Live life

DANCING WITH THE STARS

 

I'm ethereal. Really, I am. If you don't want to believe me, that's okay as I have trouble believing you are a chunk of meat, that you do ugly things, have wars and kill each other. My friends and I bother no one. We come and go with the breeze, with the raindrops. We soar. We feel the beauty in every blade of grass, leaf on a tree. You see leaves to be raked, grass to be mowed, bagged, burned. You are pitiful.

 

'Since I believe in you, how come you don't believe in me? You do sense me, feel me circling around you. I am making your brain hear me as your ears are good only for your world. Stay still. I am going to teach you how to taste love. Look up into the blue sky. Feel that blue. Now taste it. Ah, your brain told you it tastes like blueberries. It does, doesn't it? Put your hand in a white cloud and that will be your dessert, whipped cream on the berries. Savor it and wait for me. I'll be back.'

 

This fool, this figment of my imagination, cannot fathom being like I am, ethereal. The ocean is wild, ferocious, but calm too. Salty air weighs me down. I struggle, rise above it. An albatross flies by and I hitch a ride. It doesn't feel me tucked in, warm comfortable under its huge wing. Its feathers are sharp but do not cut me. Down below is a white ship, thousands of those like the thing I am teaching are on it. They make sounds, motions, look around but don't see the small turtle swimming hundreds of miles from shore. How did it manage such a task? Another ethereal like me must have wafted him here. He is going to be made into soup and is content. 'Look up again. The sun is special. Sometimes it tastes like fresh squeezed orange juice, sometimes red strawberries, yellow butter. Think about it, Mister. It's more than a sun. It is life itself. '

 

The wind feels me floating, sailing. It lifts me, glides me and drops me in the middle of a double rainbow, lets me slide up and down as if I were riding on a camel's hump. '

 

There is a loud noise. I get angry and call out, 'Damn, it's Wednesday again. ' I open my window and yell at the garbage men to stop the rattling. No sense going back to bed. I lean over to get my terry cloth robe, put my feet on the cold pine floor and feel something gritty.

 

Little sparkling chips are everywhere. A glass iridescent butterfly wing sits amongst the pieces of stars. Something clicks and a voice reaches me. 'Mr., you with a brain and no soul, are you reading me?'