You know which ones… right?
Ah, the ruby red slippers.
The red dancing shoes.
Each pair of shoes poses danger.
Your eyes sparkle, because you love to dance. Excitement closes in, but in the last moment, you notice glittering ruby red slippers. The possibility of going home eases haunting whispers, those which wrap your name in gauze, send longing pulls from your chest. The defiance to run away, to return. To go home.
Stretch your toes into the slipper—first sliding in smooth then a tiny pinch. Learning to walk again, you step along the path and what awaits you. Desire erases the distance from your journey to your memories. Can you accept what is diluted or exaggerated? Yet will never ever be the now again?
Are your slippers incognito, what if they are the red dancing shoes? Laden with tempo and leaps, shoes which lift you to the top like a Rockette. These twirling red shoes guarantee you will dance through life forever and ever—but did you notice it’s the Devil on your dance card? Writhing and twisting, convulsing in cadence, remorse and virtue fling from your body and your moral compass is lodged in your brow. Your legs are tired and your body collapses with exhaustion. But the music never stops, and the party never ends.
Both pairs of red shoes will warn you: Be careful what you wish for.
Progressing backward in time or forward toward dreams is welcoming. Innocence and fame are coveted at their image. The good days behind you swell in your heart and bring joyful tears to your eyes. The people you lost and the daydreams you concocted are gone—but at one point they existed. Just not today.
And the excitement that grows in your belly, the thrill of what might happen tomorrow hovers before you like a carrot on a stick. What must you sacrifice today to reach tomorrow’s carrot? Your time or yearning, your wishing away moments?
And what of those moments which surround you, one then another, as if watching seeds from a dandelion puff blow through the air, they are suddenly gone from site.
Red shoes or Ruby shoes. Hmmm.
What about a pair of red flip-flops. The comfort of presence. Of being in the now. The joy of peace of mind and soothed body. Flip-flops to carry you through the day; errands, meals, crafts, music and songs, the bird in the sky and the nod from the mailman as he passes by.
Absorbing the moment, one at a time. Casual and content like a fat cat in a sunny windowsill. This is life. This is magic. This IS.
Bountiful pleasure in glimmers of life carried by the breeze. Along the path of the day’s journey from first light through moonrise, the simplicity of breathing is all that’s required.
And by the time you learn to let go and let life—instead of the other way around, you might be down to red polish on your toes, and you smile because you have settled into that perfect place unbound by the ruby shoes and the red shoes. You are not only home but have been home all along.