If I were to make a diagram of the learning curve, I think it would look something like an exponential growth pattern, crawling along the x-axis and then erecting itself in a great swing of momentum. Like healing from an incapacitating back injury, or getting drunk on an empty stomach, the first part is barely noticeable, and then before you know it, you're doing the macarena with someone you have just met*.  It seems a lot of processes share a similar, orgasmic shape when measured from the outside.  The shape that's more interesting to me is the shape of the internal process, which I'm fairly certain looks like the kind of maze where you go everywhere there is to go, but only because you have no options.  (Ah, thank you Google: a labyrinth.)

Let's assume, for the sake of convenience, that there is a god and that god is in charge. Given that, it would appear that god has a curriculum for me which involves digging through every corner of my being, with zero choice in the matter.  It even seems there is a prescribed order of operations, though no time limit, no skipping steps, and no going backwards.  I am more certain of the existence of this inescapable curriculum than I am of god, for the record.  Here's why.

I started learning to play the violin when I was 7.  I was very excited about this from the moment I heard there would be violin classes at school to the moment I understood that they would occur before school, at 6:30 in the morning.  I loved the violin, but it was my mother who got me out of bed.  That we know.  Before long, the enjoyment of playing outweighed the pain of arriving at school before dawn, and at that point it was difficult to get me to stop practicing (many tried**).  A while later, when the concept of the seasonal recital was introduced, I was again troubled.  My mother diligently stepped in to assist.  My love for music waxed and waned according to my perception of suffering and pleasure, and my mother (hi Mom, I will call you back, oh crap, Happy Anniversary) regularly applied the board of education to the seat of learning, so to speak.

Once in college, I had to find out how to do this myself, which is where the learning curve began to reveal it's exponentiality.  The deeper I got into it, the more excruciating, and more rewarding, it became.  Every lesson pounded full frontal self-knowledge, which was somewhat of a drag.  I needed to learn Brahms, I thought, not how to take responsibility for my fear, say.  What happened was this.  I got really distracted by art, because it was super and did not confront me so much right away.  Think, the difference between a first date and couples counseling.  Mistaking the ease and pleasure of my new practice for a sign that it was my true soul mate, I broke up with music and moved in with art. 

I got deja vu.  My very first struggle with art echoed the same stunning ring as the last one with music.  I found myself almost precisely where I'd left off, let's call it Lesson #17.  (I'd give you a real example here, but those are confidential, and for good reason: internal, god-made curriculums unearth the kind of tangled, soul-shaking stuff that folks maybe rightfully require payment to hear.)  Suffice to say that my progress hit a speed bump.  Because I am in some ways, Jonah***, I broke up with art and moved in with yoga.  And this summer, getting walloped in the back turned out to be my whale, the place where I stared at the ceiling for a month going, "damn, I'm really going to have to finish Lesson #17, aren't I."

What's odd is that I nearly decided to break up with yoga and move in with a desk job, thinking I could pretend I didn't know what was coming.  I didn't.  I decided to go poly-amorous, which requires more couples counseling than the alternative, as it turns out.  I've started to learn some marketable skills lately, with the help of a generous tutor (many thanks, Tom), and because I've taken up a fiercely engaging learning process again, I am now looking at the assignment sheet for Lesson #17.  Again.  Because that's the one I'm on.  And there is no way around it.  Subject irrelevant.  I could be learning German, astronomy, or cross-stitch.  I would still be on Lesson #17.  It could in fact be the entire point of this incarnation.

Of course, I haven't been completely idle since those days crying through my recitals, and it's possible that I'm not exactly where I was, but slightly to the left of there.  Someone once told me, "life isn't a circle, it's a spiral."  When it seems like I'm back where I started, it isn't because I'm going nowhere, it's because I've come around.  I'm doing Lesson #17, version 3.1.  This kindof screws up my labyrinth curriculum idea.  So the labyrinth has 3 dimensions.  (Illustration still rendering.)  It is very difficult to represent one's life path graphically, as it turns out.  And even more difficult to explain without a visual aid.  So it goes.

Today I feel happy about version 3.1.  I'm doing a better job this time, with more tools and more help.  Thanks, everyone.  You are the only reason this is working. 

*not the same as a stranger, who is someone you have not met, and strange

**irresistible Dune reference:
"They tried and failed?"
"They tried and died."

***from "Jonah and the Whale," y'all.