lotuscathedral
There was no ceiling, in fact. There never had been. The room was domed by open sky, by endless stars, by soaring comets and brilliant nebulae and all sorts of cosmic treasures. The room had no floor, either; there were only endless miles of green, of blue, of brown and red and yellow-- trees and fields and oceans and rivers, mountains and hills and canyons and caves, plateaus and tundras and deserts and dunes. What were walls, to a world. What were borders, what were boundaries, what were limits? What was a ceiling but a nonsense word, a nonexistent cap on an infinite climb, a vertical ascent stretching out beyond the atmosphere? There was no ceiling, there never would be, and life rejoiced for it forevermore.
It's raining outside. It's the first week of December, the air is flirting with 50 Fahrenheit, and the pavement is as soaked as summer. Hazy rainbows cloak every streetlight and every car hisses past like an oceanic sigh. Behind us, through cracked-open screens, the rich warm aroma of steak and marinade lazily drifts, in jovial defiance of the encroaching cold. Christmas lights swirl about the porch, entwining with well-worn wood-- aged, luminous, mist-touched. Our arms do the same. Content in quiet wintry perfection, life ebbs and flows all around us. It's raining outside.
It's more of a feeling than it is a word, really. Even if you first open your eyes to pitch-thick black, or to screaming fearful yellow, or to hot gurgling red, the feeling remains, echoing, pulsing in multicolored veins. Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the System, to the Spectrum, to your collective heart. Welcome to Us, that deep embrace repeats, speaking of starlit cities and glassy oceans and labyrinthine woods. Caves and towns and clear skies and thunderstorms, volcanoes and stairwells and deserts and snow, all of it inundated with it, with you. Welcome home, it all says, aching and scarred and trembling and dizzy with gilded love. Welcome home.