I had a vision yesterday and I feel the need to share with you all. She was beautiful. Fresh. A picture. But I get ahead of myself.
I live in the historical district of Charleston, SC. You should see it in the fall. The trees begin to turn and the last of the summer flowers still have a little bit of color and life in them. On a beautiful day the temperature is perfect so that all you need is a light sweater. Yesterday was one of these perfect days, so I decided to walk down the park near my house. The walk is only about two blocks and the park is always full of families and teenagers playing frisbee or football. Sometimes there is live music coming from a band set up on the sidewalk trying to make an extra buck.
I was sitting in my favorite bench and looked up from my book to give my eyes a rest when I saw her. She was perfect, laying on a checked blanket, her head propped up on her hand with her dark brown curls falling across it. She wore a red sweater with a wool brown and white hounds tooth skirt. On her feet she wore brown boots which were swinging back and forth in the air. She had a drawing pad laid out in front of her and she was concentrating on the children playing in the park a few yards away from her. She was able to get maybe two or three sketches down before they noticed her.
They saw her and began to wave at her. She smiled and waved back to them and they began to run to her. She sat up just as they reached her and plopped down on the blanket around her. She showed them her pictures and pointed to things in the park. They giggled and laughed as she told them things, stories perhaps. They sat and listened to her as she spun them webs of things both near and far, true and false.
After a while the children got up and began to run around picking up leaves the trees had begun to drop. They would collect a few and bring them to their pied piper to drop into her lap. She began to weave the yellow leaves together creating golden crowns for the children and one for herself. They placed the crowns upon their heads and danced. For those moments they were all kings and queens. They ruled the world and all their subjects looked up to them. I don’t even think I knew that I was only a watcher. My heart was with them, dancing in the sunlight with a crown of gold upon my head.
The dance was broken when a woman came out of the house across the park and called to the children. They ran away from us, the pied piper and I, waving and smiling and dancing home. The newly crowned royalty had left to return their castle. I saw her laugh and wave to them and turn back to me, her head tilted down. She nudged a pile of leaves with her toe until she found the three she was looking for. I watched her go back to her blanket and take up the folder of papers as she pressed each leaf gently into into it as if they were each made of antique lace which would fall apart if handled the wrong way. She closed her folder, folded her blanket and began to walk away. I sat there watching as she walked down the street when a breeze caught hold of one of the papers. It blew one of the papers all the way to my feet. I picked it up, ready to run after her but the sketch caught my eye. There was a man, bent over his book, his eyes hungry to read each word. He didn’t have any awareness of anything around him, only the world his book had created for him. He had chosen to retreat from this world and into the book. It was titled “observing the observer”. She knew me. She had looked into my heart and then given me the chance to look into hers.
I still don’t believe she was real. She couldn’t have been. I believe that as she turned with the sidewalk around the corner, she disappeared from this world. But the picture she drew is still here, fresh and beautiful. She revealed things about me without even saying a single word to me. Her heart spoke to me and I will never forget the vision that was sent to me.