There was no telling if the woman danced a roller-skating dance that metaphorically expressed a tornado—having been inspired by an enormous funnel-shaped wind she’d seen up close once when a tornado came—and there was no telling, either, if she didn’t mind someone watching her dance, but hoped that no one would if possible, and yet she didn’t mind passing birds, or birds that had stopped for a moment while passing, watched her, and there was no telling, either, if among the creatures she didn’t mind—starlings, eagles, and owls who lived in the area—a particular owl had shown unusual interest and watched her roller-skating dance from the top of a telephone pole, and there was no telling, either, if, as she danced her roller-skating dance, she turned on “The Internationale“ or “The Cossack Lullaby,“ which she must have been familiar with since she was little, instead of disco music that was popular when roller skating was popular, but nonetheless I pictured the woman dancing in a roller skating rink to the song “Madame Press Died Last Week at Ninety,“ a song that was written in 1970 by Morton Feldman—who was born to Russian immigrant parents, and who was a friend of Jon Cage’s—for Vera Marina press—who was a woman from a Russian aristocratic family, and who’d being his first piano teacher when he was a child—when she passed away; a short song that lasted about four minutes, with a continuous repetition of notes that sound like a knell, bringing to mind the sound of a cuckoo clock played by instruments including a flute, a horn, a trumpet, a trombone, a tuba, a chime, a celesta, a cello, and a double bass, save for very brief piano sequences at the beginning and the end; a song I used to listen to while thinking that a mind that couldn’t be put at ease no matter what was as necessary as any other kind of mind, although there was a time when such music had put my mind a little at ease, although it no longer did; a song are used to listen to when I heard of someone’s Deas mourning alone in my heart; a song I used to listen to when I had some other thing to mourn or when I’d finished writing a book; a song that it once been my requiem—there was no telling if she listened to that song or, instead, “The Owl and the Pussycat,” which was the last song written by Igor Stravinsky, who is also from Russia; and the thought of someone roller-skating by herself, in the middle of the night in her own rink in a little town on the vast plains in Texas, seemed like utter nonsense, but wonderful for that very reason, and my seven samurai, too, in the meantime had been getting swept away in a river again, seemed to think it was interesting even as they were getting swept away in a river.