this is for you #3

My scope of vision contained only a door. The door was very alluring, every time I try to reach its grip, I wake up.

That is my recurring dream.

***

There is something that my mother mentioned the other day, that her greatest inspiration in designing the interior of her house and choosing the colors of her furniture is birds.

She said that the colors of birds match so well, no artist can deny that.

Especially humming birds. The hues of purple, the orange, the blue and the green. They are perfect.

Her bedroom was so vibrant and alive in colors, it had the soul of a humming bird, no wonder it brought joy to my heart every time I entered.

I told her I’ve been experiencing something strange in my body before bedtime. It felt like one of my organs was vibrating, I couldn’t detect the source of it. It was so intense that, no matter how sleepy I was, it would keep me up all night. Or, if I had just fallen asleep, it would wake me up. I did not mention, though, that I kept having the vision of the door, in the days that I actually did fall asleep and the electrical sensation in my body would wake me up.

She told me that she never heard of such thing and that I should see a doctor.

I did an MRI, blood tests, and there was nothing alarming. The doctor gave me a herbal sleep aid. But still, every time I get in bed, I’d have this emotion all over my body that I could feel electricity pumping in my blood like waves, reaching my hands and feet.

I was uneasy, and frustrated.

***

My friends ask me for advice in relationships, work, and family. My advice to them is to never plan ahead. You don’t know what endless possibilities your path holds, and how those possibilities extend to a hundred others. There are factors that would unfold themselves, information that would unveil, and there is no intelligence in the world that can help you contain all this information, enough information to plan ahead.

So don’t plan ahead.

I was unable to give that advice to myself. Sometimes, in your box of thoughts, you can’t think outside it. I booked an appointment with a tarot card reader, a shaman, and an astrologer. All I wanted was an answer to this question:

Should I leave?

But I never got an answer, rather, I got answers to questions I haven’t asked. This question would keep me up at night.

I can’t give that advice to myself.

So I did what I do best. I tried meditating more.

After 48 hours of one sleepless night, I tried to occupy myself with many things to distract me from this physical sensation.

I was not even able to meditate.

I waited till the first rays of the sun would break through the curtain of my room. And I took a walk outside, focused on my breathing. I sat on the bench of our garden. A pigeon landed few steps away from my feet. I observed the pigeon. I have always been amazed by the underlying intelligence that drives all the creatures on our planet. The animals, the insects. This intelligence that drives them to find food, and mate, with an underlying sense of trust. We are excluded, of course, from them. The logical side of our brain, after its advancement from its primitive nature, started to question the intuitive side, and led our current evolved state to making flawed decisions.

But the pigeon flew away with those wings of his.

“What was the pigeon trying to tell me?” I thought to myself.

“Surrender.” the right hemisphere of my brain answered.

And this is how I medicated myself. I started taking 30-minute meditative walks. I tried to learn from the flow of nature, the effect of the full moon on the dwellers of the ocean, how ants invade homes to know exactly where food awaits them. And the synchronicity of the birds migration. For centuries, people who kept cage birds would notice their birds become restless, each spring and fall, and often fluttering at one side of the cage. “Zugunruhe” a German behavioral scientist called it. It translates to migratory restlessness.

The need for change, I would feel it when I need it. “So surrender” I’d remind myself.

This underlying intelligence, the music of Earth.

I hummed along with it. I let go.

***

It’s been four months since I last had my sleepless night. I would close my eyes and envision the door. And that I reached its grip, and opened it. And every night I would imagine something different. A waterfall, a wild city, beautiful cats, gigantic flowers. A bird, ready to migrate north, sometimes I would imagine myself refusing his invitation to fly with him, and other times, I would go. Trusting my direction, I’d imagine whatever I want. I never actually knew what was there behind the door. And it doesn’t matter. I will envision whatever I like.

***

“Birds make great sky-circles of their freedom.

How do they learn it?

They fall and falling,

they’re given wings.”

-Rumi

 

© 2018 ALIA S. F.