RAINBOW OVER PARK

…a creative non-fiction piece

© Frank Westcott, 2014

There is a rainbow over the park, today. There are two separate strands of rainbows. Two rainbows, each with its own set of strands, arcing ground- ward. Blue sky between the strands. Strands over blue sky. The sun making a star pattern between the pastel colours of yellow. Pink. And blue. Lovely.

The sun looks like images I’ve seen of the North Star hovering over Bethlehem in Biblical pictures. Beams stretching out around the Star, into the air and sky where the rainbows aren’t. There, too, I suppose. But you don’t see them.

Snow crystals, tiny white flakes, are falling to the ground. Onto the ground. To the ground, too. When you face the sun you can see them. Falling. When you

don’t face the sun, you can’t see them. The sun makes the crystals shine. Air-borne prisms of crystallized, frozen snow-water. The sun lights them. Sparkles… sent to your eyes. Tiny crystals .Dancing. In light. In air. Lovely.

Snow. Crystals. Tiny snow beings? Entities. Alive in the air. They dance. I walk through. Them. Feel their dancing. On my face.

Maybe this is how spirit is. The world of other. When we walk. Through. It. Through air. And other.

When the snow is falling this way under the two rainbows, there are tiny, white, snow crystals…always. They are there whether you see them or not. You can feel them. On your face. Whether you can see them or not. Seen, when you look directly into the Star Light. The Sun. The light star. That one. On this day. Of rainbows. Two. Maybe this is. Double Luck. Maybe this is how the spirit world is on a double luck day. When you walk through. Seen. Unseen. But felt. As you feel it. The flakes. And the snow. And the luck. And double rainbow. Behind the sun if you look from the other side. Of the sun. Maybe. That’s how it is.

Subtly. Awareness. Sensed. Of. Something. Else. There. Present. Around. You. Formed. Nearby. An entity nearby? That would be lucky. Two entities would be double lucky. Like shadow. Beings. Here. Gone. Here. There. Everywhere. If you look. Directly. Into it. There is shadow just on the edge. Of your peripheral vision. Just like that. Just like the snow crystals in the light on this morning of sun.

And two rainbows.

The Star-Sun I think is magic. Sleight of hand. Seeing what is not there. Seeing what is there. Both at the same time. Magician's magic! The sorcerer. A sorcerer. The deceiver. The giver. The deceiver receiver giving giver. All of these. It magic. There. It is all magic.

Doors opening. Vistas expanding. Before me. In front of me. Behind me. Life taking on dimension. More dimension.

Greater depth. Spreading what is there. So what was always there is fully three dimensional now, wiggling into four dimensional. A sense that what is there, in the fourth, is more real. Has more shape. Substance. Aliveness. Reachableness. If you can reach. Dare reach. It.

Spirit expands. Like a balloon. By the expansion of spirit. Air. Under rainbows. Two of them. Lucky ones. Double luck. Double the luck. More. And more. Spiritual room. Is created. To encompass the expanded. Dimensions. Of soul. The expanded dimension of you of me of all. Strange. Not strange. Is.

I, for many years, for so long. Would constrict my spirit. Squeeze it. Hard. To. Try. To hold. It. Tight. So I would not lose it. So I would not lose sight of me. Within me. I smile now. A quiet smile. Because I was wrong. I thought if I didn't constrict my spirit, if I didn't hold onto it, tightly, the little

bit of room it seemed to have in me would be usurped by other things. Elements. People. Their demands on me. In the outer world.

Yet most of these things, elements, people, demands I created for myself. False things. Elements. People. Demands. False thinking that made it difficult for my spirit to exist in the space within I had been blessed with on Earth-entry. Birth we call it, I guess. I see this now. In retro. Retrospect. Relief. In relief. With relief. I did not know that if I opened up, stopped the squeezing, let my spirit have all the space I had within, and set my spirit free, my spirit would expand and expand and expand spreading all through me, into all of my Earth, within, all of my domain, my reach freely reaching to and encompassing all my me. I didn’t know.

How could I? Know. These things. Nobody teaches you. Or if they do. Could have. Would. Have. For some. I had to learn. I. Myself.

Some would say, these things were there for me to learn. Were there. For. Me. To. Learn. I wish. I had. Learned. Sooner. These things. I am learning. Still. Not to squeeze. My spirit me. Inside. But to let me grow, unencumbered into my space, within. All of it. Unconstricted. Not squeezed. By me. Or false things I let in there. Like. Others. Demands. I let be in there that do not have to be there. That I didn’t come into this Earth thing with. I came in empty. And let it, me, get filled up with not me.

Now I know better. Yes…

Yet part of me wonders if the squeeze is necessary for growth. And the letting in of the not-me, necessary for me, my spirit, to be strong. Strong enough. Within myself. To withstand. The elements. All elements. The storms. The ebbs. The flows. Of the seasons. Of life. Its vagaries. Ravages. Disease. Decline. These. Dealing with. Growing through. These. Things. False and real. So we, I, become strong. Inside. Maybe. Sort of. How a tree becomes strong. Squeezed. Tightly. Inside. Inside its bark. Squeezed tightly, there, within itself, and the bark and trunk itself, too. Squeezed. Before. New growth. A shoot. Shoots. Shoot forth. After the squeezing. Strong within itself before and after, even while squeezing, protecting the inner through the squeezing by the hard shell protecting.

Maybe this is what it is… was… all about. My squeezing. The squeezing. Helping me grow. To grow. To shoot my shoots out of my trunk. My core. Me. I wonder if this could be true. I wonder, too, if there is some strange act of generosity allowing another person to grow, and not squeeze them to be what they are not, letting them squeeze themselves until... they get free from their own struggle. Refining their journey. Winding their own wobbly, knotty, twisting branching path. Course. Like shoots. Tendrils. From a tree after the squeezing. By. The. Tree. Itself.

It would be a sad forest, if every tree grew straight and smooth. That would be the saddest of all forests. And perhaps journeys. A journey without bends, or knots, or twists or turns. Trees and journeys are similar. Maybe that’s why a symbol of life is a tree of life. Free to spread. Knotty. Twisty. Under rainbows. Or not. With double the luck. Or not. Squeezed. Or not. Like the Star of Bethlehem squeezing rays out of itself.

I wonder, too, maybe… sometimes… when we are exhausted by our own squeezing and struggling, and we give up, let go… of ourselves… if we actually break through in the breaking of nothing. Because we have let go of it all. Stopped the squeezing.

I start to wish I was an eagle. Or the myth of an eagle. Or butterfly. Un-cocooned. I think of flying. Distracting myself. I fly. In words. And don’t have to be an eagle. Or myth of. Or butterfly. Coccooned. Or un-… I have stopped squeezing. Nothing else matters. It feels like flying.

I see the in-between place in the rainbows over the park. Two rainbows. Double rainbows. Lucky rainbows. Ice crystals in the air. Light where snow is falling. Lovely. A message. From spirit. Perhaps. Or just snowflakes falling under rainbows. Two of them. Either way I have stopped squeezing.

I walk. Slow in my way. My snow-glide. Through the snow glade.

Among winter-spring-like poplar shoots. Breaking through snow. Under the shadow of a rainbow. Make that two rainbows. The flat river channel between me and the island. I walk to the bridge. Rainbow coloured air transcends, arcing elegantly above the ground. There is a fresh path before me. Smooth. Unmarked. Untrodden. I hear the cry of a summer loon on a patch of broken water where ice melted opening for the loon, the squeezing of winter done. Open water getting wider and wider without the squeezing. I look to where I thought I heard the loon. It is not there. Maybe it never was. Maybe I was hearing the happy sounds of the open water. No longer squeezed by ice of its own making. Ice melted into spring sounds. Under the light of two rainbows. Double the luck.