The Heavenly Switches

It’s really, truly all too much for me.  These photos, taken while spinning dizzily in the tower, watching the sky wizard throwing the light switch On. Off. On. Half. Three Quarters. 

I think I can hear a maniacal cackle. “Here we go! Let’s blow their little minds! How about a little WIND, Scarecrow?”

And just like that, the light is gone, covered in cloud, and I stand, considering the trees. These radiant lollipops of color, each one trying on a different dress.  Changing it every morning, every minute. Showgirls, dancing their best, for those who will watch. I remember going over to a friend’s house when I was young. They had central air conditioning and a color TV, both things we didn’t have.  I was there a lot. Their house was like a big dark walk-in refrigerator, blinds always drawn against the sun and heat. They were from Texas, where people know how to deal with sun and heat.  My friend and I watched variety shows on TV, and I used to marvel at the blinding color of the dancer’s dresses. Back then, variety shows had troops of female dancers, and they’d all come out to dance a number midway through the show. An odd concept, now. There’d be a red one, an orange one, a yellow one, a blue one. A green one. Of course in the midst of a sweltering, sticky Virginia summer, I thought all that was pretty wonderful. But I always felt like I’d been released from the hospital when I came out of that house. It wasn’t right, in so many ways, to shut myself away from the light. Now I can’t sit down to watch TV at all. I hover, pace, find something that needs to be done. There’s always something that needs to be done instead.

I stand in the tower, remembering, my eyes roaming over the trees in their pretty dresses.

And then the switch gets thrown again and the lights go ON and I am jolted from my reverie, blown away. Not knowing what to do with all this extravagant beauty, other than to be out, every day, drinking it in, reveling, making low animal noises, groaning with the burden, the need to appreciate now, now, now, before it’s all gone. I have to be out. The winds are coming, and the rain.

Julie Zickefoose is a painter and writer who lives on a nature sanctuary in Appalachian Ohio. She is the author of Letters from Eden and The Bluebird Effect: Uncommon Bonds With Common Birds, due in spring 2012. http://juliezickefoose.blogspot.com