What are the chances I’m the luckiest woman on earth?

What do you call it when a person gets an indescribable urge to “hang” by her arms, legs and feet; ties ropes to rafters and proceeds to all manner of contortion upside down by the knees and finally the feet wrapped in rope; body elongating toward earth, arms outstretched reaching down and “stand” in such a space as to be one completely transformed by the sublimation of will to gravity UPSIDE DOWN? Is this nature? Instinct?

Now what do you call it when that same person goes to market from a month-long solitude, tells ONE person she “loves flying” and finds herself on a TRAPEZE the very next day swinging high in the air doing things with her body she never dreamed, back-dropped by a 3,300 ft. series of waterfalls cascading down a 100,000 year-old ridge on an isthmus formed at least three million years ago but upon which she’s only been for maybe 1,000 days? Fate? Serendipity?

And what could one possibly say about the fact that she—a poet who works sits on her azz writing or working on the computer all day–has been “practicing hanging” for a month without any idea why or what for but obediently listening to the desires of the body for what it asked? Is this true intelligence? Intuition?

Furthermore, WHAT would you make of it if I told you said poet’s nephew in San Antonio, TX most likely just watched the wife of the owner of said Trapeze School perform in a “circus with a lady flying on ropes”? Coincidence? Harmony?

And finally, HOW do you explain that this greatest of her life’s great joys arrived the very day after experiencing such a sorrow most of us have the strength of will to live through but a few times in our lives? Duality? Synchronicity?

Tell me, what are the chances?

On the calves of an Isthmus