forget me not, forget me not

A performance deserving of standing ovation
And who would have thought it'd be the two of us
So don't wake me if I'm dreaming
'Cause I'm in the mood, come on and give it up...




He dances with me. It's not how we met, but it's how he stayed on the radar. Three weeks of dancing, once, the same dance, over and over, lighting up every time he asked me, oh so politely, if I wished to dance with him. Three weeks of wondering where this was going to go, if it was going to go anywhere off the dance floor, and three weeks of realizing, even if it never did, I was alive in his arms and that was enough.

He dances with me. He danced the day the Enigma fell, the week my heart shattered, and spun me around in delicate circles as I took back the rest of the club dances and finally turned off the lights. That memory was all that staved off crushing grief, in the days following, that I had such joy to balance pain.

He dances with me still. I pray we never get to the point where we stop.

You've got me feeling hella good
So let's just keep on dancing
You hold me like you should
So I'm gonna keep on dancing, keep on dancing...



He dances with me. Stately, elegant, friendship's finest offer, he started dancing with me to stave off incubus advances, fearing my return to the demon if I returned to the demon's arms, even to dance. He started dancing with me as protection, and then he started taking me to other clubs, where we danced long into the night.

I remember one night in Broken Rose, he called across the miles for me to come and dance. When I arrived, it was to a room full of half-clad gentlemen--half of whom I knew--and one additional damsel, and myself. He claimed me for the first dance, and didn't let me go to dance with my favorite Victorian for several hours. We talked about...everything, that night, a meeting of the minds as we swayed in place, and it's a memory I still treasure.

He dances still, when he has the time, and though honestly, some days, I'm more enchanted watching him build, watching how he sets ideas and prims together...I still adore dancing with him. Even though I'm too short.

The waves keep on crashing on me for some reason
But your love keeps on coming like a thunderbolt
Come here a little closer
'Cause I wanna see you, baby, real close up...



He dances with me. Obscurely, it is how we met, staring across the bay, I breathing sea water through gills, he breathing it through some odd elemental magic...He showed up at one dance and I was intrigued; he showed up in town after, showing me what he'd built, and I was impressed; he showed up at Tiki Night in Kokopelli, and I was enraptured.

We danced for hours, that night, watching the night fall, the sun rise, the night fall again. We have danced for hours since, simply moving to music and talking, endlessly, on everything and nothing, from minutiae to reality, observances of lives in progress and lives led elsewhere. We have swayed in place and spun out in mad abandon and all that lies between, and I never, never tire of it.

He dances still. How could he not?

If I seem to value nothing else, let me say this: I value dancing. Moving together, you learn your partner in a way you sometimes cannot with simple words. Motion cannot displace communication; but motion ties all things together. We all dance to the music of the universe, all the way down to the smallest atomies, that dance and spin, each against each, as we do with each other. And those that touch my heart, they must value it, on some level, as well.

I am blessed by knowing these three men, who show such care to all their dancing partners, through all their days. As I've said before, it's rule number five: Dance whenever you can. Never pass up an opportunity to move.

Dance can be thrilling, exalting, humbling, dizzying, goofy, happy, giggly and festive. It can be a form of worship, it can simply be you and the one who asked you to dance, two strangers brought together by a whim. And everything conceiveable in between.

We can dance together and apart, we can dance without knowing we're dancing, we can dance privately and publically, we can make merry and play havoc, all with dance. There are those who say sex is a form of dance, and I wouldn't entirely disagree. There are others that say love itself is dancing, and in my best and brightest relationships, I think that's true.

Never pass up an opportunity to move. Dance as long as you can. Dance and the universe dances with you, your percussive beat adding to the music of galaxies and suns, spinning around and around.

Just get out on the dance floor, already. Move.

(Lyrics taken from No Doubt's "Hella Good")