Lulu And The Fire

It’s 9 pm, the day just beginning to fade.  We sit at the fire and watch it crumble into itself.

Our Solstice bonfires always chase the sheep and donkey to the far pasture.   But now Lulu and Fanny are slowly making their way around the old stone foundation.   They stop on the other side of the fire opposite us.  They are standing on the bare ground where we had last year’s fire.  The place where they roll to take a dust bath.

Lulu stays, her ears up when Fanny wanders back to the sheep.

I get up from where I’m sitting and go to her.  Standing beside her,  I scratch Lulu’s neck, hypnotized by the soothing repetitive movement and the steady glowing flames.

It’s hard to put into words what happened next.

It’s more image and feeling.  What I saw seemed to come out of a fairy tale.  A moving illustration of a woman and a donkey walking together.  The colors are intense. Primary blue, green, red and white.

I am the woman and Lulu is the donkey.  We are walking where the fire should be but isn’t.

Without words, Lulu is relaying to me that existence is timeless.  For a moment I know what eternity feels like.  She “tells” me that we’ve done this before, we’ll do it again. There is no divide between the past, present, and future.

And then, like waking up from a dream, it’s over.  Lulu walks away and I go back to my chair by the fire.

I try to hold onto the feeling of enchantment, the peaceful sensation that everything is ok.  That life doesn’t just begin and end, it’s larger than that and all in a moment.

But it fades like the passing clouds.

I turn to Jon.  “The strangest thing happened with Lulu just now,” I say to him.  I can feel a slight smile of wonder spreading on my face. I try to explain, but my words are lacking.

Jon saw it though, he took a picture of me and Lulu standing together. Talking without words.

My ability to describe what happened is still lacking, but it will have to do.

I  have a feeling that the fire helped open me and Lulu up to each other. That standing before it somehow allowed for our communication. That it is a day before the actual Solstice doesn’t seem to matter.

Now, if I’m very still and concentrate on my belly, I can find a whisper of that feeling. Then the corners of my mouth curve slightly up and I know it’s somewhere inside of me.

A place to go, to know everything is ok.