If birds can fly over the rainbow, why can't I?
This seed of a wish always starts in the dark. An empty basket; a broken cup; a restless lie. A world in black and white... as though it doesn't quite understand her. As though she doesn't quite understand herself, even after all this time.
Still she believes this is her life; stifling in its not emptiness: the picket fence, the dog barking, the rolling, swarming debris of yesterday. A grandmother calling from somewhere far away; a fog that never dries up. And underneath it all, a sadness that won't stop crying. Her song is the dream of the dreamer; of something forgotten... but not yet gone. Everyone has a song like this.
It calls for change, whether intended or not. Sweeping through her world, breaking up that lonely land, throwing everything into the air. Bicycles, broomsticks, a cow and a chair.
And then suddenly everything is technicolour, dazzling and brilliant and she's arrived and it's perfect; it's what she deserved all along, they were wrong those demi gods, they were wrong. ...But already a strange little man with a funny hat is asking her to help him. All these little people bouncing around her toes. And everyone is smiling but some are also hiding and ...actually ...she wants to go home now.
There is a faint glimmer, a sense of kindness, of calm in the shiny lady but the girl is still lost, perhaps even more so now. She wishes someone would show her the way; someone great and powerful. Not small and silly like her.
There is another language here. An older one. And sometimes her mouth speaks words that she finds very real indeed. They confuse her and light her up. An hour a week, the lights are turned on inside this other world and she walks around it baffled and embarrassed. Sometimes she trusts and a flower opens on the path.
And slowly... she finds lost things. First a ball of wool; she finds herself inside the ball and little by little, it begins to unwind and set her free, waking the little ones tied together under there. "We had to forget we were real" they say "that's how we all got through this tug of war inside."
Sometimes, going inside is like stepping into a vast yellow cornfield. She is so frightened that no one is waiting in that place for her. It takes so much time to go ...to be seen...but every time she does she finds herself wanting to re-discover it again, to feel the wind in her hair and that feeling of knowing.
And whilst the cornfield waits she finds her siblings. The thinkers, the appeasers, the self-hating ones. The ones who wish they had a brain. They are the scarecrows of this inner world. Hardly noticeable in that field but they notice her, they see everything. They look to horizons, wanting desperately to move. Clarity is the answer for them. To understand the why. Frightened children trying to fix unbearable situations with their little minds and in their pockets are many maps but they know so little of the territory. Hurting other parts with ideas and ideals but "look, look to where we could be" they say!
All they know is this fence post. They mustn't be over-ruled, they have to win, and so they continue trying to think themselves away from pain because they can't just leave. But when they surrender oh the freedom and sweet joy of leaving that floppy hat behind, of not working alone anymore and of finding that faraway place they dream of so much. What possibility they catch on that uncertain road with the girl and the dog when they leave their maps behind.
Next come the tin ones, the lost boys. The shiny, frozen, runaway soldiers. They put out shame with lust and cigarettes and blame. Press on them and they get bigger. Challenge them they disappear. Searching for their hearts in broken places, seeking ease and rest in chaos. They wish the scarecrows were dead but they need to do something themselves instead. These stone wonders have wisdom hidden in their holey pockets and blood-shot eyes if they could only remember. They are so close to love it hurts all the time. If they would only bring themselves to life, wake and face their own music and with a different tune pick up that brush again.
Next she finds her batting brother hiding behind a rock. Like shame, he moves through the system carefully and alone. Old battles echo in his sleepy caves where claws were taken long before they learnt to scratch. Like the others he believes he is not what he is. He has forgotten himself and must be found to find himself again. This is courage. But he knows himself as fear, as if often the order of such things.
And finally the black watch with their screams and bat wings and the shadow lady with her cold smile. She carries all the times love wasn't there with stories that would make stones weep. She keeps everyone tied to this land. They whisper about her - this ruler with the five eyes and ten noses...
But shame is not a real person just as pain is not a real place. Slowly thoughts, feelings, courage gather, these siblings arm in arm. They go to that cold smile and name her...and meet the frightened children she has kept. Sometimes gently, sometimes swiftly it is these same children that throw the water bucket to put her out. All the puddles left reflect the light. So much shimmers in those hallowed halls.
They arrive amid the emeralds. Illusions scatter as the curtain falls. The should's and should-nots; I am's I am nots are given back. Perfection softens and with it grief moves creating a sparkling underwater world full of dreams to come; where minnows eat what's left of sorrow and dolphins take what's there's to change.
She finds herself back in Kansas and it has altered with her. ...she's reassured to see the crow, the iron bucket and tabby cat...They weren't imagined ...and she hears her grandmother once again and the dog calling her back to a life she can touch... As far as the eye can see belongs to her and she belongs to it...and there it is again that strange cornfield and all the children standing there now ...she finally knows what that shiny lady meant about something waiting for her there. She didn't believe. She had to learn for herself... this is how dreamers heal dreams.
