Magic mirror in the sand, Tell me who I am again #4

-Between you and I, goes on Peridot, I must confess that I’ve always seen all those dolls in Santa’s office like red drops in a unique shade of pain(t) tossed in a bucket that I call the “Mirageous (an adjective between miraculous, mirage, and rage) Harem Pot”. Sounds a bit like Harry Potter, by the way. How about transforming that name I chose for the particular paint bucket?

-I would love it! I say. Nico, grab my hand, and we’ll see what we can make of this fake harem…

After a few minutes of deep concentration, Nico and I come up with a funny line made of our boggling mind:

*Harem pot* dance, born in the old *hate prom*, I’m grounded again and have built from the *earth* *THE* perfect *mop* to cleanse my *heart*.

-I needed a heart mop too, Lady, says Peridot. Thank you for helping me finding it.

-De nada…

-We all needed it, says Nico. Now that you seem to have expelled the black sap from your heart again and turned the interrogation marks into a big red heart, the sacred cow and I have a gift for you…

-Holy Cow! I exclaim. It is so gorgeous, and look how the edelweiss have grown!! Thank you, Nico, from the bottom of my heart…

-You’re welcome, so do you want to come home now?

-Yes, I do.

-Good, but you never did make that list to Santa though, at least not a real and normal-looking wish letter, with more concrete and practical facts, like listing your qualities and then the things that you want him to give you. Don’t you remember the expression “quién no llora no mama”, “who does not cry does not get nursed”, aka “those that don’t ask, don’t get”?

-Yeah, I seldom cried as a baby, since I was an only child, and I was never breastfed either, and I don’t know well how to ask. But all the things that doll #3 told me in that bad dream on her own phone actually gave me ideas.

-Well great because it’s about time for you to learn, and also to let us know what you can bring home… Home is your spot on earth, you know, the place where your heart really beats in the right rhythm and tune. I’ve heard pow wow singers once who said that the drum represents our mother earth, and when you ask something to mother earth, it’s like a newborn asking his mother something. When you ask our mother earth what you need, just like a baby, it has to scream and cry, asking for help. So maybe it’s why Peridot wanted to throw many thunders in your sky so that you could finally wake up. Think of home also as that funky B&B that Tonto and the Lone Ranger started to operate!

-Awww, so cute… I would love to work there. And I love the picture frame with Spirit and Rain and the gorgeous background behind the two humans… It looks like it is directly painted from un Valle de Sueños. The spiraling mane on the forehead of the Lone Ranger’s mare looks like a whirlpool in the river. Maybe it indicates where the rivers are. And Tonto’s horse seems to say “she understands”.

-She understands what? asks Peridot.

-Part of the mystery, maybe, I answer.

-Look, says Nico, if you come, we can share our toys:

Spirit, Rain and Little Creek can play with your Barbie horse and all the other four-legged you brought with you, plastic, teddy or real.

So come on, now, look at those pictures of you at three different times, the most recent being three times you, in a kaleidoscopic device, and may they inspire you to finally do what all little children should be allowed to do, write your list of give and take, or “what I give, I receive”.

-All right, I accept. It’s true that it’s about time that I ask for something more than a horse puzzle and fake rifles like I once did in my childhood.

-I thought you were against weapons, ahahahahahah, who, then, is full of contradictions now? It’s not just me…

-You’re right Peridot, you’re always right in the end, because I’m left…-handed, and also because in so-called wrongness there is a rightness of another sort. I think you teach me what spiritual evolution is all about.

-You know, lady, Adyashanti once said Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth.
It’s seeing through the façade of pretense. It’s the complete eradication of everything 
we imagined to be true.

-Wow, I can’t believe that I am hearing you talking about truth and untruth in that way, Peridot. So I have a question: what am I supposed to do when I know you play your jokes on me? How can I break the spell of spiraling pranks? How can I get you cross the mirror again?

-As long as you live “a lie” I will tell you lies… he says.

-Oh, so you take “allies” to build half lies? I answer, pretty proud of my pun.

-Yes. Once you toId me “I wanna see you fly” and ever since I flew, being half you, so now I am the one asking. But as long as you do your wind-sand angels, half and half, it’s just a half fly, so you’ll still be given half lies… or half truths… although you’re half way through, heehee. Just ignore the words and hear the heart, lady.

-Oh like when I told you, once in a bad dream, that I liked what I was doing when driving away from a place called “mirror”?

-Yes, acknowledges Peridot.

-You had hurt me earlier, because of your, yes, your ego-driven need to pay me back all the words of mine that had pissed you, so I desperately looked for a meaning to the life I was still leading by then.

-It is no excuse, says Peridot.

-And what does excuse your behavior sometimes, huh? I ask. It’s not always your boss’s orders; let’s be honest here…

-…

-Oh come on, guys! says Nico. Peridot, she said without saying that such lifestyle came to an end; and Nathalie Christine Elisabeth, he let you know why we only half opened to you, because your half angel had only half flown from its nest. Please, you’ve been gone too long… says Nico.

-Yes, I’ve been gone too long.

As I say this, two other slides add up to the show, they evoke desert, pilgrimage, prayer and love in Nico’s waking movie. I look at him and say nothing, and I swear that we communicate in thousand words with just one glance.

-The snow angel spelled the wise letters of one of your three names that I wrote in the sand during my own spiritual journey, he finally says.

-It’s raining a bit in my eyes, I say, and I did rain on your domain every time I closed my eyes, flew in a plane or from a cloud, turning dull paintings into crazier ones.

-Magritte pops in again, smiles Peridot.

And as I open Santa’s red shoe on the ground, ready to receive the future gifts in this wonder from Santa’s wizard cobbler, I use the sand ground as a slate and a hollow reed as a quill.

The letter starts with a quote by Mary Poppins:

“You helped me open different doors to make me find a me there that I never knew was mine”

Dear Santa, Peridot and Nico, and dear desert roses aware of the secrets of seeds of old and blue deer songs:

Here I am like a little girl again, I have observed the world through little people’s stories amidst blue walls, I’ve seen part of my life in their stories, part of my fears, part of my needs, part of my light and part of my shadow and I think it’s time for me to live this life fully, beyond blue walls, as I build daily stories, really real and really mine, ours. Through my journey in the desert, I have asked a Mirror in the Sand to tell me who I was again. I am a work in progress, but if I must leave a visual testimony on the rocky portion of this desert land, I think that I’ve learned to be all heart, todo corazón, and that I will always tend and try to see life as a BEACH, with ‘E-A’ as in reach...

If I have learned something in my recent (his)story, it is that I will never apologize again for being todo corazón, maybe it is why something pushed me to write it with pebbles instead of just on sand because I know the might of a Peridot’s whirlwinds… I used the pebbles on a scarf that might belong to my little Prince. He sometimes flies from here and flees to his land of the star, from which I glimpse, greener than ever, the shining hues of his heart’s palace.

When it happens though, I know how to listen to butterflies and read in the starry heart of apple planets cut in half, because now I know that things can be told in other ways than words, and that words and sights sometimes can be read through distorted mirrors. And if sound there is, the only one I will hear is that of the melody of my heart that wants to see me climb what may be my last mountain of uncertainty and see through the eye of a light pyramid.

I offer my vulnerability, my beginner’s openness toward non-verbal skills, my desire to embrace true liberty from the former me, my certainty that silence now really means that everything will be all right and my faith in trading sadness for joy, lies for kisses and words for facts.

I pledge that I will always try to remember to tell myself and then all of you and all the rest:

I will always sing, starting with Do Re Mi, the alphabet that gave such good advice, singing it both to me and the rest: A-dmit mistakes, B-e loyal, C-ooperate, D-on’t whine, E-xpect surprises, F-orget Quarrels, G-et over it (hmmm, this one is tough but will work on it), H-ave fun, I-ntend well, J-ust listen, K-eep promises, L-augh, M-ake up quickly, N-urture, O-ffer solace, P-lay together, Q-estion critics, R-espect privacy, S-hare your toys, T-rust, U-nderstand, V-alue Kindness, W-ait patiently (I’ve become an expert at that one), eX-(heehee)-ceed eXpectations, be Y-ourself, amaZ-e.

If it didn’t feel like writing a CV I would add what follows in a section called “I give”: Among my “a-ma(i)ze-ing” skills are my openness, my linguistic knowledge, my capacity of adaptation, my good creative ideas for a million things, my visual sense, some of my stunning photographs (sí, sí, so good that I could turn some into trendy postcards!), my writing skills, my playful mind, my flexibility in most circumstances, my desire to take care and nurture and also to be taken care of and nurtured. Most importantly, my desire to learn all that I still want and need to learn.

And in the section “I receive”, I basically ask for what I offer: to be taken as I am, to take every day as it comes, to be defined, to be boosted when I’m not too sure, to be taken by the hand and to be let taking by the hand too.

Now if I may, and I think I can since after all I have many years of “ghost Santa lists” to catch up with, I’ll add a third list in the heart of it all, a middle list, which might be the most important of all. So here we go, I ask:

-To one day meet the godmother, fairy of fairies, Hada rubia *Divina*, who helped me walk the yellow path through the red field to the green palace of the real world and of myself;

-To be understood and therefore told from time to time what is mine for asking, since I’ve never been too good at asking but am working on it, and I would appreciate Peridot not answering the contrary of what he means in such important cases;

-To get some rest from tests, therefore, and if they must come back, to be given the opportunity to reach a deal with Peridot.

-I am all ears, INTERRUPTS Peridot.

-Ok, fair enough since I am mentioning you. Well, let’s see. We could think of various options: when I suspect silly talk I could be allowed to braid red and blue threads around your mouth or to answer with a muac and a mueca, my way to deal with tonterías. Which one would you choose?

-The mueca muac, he answers.

-Good, in that case I will assume that it would be sufficient for you to understand, exactly like you do with me. Buuuut, in case the tontería aka silly talk would sow the weed of doubt in my mind, in imitation of that bracelet of yours I will wear two key bracelets: one will be braided with red and blue wool, and one with green, the color of the heart chakra, the color of the hues that are more and more defined there in the desert horizon. If you just spoke silly talk, you will touch the red and blue key, and if you spoke from the heart, you will touch the green key. AAh! And also, when talking to each other, I’d ask you to leave your cell phone aside, Peridot… How does that sound?

-Is that all? Silly girl, he says. You’re lucky that I’m in a good mood today so I choose to touch the green key for the future, oh, and by the way, “silly girl” belonged to the red and blue side… Speaking of which, what is this silly red and blue thing above the dancing brush?

-Oh, you’ve seen it too soon, as usual, you are always a few thought steps ahead of me… I say. Well, it is a little shack with muacs for a face… It is part of what I still haven’t asked for in my long wish list. If your boss still sends us homework from silly talk land, kingdom of fairy electricity, and even though it is directly related to our growth together, it would give me time and space to deal with the things going on in my little head, present thoughts, future hints and past memories. So yes, you convinced me to ask, so just in case, I ask, to be given a little wooden shack. It would be covered with one stripe void, one stripe light, one stripe dark, one stripe sky, reflecting a beautiful cielo azul. I still did not have time to add the silly face shack earrings: a red and a blue star would hang from its ears by the roof, and I could hang inside-out there, if in need of private talk with all the feelings in my head-quarters, close to the big green heart house in the land of the star, there in the real world, and now I see that the big house has the exact same hues as the gem you wear, Peridot.

Of course this could also be my little retreat to paint new dreams similar to O’Keeffe’s pink and purple flowers, to find hiding places for my fur babies, to make forts out of blankets and books, to organize dress up contests with the desert roses who would be turned into gorgeous butterflies or blooming edelweiss, to learn by heart songs in at least twelve tongues, and turn the magical hut into a real sugar shack where we could find shelter from the generous sun after a good day of work… There I could also laugh with and at myself as I *blink* at life’s beautiful winks while busy at turning a once no-man’s land into blooming fields of joy… Oh! And last but not least, it would be a good place where to be told others’ dreams and where to tell my dreams too, like that one where I walked on a curved bridge, above what looked like a giant Tweedledum and Tweedledee Jug made of beautiful clay.

-A “Tweedledum and Tweedledee Jug”? asks Peridot, scratching his head.

-Yes, I say. Actually that is where I would like to become that clay siren for you, Peridot. I call it that way because the duck-bill-looking endings each look, one east, one west, but always have each other’s back through the curved bridge… So there at the bottom of the bridge, leaning on a little stone wall similar to what I remember from a street called “Promenade of the Sad” and that once was flooded, Santa and Nico sat by the river inside the jug.

-And what about me? asks Peridot.

-You, Peridot, were sleeping, or maybe performing a ceremony, or maybe both. So Santa and Nico were clad in white, chanting and performing a cleansing ritual to finally let me dare shouting that I need you, guys, and hear in a clear voice and see with waking eyes that you need me too…

This is the dream I paint for you and me, this is my dream for all.

PS: And since I’ve learned from Peridot to stop taking everything so seriously, maybe I should have started this long list with this silly wish of mine: to see Santa personally coming at my front door with a formal invitation… Maybe the odds are as high as seeing him doing a headstand while shouting oleeee, or órale… And I would still settle for that!

Signed: ME.

~The End (or the Beginning) ~