Being Alive

Your blood crystallizes and your lips are cold; you are beautiful and shining in the glow of an effervescent light, but it comes from within; you light your own path and exist in all your glory. You are nothing but you, you are everything that is best in you and nothing that is bad. You glow with the desire to do all that you find to be good; it's like you've been dipped in a kind of glory, an iridescent eddying shine that falls over you like a veil, that clings to your skin and shimmers about you, so that you throw off sparks and glitter in the night.

It's when every word drips from your fingers like the gods have placed it there, when you write and you know you are writing your very soul; there are no limits and no barriers, no fear and no fury, nothing but the desire, the simple desire to be and the knowledge that you shall be; nothing is impossible and you are invincible. The world was created for you and you exist to create yourself; every day is a new day and every day you are blessed again. For you need not deserve the love of God; God grants it to you regardless. You look up at him innocently and throw back your head and laugh, and you shake your hair in the moonlight and tendrils curl around your neck and you are intoxicated by the simple scent of roses.

It is only at night, because the night is the time to be most alive. It is at night that thoughts come together and coalesce; it is then that I suddenly understand, I see, I comprehend exactly. In the morning I've lost it, that clarity I once possessed, that absolute understanding. There are two pieces of a chain, shining and silver, and they link together in my mind and I know, as I always knew before, exactly what it is that I am to do and exactly how to get there. It is a mere flash but it illuminates my mind and therefore my entire body sings with joy. I am here and I am present in the very now, in what is happening, every glimpse and every glance catches my eye and I laugh; I laugh and laugh, for there is nothing to be sad about, not any longer, for everyone exists and always shall exist.

It's when the souls come out to meet me and let me dance among them. I see them all, everyone that I miss, my Grandpa most especially. He holds out his hand and I clasp it and he whirls me and we are skipping and I see that I am barefoot and in my nightdress; it is light blue with a simple flower tucked behind an ear. He has never seen me like this, has he? But he is laughing; his craggy face smiling and I see that he loves me still and hasn't forgotten me, that he is watching and has watched me and he approves of what he sees. He knows how often I think of him and he knows I love him, and he is glad of me and what I am.

Turn off the light and let me clasp the dark to me; it's in the night that I see them all, that I shiver with the knowledge of having met them. They forgive me for everything that I am, there is no sin when I am amongst them, dancing in a half-world, a dream that I build out of my own fantasies and shadows, the illusions I lay at its foundation. I need them to know me and so I know them, and it is they who give me the strength and show me how to proceed. They come to me and guide me so that I know, and I know more strongly when I speak to Dustfinger and the boys, because they explain what I did not understand.

It's a world of my own making, but we all have entrance here. I see you every night, but you don't know it- I dream of you and your auburn curls and of them and their smiles. My father comes to counsel me and my mother to comfort me, and when they are all together they teach me. I don't remember in the morning, but I know it in the night, and so it is in the night that I am everything, I am exactly what I should be. A thousand songs play in my mind and make a heavenly kind of music, something that I cannot repeat and cannot capture, a picture that I cannot paint no matter how high my skill, for it is made out of lights and not of colors.

It is not a dream but a wistful half-making; I create it for myself and you come and help me complete it. It's everything that I want and that I am when it is dark; it's only then that I can think and that I actually comprehend. I know things at night that I don't know in the morning and I have to struggle to find them again; what I saw in the water has muddied, become murky and dim. But it is there, if only I look for it; if the sunlight falls properly I will see the glints again, and they will remind me, but I will be sluggish and slow; I prefer the night because then I needn't even look. It is reflected, then, and shines on me, and I simply take in the glow and shine brighter.

There's a beauty in the dark that you don't see in the daylight; it's the beauty of the unknown. It's the wild and the fae, the enchantress and the girl, the mixture of the known and the forgotten. It's the way the light curves on my skin as it falls through slatted windows; it's the moonlight or the starlight or even the reflected mica from the sidewalk, but each way it glitters and captures the essence of me. It reminds me of what I truly am, the answering soul that glows within me, that no one knows but me. I remember, then; I remember who I am and why I am and that thought gives me joy, so that I am dancing and could dance all night. But no one sees me; no one knows how to look. I am free but you can't see it; I am whirling on a sea of white sand that rises and falls under a gentle wind.

There are shadows who are with me, but they do not bother me because I acknowledge their presence. I bow to them all before I begin; there is doubt, and there is hatred; they are all here but they have no power. They can simply watch me and do you know, I fancy they are glad; they almost wish they were overthrown, because like all beings, they too desire to self-destruct. I cast no shadow in the dark; I am of the dark, of the night, of everything that clings to itself and binds itself together; I am everything and nothing and I am immortal.

There is a world beyond this one, a world that exists only at night, and it is the world I enter. I construct it in my mind and then I see it with my eyes; I am its enchantress and my subjects wait for me. And there I am forgiven, and there I create myself anew, and when I sleep the souls protect me. The Sandman scatters sand across my lashes and causes me to forget what I have learned, so that when I begin again I must recapture it, recapture everything I understood in the night. And in the morning there are flashes, but only flashes; I see the two links shine and connect and I know that I am right. But clarity comes at night, because it is then when I am truly the essence of me; I dance all night but nobody notices. I am one of the twelve dancing princesses, you know, only no one has found me out yet and no one ever will, for I don't wear my shoes to shreds. I do not even wear shoes; I go barefoot, you see. For the sand cannot harm me, and my servants are spirits who attend me, and the souls guard me, and the shadows watch me, so I am nothing if not myself. And it is only I.

And that is what it means to be alive, to know with every fiber of your being that you exist and you are here and that all that you do is blessed and is meant, to realize that you have the power to fulfill every goal that you have set for yourself, that you are the epitome of your own dream. For you are the person you so admire; you are everything you want. And then you breathe again, and you come back to life, and that joy transmits itself to everything you touch, for you are happy and therefore you glow. There are sparkles on your eyes, but you did not put them there; you are radiant and happy and therefore alive. The world is yours.

I am alive now, and I am dancing, and soon I will be dragged back down again, but for now, for these few precious moments, oh, how alive, and how deeply felt!