Jason Mraz

I live near a military base. I don’t know much about it. It’s a place where Marines develop their skills and learn how to properly play with their toys I guess. Our friendly neighborhood airspace includes as many low flying helicopters and subsonic explosions as it does crows and their foretelling caws.

The base begins just beyond a storybook contoured landscape of farmland that cat-cows across a horizon on the opposite side of a valley below my house. At night the farm is lit with hundreds of well organized rows of bulbs. I tell people it’s a light bulb farm but the guy is really growing flowers. He produces many for the Rose Bowl parade and has for years. The night lights he uses hurries along mother nature.

Last night the base was firing something into the sky, adding even more light to the fields. The sparks moved like melancholy fireworks, each one a runaway from the pack. One soft light at a time trailing low over a canvas of stars held me a kept man and reversed my years. I wasn’t even a man anymore. I was just a pair of eyes, like how a child must feel before it’s first download.  Each flare arced and faded languidly like shooting stars in slow motion. Mimicking it’s movement made my head turn.

The waxing full moon had my back which meant I was free to be lost in gazing. In gratitude for this new chance to see the earth in such great light, from such great heights, from a little house on a hill, at night, I smiled a warm smile, tucked my hands in my pockets, and levitated.

To some, the electrically charged flower farm and the military base could be viewed as wastes of energy; each operating out of some degree of fear or greed. But to others, the spectacle alone is beautiful and worth acknowledging.

How you choose to project your light onto others is “soul”ly up to you.

I wish you wellness on this day.

Love and light,

J