The ISU decision was expected on the final day of the seven-day extension. She knew the exact day because Sophie had communicated it, which was the way she had been receiving all administrative information throughout the review period: through Sophie, who filtered and contextualized and forwarded with appropriate notes. She trusted Sophie's filtering. Sophie had been accurate and timely throughout.
She woke on the final day at five-thirty-two.
She made coffee. She did not look at her phone immediately , she made the coffee and stood at the east-facing window with it for three minutes before she looked. The east-facing window showed the same Montreal December morning it had been showing every morning for weeks. Dark. Cold. The streetlights on. The Saint-Laurent building visible at the right angle.
She looked at the phone.
Nothing from Sophie. Nothing from him. It was five-thirty-eight. The ISU office would open at nine. Decisions of this kind typically came in the mid-morning. She was not going to know before the solo session.
She went to the rink.
The solo session was ninety minutes. She ran the elements correctly and at the correct level. She was present in the session , not the extended two-fifteen of the day before, the correct ninety minutes. She had promised Coach Han. She had kept the promise.
At seven-twenty-two, the joint session was forty minutes away, her phone showed a text from Sophie: ISU office notified both parties this morning: management's formal complaint filing has triggered a procedural review of the emergency clause registration itself. The review board is expanding the panel. New timeline: determination within five additional business days.
She read this.
She sat on the bench with her skates on and read it a second time.
Five additional business days.
Not the final day of seven. Five more days after the final day of seven. Management's formal complaint , filed in response to Cas's personal statement , had triggered a procedural escalation. ISU was expanding the panel. The determination was now five business days out from today.
She texted Sophie: Does Cas have the same notification?
Sophie: His lawyer received it. I'll send the full memo to both of you.
She put the phone in her bag.
She sat with it.
Five more days. The extension had extended. She had been living in the review period for more than three weeks and it had just been extended again by five days. Because management had responded to the personal statement. Because management did not accept independent action from people they represented.
Because Cas had filed the statement.
She did not assign fault to his filing the statement. She would have filed it. She was glad he had filed it. But the consequence of his filing was: five more days. And she had been in the review for three weeks already and the five more days arrived like something very specific that she needed to sit with before she could name it.
She named it at seven twenty-eight, sitting on the bench in the equipment room with her skates on and the joint session twelve minutes away:
The ground had shifted under her again.
Not collapsed. Shifted. The difference was real but the feeling was the same , the body's system for threat detection had registered the change and was reporting: something that was in one position is in a different position now.
She had been managing this feeling for three weeks. She was managing it again.
The joint session arrived. She ran it.
The lift: she gave the weight. She was not certain of the percentage. She noted this and continued.
After the session, she looked at her phone. A text from Cas, timestamped nine forty-one: I got the ISU notification. Management's escalation triggered a panel expansion. I'm in back-to-back calls with my lawyer right now , can we talk at noon?
She typed: Yes.
At eleven-fourteen , fifty-three minutes before the noon conversation , a text from Sophie arrived: Heads up: Cas and management had an unscheduled call at 10am per his lawyer's log, which I received as co-manager. He'll have the details. Wanted you to have the timeline.
She read this.
An unscheduled call with management at ten. While he was supposed to be in calls with his lawyer. He had been in a management call at ten and had not texted her about it, and Sophie had found out through his lawyer's log rather than through him.
She put the phone face-down on the desk.
She sat.
The specific cold quality.
Not the managed version. The actual thing.
He had gone to a management call , at ten, while she had been waiting for the noon conversation , and she had found out through Sophie reading a lawyer's log. He had called her this morning, after the ISU notification, and said he was in back-to-back calls with his lawyer. The management call had happened. He had not mentioned it.
She thought about the pattern.
She had named the pattern to him three weeks ago: management makes a move, he handles it, he tells her after he has the full picture. She had told him: I want to know before you have the full picture. He had said yes. He had texted her twelve minutes after the emergency meeting notification , progress. He had shown her the statement before filing , progress.
And now: a management call at ten that she learned about through a lawyer's log Sophie happened to receive.
The pattern had run ahead of him again.
She did not think he had done it deliberately. She did not think he was managing her. She thought: the pattern ran ahead of him the way the wound ran ahead of her. Both of them trying. Both of them being outrun by the thing they were trying to address.
She picked up the phone. She did not text him.
She sat with the cold quality.
At eleven fifty-eight, she texted: I have to move noon. I need some time. Can we talk this evening?
He replied in two minutes: Yes. Is everything okay?
She: Not fully. I'll explain tonight.
He: I'm here if you need me sooner.
She: Tonight.
She put the phone down.
She needed the afternoon to understand what she was feeling well enough to tell him about it rather than manage it at him. This was the specific thing she had learned: she processed better alone first. This was not the wound. The wound would have gone to silence and wouldn't have committed to tonight. She was committed to tonight.
She went to the window.
The Montreal December was doing what it had been doing since she arrived in this city four years ago: the specific relentlessness of it, the cold that did not ask your permission and the dark that arrived too early and the particular persistence required to live in a city that demanded you keep going regardless.
She had been going for twenty-three days of review period. She was going to go for five more.
She was going to tell him tonight about the management call and the Sophie text and the cold quality. She was going to tell him before she had processed it fully, because she had promised herself she would tell him while it was happening rather than after.
She was going to do that tonight.
She was in it.
Both of them.
She was going to find out.
She believed.
She was going to tell him tonight.
She was already there.
She was.
At three o'clock she walked the seven blocks to the Saint-Laurent building. She had not told him she was coming. She knocked.
He opened the door. He had his phone in his hand and the specific expression of someone who had been expecting her and had also been in the middle of something.
She said: "I need to tell you something before I've had time to process it into the clean version."
He said: "Come in."
She went in.
She told him about the Sophie text. About the lawyer's log. About the ten o'clock management call. She told him in the specific sequence it had happened, without editorializing , the notification, Sophie's heads-up, the timeline, the cold quality.
He listened.
When she had told him everything, he said: "I should have texted you before I took that call."
She said: "Yes."
He said: "Management called at nine fifty-eight. My instinct was to get information before bringing it to you. I took the call."
She said: "I know."
He said: "I did the same thing I've been trying not to do."
She said: "Yes."
He said: "I'm sorry."
She received the apology.
She said: "I'm not here because I need you to apologize. I'm here because I told you I would tell you while it was happening. It's happening. This is me telling you."
He said: "Yes."
She said: "Your pattern runs ahead of your intentions sometimes. My wound runs ahead of my decisions sometimes. We've both been trying. We're both still running into our patterns."
He said: "Yes."
She said: "Five more days."
He said: "Five more days."
She looked at him. He looked back. The Saint-Laurent apartment, the east-facing window, the Montreal late afternoon coming in.
She said: "I'm going to give full weight tomorrow."
He said: "I know."
She said: "I believe this resolves in our favor."
He said: "So do I."
She said: "And I'm still in the cold quality right now."
He said: "I know. You told me while it was happening. That's different from before."
She said: "Yes."
She stayed for dinner.
The pattern had run ahead. The wound had reported. She had told him while it was happening.
Both things.
Both real.
She was in it.
She was going to find out.
She believed.
She was there.
She walked home at nine-thirty. He walked her the first four blocks and turned north. She continued the remaining three blocks.
She thought about what had happened today.
The pattern had run ahead of him at ten o'clock. She had learned about it through Sophie at eleven-fourteen. She had moved the noon conversation. She had gone to him at three without waiting for evening. She had told him while it was happening rather than after.
She had not followed the wound's complete instruction. The wound's instruction was: learn about the management call, note it, process it alone, and by the time she brought it to him it would be packaged in the managed version , clinical, contained, no longer raw. She had not done that. She had gone to him at three with the raw version.
This was progress.
It did not feel like triumph. It felt like the specific effort of doing something correctly when everything in her nervous system was pulling toward the other option. The correct thing and the easy thing were not the same thing and she was choosing the correct thing.
She had been choosing it for three weeks.
She was going to choose it for five more days.
She believed in the outcome. She also believed in the choosing, independent of the outcome. The choosing was something she was doing regardless of what ISU decided. The choosing was hers.
She arrived at her building.
She went up.
She sat at the desk.
She opened the notebook.
She wrote: Day 113 , extended review, day 1 of 5 more. ISU panel expansion. Management call at ten , I found out through Sophie. I went to him at three without processing first. I told him while it was happening. He said he should have texted me first. He's right. I said: I know. We're both still running into our patterns. Five more days.
She wrote: The cold quality is real. I am sitting with it and not managing it and not letting it drive the lift weight. I am going to give full weight tomorrow. I have decided.
She wrote: He said: you told me while it was happening, that's different from before. He's right. That's what I'm doing differently. It's hard to do differently. I'm doing it.
She closed the notebook.
She looked at the window.
The Saint-Laurent lights were on.
Five more days.
She was going to find out.
She believed.
She was in it.
Both of them.
She was going to give full weight.
She was going to tell him while it was happening.
She was going to be there.
She was already there.
Both of them.
There.
She was going to find out.
She was already there.
In the morning she went to the rink at five-thirty-two.
Day one of the five additional business days.
She ran the solo session at ninety minutes , the correct length, not extended. The step sequence element was at the target for the sixth consecutive session. She noted this as she had noted it each time: the body learning, the repetition producing the result, the patience required and given and rewarded.
She went to the joint session.
He was there.
They ran the warm-up. They ran the program. The lift: three taps, weight transfer, full commitment.
She checked the weight after.
One hundred percent.
She had decided.
She had given it.
He had held it.
She had landed.
After the session, Coach Han said: "Good session." Two words. She received them.
After the session, Cas said: "I'm going to tell my lawyer about the ten o'clock call. About the pattern. He needs to know what happened so it doesn't happen again."
She looked at him.
He said: "I should have done that differently. I'm making sure I can do it differently."
She said: "Yes."
She received this as the action it was. He was not just acknowledging the pattern. He was telling the person he worked with about it so that the person could help him not repeat it. This was what accountability looked like when it was serious: not just sorry but here is the structural change.
She said: "Thank you."
He said: "Five days."
She said: "Five days."
Both of them in the corridor. The joint session complete. The lift at full weight. His lawyer going to know about the ten o'clock.
She was going to find out in five days.
She believed.
She was there.
Both of them.
In it.
She walked home. Seven blocks. The Montreal cold, the same it had been, the specific relentlessness she had come to understand as a reliable thing , it would not surprise her, it would not ease before its time, it would be the same every day until the season turned.
Five days.
She was in it.
She was going to give full weight.
She was going to tell him while it was happening.
She was going to find out.
She believed.
She was already there.
Both of them.
Five days.
There.
That evening Petra called. Not the scheduled Monday call , an additional call that Petra had requested via Sophie because she had reviewed the Fukuoka footage again in preparation for the spring program planning and wanted to discuss one of the lift development elements before the Monday session.
Harin answered.
Petra was direct in the way she was always direct: "I've been looking at the third run in the free skate. The lift at the three-minute-forty mark. I want to talk about the quality of the entry."
Harin said: "Yes."
Petra said: "What I see in the entry is complete commitment. Not the controlled commitment of someone who has learned to trust a mechanic , the specific quality of a person who has stopped managing the decision and is in the decision already. You gave the weight before the cue."
She said: "I know."
Petra said: "That's what I want for the spring program. Not the learned version , the version that happens before the decision."
She said: "That version doesn't always happen. It happened in Fukuoka."
Petra said: "It happened because of what led up to it. The entire season. What I'm asking you is: can you get back to the condition that produced that entry?"
She sat with this.
She thought about the review period. The ninety-seven and ninety-eight percent. The hundred percent she was choosing consciously. The difference between choosing and already being in the decision.
She said: "I'm working on it. I've been in a complicated period."
Petra said: "I know. I'm not asking you to have resolved the complicated period. I'm asking whether you know how to get back to the entry."
She said: "I think I do."
Petra said: "Good. That's all I needed to know." A pause. "The spring program needs what you had in Fukuoka. Not a performance of it , the thing itself. I'm going to build choreography around the assumption that you can get there."
She said: "Yes."
Petra ended the call.
She sat at the desk.
She was working on it. She was choosing the hundred percent consciously. Fukuoka had been before the decision , already in it, as Petra said. She was not before the decision right now. She was in the process of deciding. That was the difference and the work and the five days and what she was going to find out.
She wrote in the notebook: Day 114. Petra called. She wants the entry from Fukuoka , before the decision, already in it. I told her I'm working on it. I think I know how to get there.
She wrote: Five days.
She closed the notebook.
She was going to get there.
She believed.
She was already working toward it.
She was in it.
Both of them.
Five days.
There.
She went to bed early , nine o'clock, the same hour as the nights when the body had processed something significant and needed more than its usual duration. She lay in the dark and thought about Petra's question: can you get back to the condition that produced that entry?
The condition. Not the entry itself , the condition. What she had been in during Fukuoka that had allowed her to give the weight before the cue rather than at the cue.
She had been in: ninety days of the specific process of learning another person's body and having her own body learned by them. She had been in: the shared history of the step sequence developing, the lift developing, the program becoming more itself over weeks of practice. She had been in: the specific quality of a person who had stopped pretending to be performing a program and had started being in the program.
The condition was: she had been in it already. Fully. Before the cue.
She was not fully in it right now. She was partly in it and partly managing the five days and partly in the cold quality and partly choosing the hundred percent consciously. She was not before the decision. She was in the middle of making it.
Five days.
After the five days she was going to be in the decision. She believed that.
She was going to be before the cue, already in it.
She was working toward it.
She was in it.
She was already there.
She was going to get back to it.
She believed.
She slept.
You've reached the end of this chapter
The ISU decision was expected on the final day of the seven-day extension. She knew the exact day because Sophie had communicated it, which was the way she had been receiving all administrative information throughout the review period: through Sophie, who filtered and contextualized and forwarded with appropriate notes. She trusted Sophie's filtering. Sophie had been accurate and timely throughout.
She woke on the final day at five-thirty-two.
She made coffee. She did not look at her phone immediately , she made the coffee and stood at the east-facing window with it for three minutes before she looked. The east-facing window showed the same Montreal December morning it had been showing every morning for weeks. Dark. Cold. The streetlights on. The Saint-Laurent building visible at the right angle.
She looked at the phone.
Nothing from Sophie. Nothing from him. It was five-thirty-eight. The ISU office would open at nine. Decisions of this kind typically came in the mid-morning. She was not going to know before the solo session.
She went to the rink.
The solo session was ninety minutes. She ran the elements correctly and at the correct level. She was present in the session , not the extended two-fifteen of the day before, the correct ninety minutes. She had promised Coach Han. She had kept the promise.
At seven-twenty-two, the joint session was forty minutes away, her phone showed a text from Sophie: ISU office notified both parties this morning: management's formal complaint filing has triggered a procedural review of the emergency clause registration itself. The review board is expanding the panel. New timeline: determination within five additional business days.
She read this.
She sat on the bench with her skates on and read it a second time.
Five additional business days.
Not the final day of seven. Five more days after the final day of seven. Management's formal complaint , filed in response to Cas's personal statement , had triggered a procedural escalation. ISU was expanding the panel. The determination was now five business days out from today.
She texted Sophie: Does Cas have the same notification?
Sophie: His lawyer received it. I'll send the full memo to both of you.
She put the phone in her bag.
She sat with it.
Five more days. The extension had extended. She had been living in the review period for more than three weeks and it had just been extended again by five days. Because management had responded to the personal statement. Because management did not accept independent action from people they represented.
Because Cas had filed the statement.
She did not assign fault to his filing the statement. She would have filed it. She was glad he had filed it. But the consequence of his filing was: five more days. And she had been in the review for three weeks already and the five more days arrived like something very specific that she needed to sit with before she could name it.
She named it at seven twenty-eight, sitting on the bench in the equipment room with her skates on and the joint session twelve minutes away:
The ground had shifted under her again.
Not collapsed. Shifted. The difference was real but the feeling was the same , the body's system for threat detection had registered the change and was reporting: something that was in one position is in a different position now.
She had been managing this feeling for three weeks. She was managing it again.
The joint session arrived. She ran it.
The lift: she gave the weight. She was not certain of the percentage. She noted this and continued.
After the session, she looked at her phone. A text from Cas, timestamped nine forty-one: I got the ISU notification. Management's escalation triggered a panel expansion. I'm in back-to-back calls with my lawyer right now , can we talk at noon?
She typed: Yes.
At eleven-fourteen , fifty-three minutes before the noon conversation , a text from Sophie arrived: Heads up: Cas and management had an unscheduled call at 10am per his lawyer's log, which I received as co-manager. He'll have the details. Wanted you to have the timeline.
She read this.
An unscheduled call with management at ten. While he was supposed to be in calls with his lawyer. He had been in a management call at ten and had not texted her about it, and Sophie had found out through his lawyer's log rather than through him.
She put the phone face-down on the desk.
She sat.
The specific cold quality.
Not the managed version. The actual thing.
He had gone to a management call , at ten, while she had been waiting for the noon conversation , and she had found out through Sophie reading a lawyer's log. He had called her this morning, after the ISU notification, and said he was in back-to-back calls with his lawyer. The management call had happened. He had not mentioned it.
She thought about the pattern.
She had named the pattern to him three weeks ago: management makes a move, he handles it, he tells her after he has the full picture. She had told him: I want to know before you have the full picture. He had said yes. He had texted her twelve minutes after the emergency meeting notification , progress. He had shown her the statement before filing , progress.
And now: a management call at ten that she learned about through a lawyer's log Sophie happened to receive.
The pattern had run ahead of him again.
She did not think he had done it deliberately. She did not think he was managing her. She thought: the pattern ran ahead of him the way the wound ran ahead of her. Both of them trying. Both of them being outrun by the thing they were trying to address.
She picked up the phone. She did not text him.
She sat with the cold quality.
At eleven fifty-eight, she texted: I have to move noon. I need some time. Can we talk this evening?
He replied in two minutes: Yes. Is everything okay?
She: Not fully. I'll explain tonight.
He: I'm here if you need me sooner.
She: Tonight.
She put the phone down.
She needed the afternoon to understand what she was feeling well enough to tell him about it rather than manage it at him. This was the specific thing she had learned: she processed better alone first. This was not the wound. The wound would have gone to silence and wouldn't have committed to tonight. She was committed to tonight.
She went to the window.
The Montreal December was doing what it had been doing since she arrived in this city four years ago: the specific relentlessness of it, the cold that did not ask your permission and the dark that arrived too early and the particular persistence required to live in a city that demanded you keep going regardless.
She had been going for twenty-three days of review period. She was going to go for five more.
She was going to tell him tonight about the management call and the Sophie text and the cold quality. She was going to tell him before she had processed it fully, because she had promised herself she would tell him while it was happening rather than after.
She was going to do that tonight.
She was in it.
Both of them.
She was going to find out.
She believed.
She was going to tell him tonight.
She was already there.
She was.
At three o'clock she walked the seven blocks to the Saint-Laurent building. She had not told him she was coming. She knocked.
He opened the door. He had his phone in his hand and the specific expression of someone who had been expecting her and had also been in the middle of something.
She said: "I need to tell you something before I've had time to process it into the clean version."
He said: "Come in."
She went in.
She told him about the Sophie text. About the lawyer's log. About the ten o'clock management call. She told him in the specific sequence it had happened, without editorializing , the notification, Sophie's heads-up, the timeline, the cold quality.
He listened.
When she had told him everything, he said: "I should have texted you before I took that call."
She said: "Yes."
He said: "Management called at nine fifty-eight. My instinct was to get information before bringing it to you. I took the call."
She said: "I know."
He said: "I did the same thing I've been trying not to do."
She said: "Yes."
He said: "I'm sorry."
She received the apology.
She said: "I'm not here because I need you to apologize. I'm here because I told you I would tell you while it was happening. It's happening. This is me telling you."
He said: "Yes."
She said: "Your pattern runs ahead of your intentions sometimes. My wound runs ahead of my decisions sometimes. We've both been trying. We're both still running into our patterns."
He said: "Yes."
She said: "Five more days."
He said: "Five more days."
She looked at him. He looked back. The Saint-Laurent apartment, the east-facing window, the Montreal late afternoon coming in.
She said: "I'm going to give full weight tomorrow."
He said: "I know."
She said: "I believe this resolves in our favor."
He said: "So do I."
She said: "And I'm still in the cold quality right now."
He said: "I know. You told me while it was happening. That's different from before."
She said: "Yes."
She stayed for dinner.
The pattern had run ahead. The wound had reported. She had told him while it was happening.
Both things.
Both real.
She was in it.
She was going to find out.
She believed.
She was there.
She walked home at nine-thirty. He walked her the first four blocks and turned north. She continued the remaining three blocks.
She thought about what had happened today.
The pattern had run ahead of him at ten o'clock. She had learned about it through Sophie at eleven-fourteen. She had moved the noon conversation. She had gone to him at three without waiting for evening. She had told him while it was happening rather than after.
She had not followed the wound's complete instruction. The wound's instruction was: learn about the management call, note it, process it alone, and by the time she brought it to him it would be packaged in the managed version , clinical, contained, no longer raw. She had not done that. She had gone to him at three with the raw version.
This was progress.
It did not feel like triumph. It felt like the specific effort of doing something correctly when everything in her nervous system was pulling toward the other option. The correct thing and the easy thing were not the same thing and she was choosing the correct thing.
She had been choosing it for three weeks.
She was going to choose it for five more days.
She believed in the outcome. She also believed in the choosing, independent of the outcome. The choosing was something she was doing regardless of what ISU decided. The choosing was hers.
She arrived at her building.
She went up.
She sat at the desk.
She opened the notebook.
She wrote: Day 113 , extended review, day 1 of 5 more. ISU panel expansion. Management call at ten , I found out through Sophie. I went to him at three without processing first. I told him while it was happening. He said he should have texted me first. He's right. I said: I know. We're both still running into our patterns. Five more days.
She wrote: The cold quality is real. I am sitting with it and not managing it and not letting it drive the lift weight. I am going to give full weight tomorrow. I have decided.
She wrote: He said: you told me while it was happening, that's different from before. He's right. That's what I'm doing differently. It's hard to do differently. I'm doing it.
She closed the notebook.
She looked at the window.
The Saint-Laurent lights were on.
Five more days.
She was going to find out.
She believed.
She was in it.
Both of them.
She was going to give full weight.
She was going to tell him while it was happening.
She was going to be there.
She was already there.
Both of them.
There.
She was going to find out.
She was already there.
In the morning she went to the rink at five-thirty-two.
Day one of the five additional business days.
She ran the solo session at ninety minutes , the correct length, not extended. The step sequence element was at the target for the sixth consecutive session. She noted this as she had noted it each time: the body learning, the repetition producing the result, the patience required and given and rewarded.
She went to the joint session.
He was there.
They ran the warm-up. They ran the program. The lift: three taps, weight transfer, full commitment.
She checked the weight after.
One hundred percent.
She had decided.
She had given it.
He had held it.
She had landed.
After the session, Coach Han said: "Good session." Two words. She received them.
After the session, Cas said: "I'm going to tell my lawyer about the ten o'clock call. About the pattern. He needs to know what happened so it doesn't happen again."
She looked at him.
He said: "I should have done that differently. I'm making sure I can do it differently."
She said: "Yes."
She received this as the action it was. He was not just acknowledging the pattern. He was telling the person he worked with about it so that the person could help him not repeat it. This was what accountability looked like when it was serious: not just sorry but here is the structural change.
She said: "Thank you."
He said: "Five days."
She said: "Five days."
Both of them in the corridor. The joint session complete. The lift at full weight. His lawyer going to know about the ten o'clock.
She was going to find out in five days.
She believed.
She was there.
Both of them.
In it.
She walked home. Seven blocks. The Montreal cold, the same it had been, the specific relentlessness she had come to understand as a reliable thing , it would not surprise her, it would not ease before its time, it would be the same every day until the season turned.
Five days.
She was in it.
She was going to give full weight.
She was going to tell him while it was happening.
She was going to find out.
She believed.
She was already there.
Both of them.
Five days.
There.
That evening Petra called. Not the scheduled Monday call , an additional call that Petra had requested via Sophie because she had reviewed the Fukuoka footage again in preparation for the spring program planning and wanted to discuss one of the lift development elements before the Monday session.
Harin answered.
Petra was direct in the way she was always direct: "I've been looking at the third run in the free skate. The lift at the three-minute-forty mark. I want to talk about the quality of the entry."
Harin said: "Yes."
Petra said: "What I see in the entry is complete commitment. Not the controlled commitment of someone who has learned to trust a mechanic , the specific quality of a person who has stopped managing the decision and is in the decision already. You gave the weight before the cue."
She said: "I know."
Petra said: "That's what I want for the spring program. Not the learned version , the version that happens before the decision."
She said: "That version doesn't always happen. It happened in Fukuoka."
Petra said: "It happened because of what led up to it. The entire season. What I'm asking you is: can you get back to the condition that produced that entry?"
She sat with this.
She thought about the review period. The ninety-seven and ninety-eight percent. The hundred percent she was choosing consciously. The difference between choosing and already being in the decision.
She said: "I'm working on it. I've been in a complicated period."
Petra said: "I know. I'm not asking you to have resolved the complicated period. I'm asking whether you know how to get back to the entry."
She said: "I think I do."
Petra said: "Good. That's all I needed to know." A pause. "The spring program needs what you had in Fukuoka. Not a performance of it , the thing itself. I'm going to build choreography around the assumption that you can get there."
She said: "Yes."
Petra ended the call.
She sat at the desk.
She was working on it. She was choosing the hundred percent consciously. Fukuoka had been before the decision , already in it, as Petra said. She was not before the decision right now. She was in the process of deciding. That was the difference and the work and the five days and what she was going to find out.
She wrote in the notebook: Day 114. Petra called. She wants the entry from Fukuoka , before the decision, already in it. I told her I'm working on it. I think I know how to get there.
She wrote: Five days.
She closed the notebook.
She was going to get there.
She believed.
She was already working toward it.
She was in it.
Both of them.
Five days.
There.
She went to bed early , nine o'clock, the same hour as the nights when the body had processed something significant and needed more than its usual duration. She lay in the dark and thought about Petra's question: can you get back to the condition that produced that entry?
The condition. Not the entry itself , the condition. What she had been in during Fukuoka that had allowed her to give the weight before the cue rather than at the cue.
She had been in: ninety days of the specific process of learning another person's body and having her own body learned by them. She had been in: the shared history of the step sequence developing, the lift developing, the program becoming more itself over weeks of practice. She had been in: the specific quality of a person who had stopped pretending to be performing a program and had started being in the program.
The condition was: she had been in it already. Fully. Before the cue.
She was not fully in it right now. She was partly in it and partly managing the five days and partly in the cold quality and partly choosing the hundred percent consciously. She was not before the decision. She was in the middle of making it.
Five days.
After the five days she was going to be in the decision. She believed that.
She was going to be before the cue, already in it.
She was working toward it.
She was in it.
She was already there.
She was going to get back to it.
She believed.
She slept.
You've reached the end of this chapter