The moment of serenity hit like a beaming light in a dark alley, a glowing peace illuminated by shadow. Its voice sung the flow of a peaceful river rolling downstream steadily, ages after breaking against solid rock and foamy rapids.

Moments before, the man twitched in his seat and shook his leg violently. His nerves were beginning to surface again. They stirred inside his stomach viciously and clenched his solar plexus with the merciless fist of an electric zap. His perfectly tailored jacket enclosed the sweat dribbling from under his arms and was pinned in the front by three solid brass buttons. Suddenly the man became afraid of convulsing, afraid that all the muscles throughout his entire body would decide to react at any moment. He recalled with a feeble distaste the embarrassing incident at the dental clinic, where he seized uncontrollably in the middle of the linoleum floor. They had rushed him to the hospital and his regular doctor was called in, shaking his head and making disapproving tongue clicks as he entered the examination room.

The lights dimmed down to a pitch black before the man could conclude his thoughts. The violinist appeared from behind parted curtains and bowed. She was barefoot and wearing a white floor-length dress, giving her a phantom-like presence that made the man feel uneasy. She carried the small instrument close to her side and it gleamed against the flooding stage lights. When the woman pressed her arched neck against the black chin rest and raised her bow, the man brought his finger to his teeth and bit down hard so that it began to bleed steadily. When the music began, filling the hollowed out shell of a peaceful stadium with its essence, the blood had crusted over and the man’s nail was rimmed with a brown-red stain. That was when he noticed the faint tremble etching from the violinist’s instrument and into the atmosphere around her. The friction between the strings and the delicately shaped bow reverberated in sound so mighty it tore down the walls of a steel-chambered mind. Each rough edge met with the smoothness and grace of a single breaking wave timid in collision.  The clocks winding in the man’s head started running counter-wise, ridding his mind of sickening dents filled with shadows and stuttering tongues. The deformity of his thoughts, spine, eyes, skin, even the crinkled creases of his mouth, straightened into symmetrical lines of blubbering cells. Tears were exchanged in the internal world of his body and the source of the shaking that had erupted from a single point inside his stomach unexplainably shut down. The ecstasy, calling sweetly to him from a tiny, checkered violin, dilated his pupils and expanded the euphoria dancing around in the forest of his mind.

It all comes down to the serenity, the single moment where light and dark shake brave hands in peace and become one source of feeling. It is a lapse in time morphing the idea of perfection and washing away sin and virtue. It is the indirect whisper that makes the witch in her evil state spread the lips of her sudden reassurance. For me, it is the registered touch of two contrasting hands, the point of contact defining happiness. It is the bridge to every soul, the single sky hovering above a frail Earth, the deep breath of heightened strength, the words, “everything is all right”.