"What a fury to fly..." ~ Jane Eyre

In the beginning, chandeliers cast a warm glow through crystal pieces into my eyes.

I am not a jealous person, but my eyes became green with envy as the chandeliers were raised.

Raised with the chandeliers were three women, sitting elegantly on the base. To call them acrobats would be remiss. They are artists; a mixture of ballerina, painter, and actress.

Slowly the music began to go from adagio to allegro, and the chandeliers began to swirl around with more depth in the circumference. The women must be at least thirty feet up the air, if not higher, draping themselves on the chandeliers. As they were raised higher, they began to step off of the chandelier and use the chandelier as an instrument to help them fly.

As the women begin to twist, turn, hang, hold, bend, and brush through the air on these chandeliers, the more my soul began to twist, turn, hang, hold, bend and brush through feelings of envy.

I desperately wanted to be up there.

I wanted to be next to the soft glow of light illuminating from the chandeliers as these women were. Life is always calmer in candlelight and softglow lightbulbs. There are so many realities in life that are glaring that to swirl around in light no brighter than the tip of a firefly's would be soothing. The chandeliers themselves are comforting because they remind me of some favorite escapes: the period rooms at the MET, the Opera House at Lincoln Center, the film version of Phantom. I wanted to be in the chandelier as these women were, escaping the life that sat flat on the ground.

I wanted to be dangling off the chandelier as these women were, wearing thick knee-high stockings and locking my body into shapes I remember creating as a ballerina. Not just to be in touch with every muscle in my body, but to feel the air press into each muscle in my body as I circled through the air. Being so strong that letting go is never an option, and, just to prove it, nothing below me to ease a nonexistent fall. I wanted to create my own sphere around myself, a sphere that blocks distractions and blocks the critiquing eyes of others.

I wanted to feel the same kind of passion these women were not only feeling, but acting on. A passion which allows all fears to cease existing and risk taking to never cease. This passion is so strong that these women are not home for months on end so they can fly from chandelier to chandelier above strangers and smile as they glide through the heat of burning stagelights.

All the while, they make the strangers, like me, smile, too.

*Today I saw the Cirque de Soleil: Corteo with my two sisters and our two cousins. We had a lovely day. The circus is on New York's Randall's Island for a month. This is the third Cirque de Soleil show I have seen; the previous two were in Las Vegas. Honestly, the show today was my absolute favorite. It was lovely to be with my sisters, too. Even though we are all quite into adulthood, its nice to share whimsical moments with them that we associate with our entire childhood together. *