Shake it up--curious music box reflections

So every once and awhile it hits me that I should probably be cleaning up and storing the remnants of my life that are distinctly from childhood, or from my teen years. I’ve cleaned a lot of it, boxed some of it, but there’s still a shelf or two in my room that sometimes stares me in the face, mockingly at times for the simple sentimentality within that refuses to box up all of these little knick knacks, glaring at me that I truly am not the adult I pretend to be.

As a child I would have said I collected fragiles. As an adult I guess I would say I collect memories. I have several music boxes…or windup music apparatuses…some are in globes, one is a box, one is a piano, and one is in a doll. Tonight I took one down from the shelf, wound it up and let my thoughts unwind to the tune.

Truthfully I don’t like the globes so much, the water always seems to disappear over time and the thing in the center of the globe comes up, detaches…and the mystery of the music is hidden...but I cannot throw these away, the music and the memories attached mean more to me than my small annoyance at the globe itself and the unavoidable deterioration. I remember….my second music—let’s call them boxes, it’s easier. So, I remember my second music box very well. It’s a little silver piano, and there was once a lid, like a piano lid, which I’m sure I did box up since I used this box so many times the hinge that kept the piano lid attached has long since broke. Anyway, this piano was a favorite of mine because you could see the device that created this haunting song and I was fascinated by the mechanical simplicity of a few bars passing over bumps on a roller that produced a beautiful song. I would listen to this box for hours, and watch the rise and fall of the little arms under the piano's lid. The music, and the little piano are still a comfort to me, and the funny thing, I couldn’t tell you the name of the song. Since then I’ve received a few more music boxes…and one of these is from my Auntie AJ and is one of my favorite classical songs, Fur Elise. This is the one I took down tonight, wound up and unwound my thoughts from the busy day.

I bring this up because this globe, for it is a globe, has a floral bouquet in it with these glittery flecks. As I sat there, thinking nothing, just listening to the music, remembering the box, my Auntie, and how treasured I felt that my Auntie would purchase this box with one of my favorite songs I found my eyes captivated by the way the light from my lamp, and then candlelight, bounced off and played with the glittery flecks within. The light and the glittery flecks have this iridescent rainbow like interaction. It was beautiful. The flecks within danced and twinkled like fireflies or fairies, the music acting as gentle laughter, from this thoughts surfaced.

Before there was the promise from God to man in the form of rainbows were colors the same? Did the spray of waves in the sunlight have that all too brief moment where all colors existed in the blink of an eye? What did sunsets look like? How about diamonds, did they reflect/refract light like they do today? When God first showed Noah the sign of promise, His bow in the sky, did Noah understand how much the world had changed; did he see beauty or just the end of the rain? At one point did Noah or one of his grandchildren realize how different the world had become just in this simple, quiet array of light and colors? Did they marvel at it as the array of colors winked at them from water droplets, from waves, from the sky, from candlelight through glass, and all the many places these little bursts of color twinkle from? When you read it in the story, it’s just a sign, a reflection of a promise that never again will this world be flooded to the destruction of all life. Yet, there’s so much more in them, to them…beneath the surface, suspended between, hovering, displayed…

And one day, there will be more, more miracles, more changes, and an eternity for us to marvel, to dawning-ly understand the nuances behind the intricate simplicities of heaven, of God, of new life, of a love that surpasses all we know or ever will, of little exquisitenesses like music or twinkling rainbows and it will no longer matter if the awe comes from a child, an adult, or an angel. We will not have to consider packing it up, sucking it up, and trudging on. It won’t be just another day, one more day survived, or muddled through…it will be more…and laughter may be the music, and our memories the weave and shadow between the beautiful light of simple graces, tiny treasures...shake them up, sit back, unwind, relax, laugh, remember, marvel, wonder…

A promise
A hidden depth
A joy
--given to us
--see, remember, rest easy
--to treasure, prismatic paradigm shifts
new

...settle in