Men fight.

The best fighter when he was a teenager had Aristotle as his personal trainer. The best fighter learned that every enemy has a strength, and every fighter has only one strength, and the only strength there is in a world of men is knowledge.

Aristotle taught the best fighter how to take and keep the enemy’s strength.

Knowledge is not yours to use as you see fit, but to share it with anyone who needs it.

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What does the warrior see in a dance?

A dancer moves with whose danger?

What philosopher has seen a dance and described it exactly as it was, as beauty, as time paused by beauty, as an impulse to move in countless ways but to choose only the next moment and the next movement for beauty?

On laughter and the life cycle of frogs and on perfect circles and the geometry of flesh, Aristotle is fluent. What did Aristotle think of a dance?

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On the Ganges and in the flats of the Terai and on the beaches of Goa and in the second-class decks of the boat from Mumbai to Panaji anyone with an education boasts that Alexander stopped here.

On the banks of the Indus, he was defeated, beat back by metal and fever.

But Macedon lives in freckle and iris here, and a dancer comes looking for an idea the way he might come looking for a lover, because Alexander brought dancers here and took local dancers away with him, to salve wound and curry ambition, and no spear or military might could slow the best fighter who wished to understand dancing as a philosopher might, by watching.

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Perhaps a dance is studies in rhythm, and the thrum of drummed skin ripples the blood, but the choice of which single move to make from millions is a declaration of a lover, given to the warriors and wounded who are watching.

Alexander loved his men and gave them dancing from Persia and Thrace to grace his people with knowledge. Alexander was the first warrior to wear the mantle of the defeated. He adopted the song and soul of the enemy. Alexander was a dancer.

The drums stirred his blood, and the steps of his dancer guided his heart, so he went this way or that, not for profit but to know.

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Alexander won Persia from a man named Darius, and he won the family of Darius as well as the lands of the man. The mother of Darius bowed before the new king, and fell to her knees. But she bowed to the powerful and tall warrior standing next to Alexander instead of the new king. The tall warrior was Alexander’s lover and playmate from childhood, also a pupil of Aristotle. The dignitaries rushed to correct the mistake of the mother of defeated Darius, but Alexander interrupted, smiling.

“Never mind, Mother,” said Alexander, “For Hephaiston is also Alexander.”

The mother of Darius and her children traveled with Alexander thereafter, and when Alexander died in the desert of Iraq she refused food or poisoned herself but died within weeks of the warrior who loved dancers.

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What costume, what song, what perfume, what fruit did Alexander learn from the mother of his enemy, who became his mother in conquest? What gift from the mother did Alexander send back to Aristotle for his museum of stuffed animals and pressed flora?

Did the philosopher receive from the Indus a message from the best fighter about a remarkable woman named Sisygambis, the mother of Darius?

Look, professor, at this white flower which has powers of contraception, brought to my attention by Sisygambis. Attached, professor, is the silk of a robe worn by women in mourning, sent to you for your studies by my friend Sisygambis?

How many Iranian schoolgirls know that Iskander, the best fighter, the lover of dancers, was conquered by a mother?

A mother should win every fight. There would be no more fights. But a mother loves every child, even those who are not her own, so every child has a chance to become a fighter, even loved by his mother. There will always be fighting, as long as there are mothers.

Think of your mother, Sue, in the fancy Manhattan restaurant, asking for a peeled apple for her daughter. Just a peeled apple, can it be so impossible? Must it be written on a menu? And that waiter sent out to the corner shop to buy an apple for a daughter of a mother.

What king bustles to the corner to find an apple not on the menu? Find me that king, so we can tell him about the importance of dancing.

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Do you remember when I got laid out by the cancer and you came to help me suffer? You hated to see me wasting, I could see the pain in your mouth, and like a mother you wondered what could save me.

I killed cancer by dancing in its face, by mocking its appetite and ignoring its demand for my attention. The chemo ward bristled with stats and research from fellow victims who wanted to know more about the enemy. Give me the details about my cancer, so I know what to do. The cancer ate them all.

I danced to make my intestines relax, and then I danced because it felt good to worry about the next move among millions of movements, while you went to Kandahar to find Alexander, and then I danced because I was happy to be able to dance.

To dance. That’s all.
Live.

I think I wrote you a postcard from Benares, about the people dying on the ghats. I must go back, soon, and bring a dancer, and have the dancer move along the edges of the holy river, sparking curiosity from all those people waiting to die, convinced they have nothing left to live for.

We could make a video for the yuppies and call it “A Dance Before Dying.”