as our hands had earlier. The trains blasted and the cars roared as our movements got heavier and harder ending with that quaking that always unhappily restores lovers to their senses. We lowered ourselves to the floor while still holding each other, feeling each other's breathing against the sighs of the big diesel. The traffic cooled down to soft waves that made us warm.

We never rehearsed again after that; something to do with prior commitments.

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