All This Beauty

Maybe the definition of home is the place you are never forgiven, so you may always belong there, bound by guilt. And maybe the cost of belonging is worth it.

-Reflections of Alphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, from Gregory McGuire’s Wicked

Perhaps there’s more truth and wisdom in that than I’d prefer to believe. Living this guiltless life as I do, never having felt too tethered to the earth. Strange for me to consider since I have longed to experience what I’ve conjured to be an enormous and cathartic surrendering and letting go called forgiveness, yet know so little, maybe even nothing, of guilt. Perhaps I’ve chased after Forgiveness with such reckless abandon that I’ve never considered her consort and familiar. If I must seek out Guilt to brush elbows with her benefactor I might well reconsider the chase.

I want nothing of guilt, just the unburdened freedom of forgiveness.

So we tie things together in a bow. Tell me gentle reader what all of this means. What symbols emerge that are oh-so-telling to you that escapes my vision for my simple proximity?

Where is my hand? My left hand sits firm on the head of a sober Contemplation and my right hand turns up toward the sky, a cozy night chair for Creativity. And what of everything in between?

Out the port side of the airplane loomed thunderheads in the distance, filled with tremendous electric charge. At the feet of this billowing and rising pillar crashed a wave of blood red as the last vestiges of sun filtered through the hazy wet horizon of cloud. Lightening rose up from the ground and formed balls of spectacular color in the bulbous monstrosity that occasionally arced and sparked golden bolts.

As the sun sank and the moon rose, a star spangled sky canopied rows of sparkling golden lights that danced as the storm raged somewhere on the ground below. I recognized this horizon of lights, snaking across the sky, from dreams I’ve had.

Sometimes it is so defeating to realize that we are responsible for making our own magic and mystery. How when we’re bored it’s our own damned fault and failing for lacking imagination. How when our lives are void of adventure and possibilities we only have ourselves to hold accountable. It really sucks how ultimately responsible we are for all this God damned beauty.