Thanksgiving

Its good to be thankful, it keeps things in perspective. Truth be told I love Thanksgiving. Yet somehow I always end up thinking about what some people say about Thanksgiving: A day celebrating the colonist's imperialistic conquering of the helpless natives of the Americas. What a depressing way of looking at things, and I don't think it has any relevance on the holiday. Every year building up to this time, I hear it again and think... How sad. I don't know how much about the first holiday is just Americana Folklore, and how much of it really happened, but I like to think that the first Thanksgiving was a happy day. There is no one denying that we did some fairly nefarious things to the Native American, but that wouldn't be for some time. I like to think there really was this wonderful sitting down of two peoples to enjoy the bounty of the lands. Does it really matter? No one really could say what happened all those years ago. I'm sure its been romanticized, no question there. But its strange that on the one day we have set aside to actively be thankful, some people choose to focus on some of the darker pages in history. I don't even think I am an optimist. But I would rather think about happy things when I have a choice, and I think we all get that choice every day.
We can be happy and thankful, without feeling guilty. Is that where this comes from? Are people just feeling guilty because we really do have so much? But when I stop and think about all the things that have really made me happy, and that I am thankful for, none of them are material. I think about love and kindness. I think about friends and family. I think about the simple joys of life. These are all things that are limitless, and me having them does not mean someone is missing them.
I just want to feel happy, I think we all do. Yet I am surrounded by things that say I shouldn't be. I think of the institutions that are built on guilt and despair. Some, it could be argued, do some good. Some, I would argue, do some bad. Its almost to easy to take shots at the church, well here goes anyway. The first step spreading most religion is first spreading the idea that you need saving/fixing. That at some fundamental level, there is something wrong with you. The second step is "But its okay, because we can fix that." It would make me very happy to see a religion or church that started with the idea that everything really is great, and if you don't feel that way, we can help you see that. I think I would go to that church when I was feeling down... And I gave up on church long ago. Relief charities are the next thing to come to mind. You have to guilt people into giving, and helping those who need it most. You start by showing sad and dieing people, then you ask for a credit card number. Some charities do great things for the betterment of mankind. Its just where the focus is that bothers me. Why can't we start by showing how happy people are when relief does arrive? Show people being helped, healed and fed, then ask for a credit card number. I would give to that charity, and I would feel better about it too.

Jump

There is a place I know, where a sheer drop descends into white mist. Mist so pure, so fair it hurts the eyes. It dances and twists on currents of air. Shapes build silently into phantom silhouettes. They dance and coil endlessly, elusive. What secrets are obscured at the bottom? Does it go on and on forever and ever? Is there an end?
I've sat long at the top, musing and gazing, watching the boiling fog. Absorbed and rapt by its magnificence, I longing to embrace the winds. Countless times I have approached that razors edge, and closed my eyes. I imagined I was falling, as the wind whipped up over the lip and around me. I would breath in the breeze and smile. Yet, my feet still on solid ground. A half effort. Its cold and barren atop my cliff. I refuse the chill. The time has come.
Again I draw near the edge, again I take my place on the brink. I close my eyes, and turn away. I plant my feet just over the edge and wait. I wait for a gust, a breath. Its so easy. I can feel it welling up in me, and around me. I reach out and draw the gust close, I embrace the winds. Its such a simple thing, just lean back and push. Like I phantom's murmur I am away from my perch. The gust becomes a gale, the breeze a tempest. I can feel it clawing at me, tearing through me. All of my fear is ripped away before the storm. All of my brooding drops away like so many stones, to heavy to be born on the winds. I am left to tumble like a feather, unchained and unhindered.
I fall and fall, but I am at peace. Will you catch me?

Mirror world

There is a mirror world. Its coherence with this world shifts and changes with the wind. Sometimes its out of focus, and nothing more then a dancing ghost of the surface world. On some chill and serene nights however, it becomes almost like a plane of glass. It is never still, it is always changing, it is a thing alive. Its never a perfect reflection of the surface world, and I am grateful that its so.

It is the inherent difference from the surface world that makes it special. Light become brilliant and vague, at the same time. Bands of it dance far and wide from the source. Shadow becomes a void, strips of nothingness. Objects shimmer and distort, only to return then do it again. And it is this very property that makes it magical. Why is the mirror world more beautiful then the surface world it reflects? It is very much the same, and yet just slightly different. Different enough, maybe to remind me to actually look and see. To not simply let my eye pass over things, and see what it expected to see, but to really look. Because it is the first time and the last time and the only time I will see that part of the world just that way. Because the winds will take it, and change it, and it will be gone forever. And the next time I look it will be new again.

And when I fly out onto the mirror world, riding my own reflection like a magic carpet, I am lost to the dance. I become part of it, my passing disturbs the world, and changes it. And I can go to far off places, and look down at the stars shining up at me. All it takes is a change of perspective and I see them again. Really see them. What if we could learn to see the surface world like this? Every day, every moment, really seeing things for the first time?