When I was little and I played on the swings at the playground, I always thought if I could just go high enough, I would flip around the top and wind the chain around, and for some reason it was very important to me to finally do that, but I never managed. This was, of course, if I didn't just go flying off into the sky. I had recurring dreams about figuring out to fly, perhaps by looking at the ground in a certain way, or tilting my head at the perfect angle, or building up just enough speed as I was swinging. Funny thing was, I never learned how to fly in those dreams by flapping my arms or jumping or anything. It would just be that suddenly I could float like a bubble, and the air was my water.

Did you ever see Fantasia 2000? I love that movie. It has the most beautiful music and the most gorgeous art, melded so perfectly together. It makes me delighted everytime I watch it. Well anyway, one of the segments is set to a piece called "Pines of Rome," and it's about these humpback whales in the Arctic who figure out how to fly. Now, this segment somewhat irritates some of my family members, I think particularly my dad, because it seems so silly to them. But to me it made perfect sense. And it wasn't as if I was a kid the first time I saw it--six years ago, um, I was sixteen. But it still made perfect sense. When the beautiful big whales started lifting out of the water and flying through the air I simply thought, "Of course! They figured out the secret! It was so simple! Why I can't I figure it out?" I was a little disappointed that the whales had discovered it when I haven't yet, but mostly I was just happy for them.

Then at the end of the segment there's a whole bunch of whales, just tons of them, and they fly up and up and up through the clouds, and it turns out that the atmosphere was just another sea, and there they are up there breaching and leaping in the most glorious light of that beautiful pulsing star.

It seemed to me to be a very Christian story, and I was amazed that Disney had made it.

Because, you know, heaven is like that.

Sometimes I can't wait for heaven. But I like it here, too, especially when there are such wonderful things to see and listen to.

But I do wish I could figure out that secret.

I was thinking lately, as I sometimes do, and I wondered, as I often do. And I thought of asking how much your perception changes how you see things.

I'm talking, of course, about the sky.

Because I mean, when you see the sky in the city, you're looking up at it from between lots of buildings, or maybe it's at the end of the street that you are traveling down, or maybe it is only a patch of something colorful that you see through the window. And when you see the sky like that, it is just only sort of a backdrop, like a painter's cloth that a very large artist put behind everything to catch the spatters that fly here and there. And perhaps that is why the cloth seems rather gray of an early morning, but then it changes gradually to a fairly even blue. Only of course it isn't a flat blue, at all, at all. Because if you look closely, you see that the blue color changes from end of the drop cloth to the other. It is lighter at the edges and deep blue in the middle, and so very beautiful.

But I mean, if you are in the city and you see this sky, you might not notice quite so much, because you can only see a bit, and that may be only one shade of blue. Or gray. Or reddish-orangeish-purplish-indigo, if it is evening. Because in the afternoon the grand artist I was speaking of begins to get a bit frantic, because he (or she) realizes that the light is going, and she (or he) must paint very quickly in order to finish, and when you are frantic, of course, you are not quite so careful, and you get paint everywhere. I speak not so much from experience as from conjecture, though I have done watercolors in the past and enjoyed them very much.

But anyway, when you are in the city, you see only patches.

But in country, you must know, this is different. Especially if you are in a large flat plain, like the pioneers and the Indians used to know. Then if you look up you see this grand expanse, stretching from horizon to horizon, and that is much much too big to be only a painter's backdrop. That is more like a huge ginormous cup turned upside down with you in the middle. And no matter how far you travel toward the edge of the cup, you can never quite reach it. So you could feel trapped, maybe, if you looked too closely at the light blue edges and wondered who had turned a cup upside down over you, or maybe you might just feel that it doesn't matter, because the cup is over the whole world anyway, and where else would you want to go?

Except I know that I would want to.

And that's what I mean about perspective. If you are out under this grand glorious blue-shaded cup, and wait until it gets all spattered with deep rose and burnt orange fading gently to purple and then to darkest, darkest indigo--I mean when it gets to be night, of course, because it's never truly black, unless there is a storm, only the darkest blue you could ever imagine--if you are out under that sky at night and watch the stars appear like the tiniest little bright creatures shyly peeking out when that great bully, the sun, has gone away . . . well, if you are outside when this amazing transformation takes place, and you continue staring straight up and straight up . . . something strange may happen to you.

By this of course I mean what happens as you watch the stars, and your perception seems to shift on you. No doubt you have experienced this a number of times. You gaze up for minutes and minutes on end (I won't say hours, because no one in this day and age has that kind of willpower), and at first you see just stars. They are pinpricks in a great dark cloth, or perhaps glittering sequins, so on and so forth. By this I mean that you are within, and they are on the edge, stuck up against the surface of that ginormous cup. But if you stare long enough, you'll feel this kind of dizzying flip, as if you aren't looking up anymore, but downward, and your fingers will twist in the grass to hold you on the roof of the world, because you are afraid of falling into that great dark expanse, even though the stars and the moon are beautiful and it might be better than here.

Did you ever let go?

Did you ever fall?

Or perhaps it won't be quite that kind of perception change, that reversal of gravity, I mean. Perhaps it will be more that you realize, finally, finally, that you are not looking out, but the stars are looking in. The earth is not the center of the universe, and you do not stand in the middle gazing outward. The earth is only a lump in the galaxy's batter, and someone has just pricked that lump with a pin to let out the air, and the stars are the holes. And the world beyond (is world even the right word?) is so ginormously bright and vast and incomprehensible that we can't even see it. We only see those bright little pricks, and nothing beyond them, because we are too tiny and too lost and too corrupt to even be allowed the smallest, smallest glimpse.

Anyway, that was what I meant by perception. I was just wondering if you ever have the same problems.

So anyway, I am very tired right now, and that seems to be a good time to write in this particular blog. I am most myself when I am not completely all there.

You know how it gets right before you go to sleep and all the images and thoughts of the day swirl into soup inside your head and spin out in crazy and interesting ways and you are almost dreaming awake? I rather like when that happens. I imagine it was what Papa Tolkien meant when he talked about Legolas resting without sleeping, but only letting the stars shine behind his eyes. I would like to be able to sleep like that, just dreaming, no going away into darkness, though darkness is nice and peaceful too, sometimes, and necessary.

Sometimes I go through entire days just dreaming while I'm walking. This most likely accounts for my appalling clumsiness, but ah well. I rather like being clumsy sometimes, if it's not awfully embarrassing, for that could become an endearing quirk of personality, to the right person perhaps. Or just an annoyance. But that is the risk you run in being eccentric. La!

I'm going to be the strange person who lives at the end of the street where there are many many trees, with a house full of cats and dogs and birds and gerbils and perhaps a pet snake or two, because pet snakes are nice, if you get the right ones. But of course I will always love cats the best. And I will have a nice old piano, grand if possible, an upright if not, and it will have a nice rich sound, not too bright and not too fuzzy, and I will play Chopin and Mozart and Bach inventions with the greatest of ease, just for my own pleasure. And that of my cats, of course. I will have flowers. Many flowers. And a bright little kitchen with large windows and dishes that are mostly blue, but some white, and the mugs will have little chips on the edges from loving use, but not too big so you can still enjoy your peppermint tea. (I will grow the mint beside the house, of course, on the lee side where it is sheltered. Isn't that a fun word? Lee? I like it muchly.)

But now the time has come when I must begin to wake up, I fear. Sometimes I very much dislike the real world. But other times I enjoy it greatly, so I suppose it all balances out in the end.