Cornerstone

As we drove to UNM for the last time this morning, Andrew said, "We are headed to a cornerstone of our lives today." 

He was right. 

I think I value sleep more than verbociousness tonight; I'll let the pictures do some talking of the fun we had. SO, SO incredible. Beyond description, truly. (Which doesn't do much good in a blog, I understand, but I think I've done enough talking about the music the last few days- I can do it no more justice now; in fact, I can offer in far less, now that the concert is ringing in my mind...). 

I will say: Dr. Stroope was an artist and we were his medium; he used us to create something incredible, and I owe him far more than a wooden roadrunner for the experience he has given me over the last three days.  It was far more than just a good time- even more than any of my descriptions of the music or the learning experience. What he gave us was the kind of strand of hope to hold on to even when you're lost in a sea of ocean waves and you feel neither up or down, only a chord in your hand, which you know will hold steady, but which leads to a shore you know nothing about, much less know how far it is away. "Don't settle for less." Those are some of the hardest words to hear (or think, or experience), when you have nothing of that standard in which you can rest- that challenge plunges you into discomfort, and in face of the frustration, you can only trust you were moved to that moment for a reason- no matter how painful it is to leave that moment and return to "real life." That moment was real life too, just a more pure, perfect, wonderful state of it. But perhaps there is better to come. Perhaps I can make things better where there are no opportunities for it to offer itself to me with such a generous gift of invitation and preparendess.

"Everyone who got where he is had to begin where he was." -Robert Louis Stevenson

"The first requisite of success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem without growing weary." -Thomas Edison

"The drops of rain make a hole in the stone not by violence but by the oft of falling." -Lucretius