Light up, light up, as if you have a choice

Kahlil Gibran, THE PROPHET, from The Coming of the Ships

"But as he descended the hill, a sadness came upon him, and he thought in his heart:

How shall I go in peace and without sorrow? Nay, not without a wound in the spirit shall I leave this city.

Long were the days of pain I have spent within its walls, and long were the nights of aloneness, and who can depart from his pain and his aloneness without regret?

Too many fragments of the spirit have I scattered in these streets, and too many are the children of my longing that walk naked among these hills, and I cannot withdraw from them without a burden and an ache.

It is not a garment I cast off this day, but a skin that I tear with my own hands.

Nor is it a thought I leave behind me, but a heart made sweet with hunger and with thirst."

The city I left as a tiny child has a name that means hope for me. A phoenix lives a thousand years before it ignites itself and then is reborn from its own ashes. It is an allegory of resurrection, of perpetual existence and joy. For this the ashes don't mean mourning, they mean watch out! I am spinning back to life again. I have whirled into fire, crumbled into dust, and found myself whole and triumphant again. So many times I have broken for sorrow with that flame, but why? Nothing is lost, another thousand years of life are beginning.
The Phoenix is rising.