There is something about twinkling lights. They just GET to me. Ever since I was a small girl...twinkle lights in trees make me feel like I'm walking through a fairy wonderland. The twinkling lights of an urban landscape tease set my heart skipping.They are magical.Before the hard freeze of the last few days of 2017, the weather was divine. The relatively temperate weather, with Christmas and holiday lights in full regalia around the city enticed me into luxuriating in walking about, soaking it all in. Even more specifically, I have reveled in simply walking again, so relatively freely...grateful for my physical therapists and my growing strength and ability to physically insert myself back into a more vigorous day-to-day world. That gratitude is a light unto itself. And it shares the properties of light - sometimes strong and clear...sometimes flickering as set-backs in recovery and strength challenge my movement forward...but it is there, as long as I keep focused and patient and hold onto my faith that forward movement is possible, is attainable. There is a challenge in the twinkling...

As I  moved through the city, I found myself thinking of the lights I can't see. Perhaps, there are those sitting in darkened apartments, watching in solitude, seeking their own sparks, from within..or tending the embers, nursing the tentative wisps of hope, until they flash alight from the constant, diligent care. There is the distant starlight that is blanched from the crush of the light pollution of the city...invisible from the streets, below...even the rooftops of the highest buildings brings you no closer to seeing the vast expanse of star fields that lays just above our atmosphere. Faded from view, through our own electrical output. Yet, I know they are there. I've seen them. Seen skies black as soot with showers of thousands, hundreds of thousands of pinpoints of light, splayed from horizon to horizon. I do not question that it is the same sky...and I, too, am the same...but it is my location...my perception, if you will, that is altered. Changed. Expanded.  And that, in turn, changes and expands me...who I recognize myself to be. It reminds me, when I am back in the city...of my own light within, that is sometimes "hidden" in the fog of doubt and perceived conflict or toxicity. It reminds me of the trick of the mind, and how our self-sabotage can short circuit more direct paths and intentions.Powerful, twinkling lights....and from that celestial platform, my inner eye reflected deeper, into the twinkling beyond all knowing. The place where the energies and spirits of those we have loved and who have transitioned, sparkle...just beyond physical reach...twinkling towards us as we look from our hearts, where their memories reside. So many dear ones, twinkling stars of beloved memory, were added to the spiritual plane, over this past year. Their memories twinkle in and out of these conscious, heart-driven, walking meditations of mine...In this way the twinkling lights of the street act as a bridge to the Universe and beyond...and as without, so within...I find myself wandering for hours, climbing visual and mental ladders of Light and Memory. Complete. At Peace. Ready to begin a this new year. Alright, 2018. Let's DO THIS.