Flickering Flames

The Winds of March...

Unsplash photo by Levi Meir Clancy

The flames on those 13 birthday candles flickered and flickered and flickered, as if a breeze, maybe warmish spring, was slipping though and around them. You sent me an internet email birthday message because you don’t know my current address, in another state, another frame of mind, another place…where it fuels me, like Hawaii once did.

Tropical weather, sweet yet always a somewhat chilly breeze from the Columbia River, the negative ions kissing my arms, my legs, my spirit and my will to be joyous, each and every day. Smooching me up!

My lungs deeply breathe in its goodness, its saturating aliveness, penetrating every cell. Its molecules jumping with life, awakening my bones, blood and energy levels. It feels so good to be alive, here!

The candles’ fires keep flickering flickering flickering. Like my heart, that beats for this place, near my children and their children. The closeness of family, three generations, feels like no other. The comfort of knowing I can truly be myself, among others. No pretending. Authentic.

The love of a daughter on my birthday. I am overjoyed, over glad and toppling over as a glass bubbling with liquid, as a sky embraced by double rainbows, with swirling ribbons of every color. Perpetual. Movement. Aliveness.

I wonder why I keep my life so private from certain people, like my nuclear family. I’ve swayed and run so far away from them, over and over, again. And I realize: it comes down to boundaries.

Would it be fruitful to give my address to my family, yet wouldn’t it also make me more naked, more seen, more exposed? How would that make me feel?

As if I am dancing in the streets, naked as a jay bird (are they really naked?), swirling, turning as my Sufi self loves to be, a remnant of Rumi’s time, ancient and mystical. I picture myself as the twirling, feminine dancer, arms laden with bracelets, fingers with dazzling rings, large dangling earrings, a sash flowing and moving with my body, draping around, in its feminine red-shade color, perhaps magenta or red or dark pink in silk. My lips, red, my eyes shining in ecstasy.

I once danced like this in third grade. My long, dark curls, flying with my movements, wrapping me gracefully. There was myself and some guy, I think it was Marshall Goldman, who had dimples deep as the Grand Canyon, a smile that wooed me in and natural singing chords that could herald angels around him.

We did the twist, in front of the entire class, exposed, animated, to each pair of young eyes, to music, most probably The Beatles–I don’t remember–twisting down to the floor and swiftly up, again, as easily as crickets jump from blade to blade, in tall, green grasses. Easily. I do remember when life was easy. When my body moved without thought. Just moved.

Now, on my birthday, I look in the mirror and see the sixteen year old me. I don’t dance as much, anymore, certainly haven’t been doing the twist from the ground up and lately I’ve been dealing with a dizziness that is bewildering.

Yet I keep moving, for that is my way. Continue to continue, because, I suppose, if I don’t move, I will begin dying, even faster than I am. I move through the dizzy spells, the tilt-a-whirl sensations, where the room is spinning, around and around, even though I am laying in bed and still. Perhaps that’s my message, to keep going, no matter what, because when I stop, my body still moves, as everything else around us, in continual motion.

Everything. Spinning. In motion. Constantly.

Like my brain, as I lay down. And yet...

I look at the desk I’m writing on. It sure looks still, to me.

And I take courses about quantum alignment, thinking I’ve got this, I can do this, this is great. And really, it’s all great.

Yet I have yet to totally hold it in the palm of my hand and believe that it’s real. Because what is real, anyway?

And although I am rambling, really, o, really, this is all threaded: reality, movement, quantum theory and death versus life.

I so want to believe it’s one, we are all one, the desk is a part of me, my laptop is me, the ladybugs that congregate on the window, attempting to be freed, even though they are already outside and think they are imprisoned, are also me.

And the angel at the pool, in human form, who thanked me for scooping the ladybugs in the palms of my hands to set them from the chlorinated water, who disappeared when I looked the other way, for only several moments. Moments. First time seeing an actual angel. Moments.

Kind of like taking your attention from your toddler, as they touch the hot stove, when it took only microseconds to do that, to turn the other way, to not pay attention, to float for a moment. Because it’s all too much.

Am I floating through time?

The angel, the ladybugs, the chlorinated pool, that I so love to walk in, every summer morning.

And here we all are. One. Human. Non-human. Group. Together. In community. Connected. Like the flames on my email birthday card. Always moving, dancing, flickering.

Yet appearing as if perfectly still.

Illusion. It’s like the magician who says, now you see it. Now you don’t.

Love and Bliss,

Ruthie