Here I am. Seventeen years old and full of life. Earlier today my body felt energetic and restless, and my mind was circling one stanza of a well loved classical tune over and over. That is why I have escaped to my alone place. That is why I find myself here.
A sound of a piccolo whispers over the wind, pulling me out of my daydream. I am laying on a ground of a wild flowering ground cover. The colors of the tiny dainty flowers are pink, yellow and white, mostly yellow and white. To express the sound of the piccolo my right arm swoops over my head, my white gauzy sleeve trailing behind. I know what is coming, what is building on the sound of that piccolo. Like the small arrow tied with string stealthily shot into Robin Hood's prison tower, the fragile piccolo pulls a stronger string of a flute in behind it, and after the string carries up the twine of the clarinet, all leading to the eventual strong rope sound of the trumpets and French horn. I quietly move and swoop out of the grasses and bitsy flowers that circle me, until I escape like a freed robin, twirling and flying to the brass band, though alas my feet are a little more drawn to the ground then the robin.
This is where I express that I am alive. This is where I release the energies of life through lively dance and joyous romping. This place, where I am alone. Only where I am safely alone. In my mind I am the image of an angel, in my white dress dancing around in the flowers. And I care not what image I would actually be to an onlooker, for there are no onlookers.
Alas if I were not dancing freely expressing the music about me, I would be thinking about what I looked like in front of a mirror. Though I love to dance, and dancing relaxes and releases me, I was not born a dancer, or given a dancers body. Never mind that here, here I can dance, alone.
The more I frolic and leap the more I ambush the hive's pollination bees at work, and startle the butterflies from their dreamy rest, into flight. As I move in grand circles around the meadow I pass the gay birds that are singing with my music. Not only do I love to dance, but I love to be alone in nature.
My blood is circulating, my head is clear, and my spirits are lifted. The brass fades out to the woodwinds and alas the lone piccolo chirps its song with the birds, until only the birds are heard in the air. I am catching my breath and remembering that I am not seventeen, I am almost thirty ( for the third year). My body is more then 'not built like a dancer' it is padded from years of childbirth. My white dress is not a dress, or for that matter, it is not really white any more. The romps in the wild flowers leaves its marks on my cotton jersey workout sweats. A workout is what I wanted and a workout is what I got. Who knows, a while longer with this workout routine and I may loose some of my padding. Alas, I also have pressing duties to attend to.
I walk over to my water station conveniently hidden behind a tree and drink long and deep to refresh myself. I wipe my face clean with a cool towel, walk behind a painted mountain range to a door, open the door, and immediately am surrounded by what could be called a different world, my home. My timed session in my biocube is over and it is time to get back to daily life. How kind it was of my Dad to give me this extension when they sold their home and moved to a condo. The biocube was so old and outdated that we had to dig up a well referred handy man to track down the proper adaptors to connect this extension to our last extension port. I can still remember the movers question me, as I paid the five thousand dollars for moving my old biocube. "For this kind of money Mam you could have gotten one of the new biocubes with hologram upgrades, and had it delivered." Movers can not measure the sentimental.
That is what this biocube is, sentimental. I have turned my body around and am now looking at the exterior wall of the biocube, this wall now makes up part of my hallway and my den. Along with my fathers gift of the biocube my sweet mother added her gift of home and memories. I walk down the series of square framed photos ending at the furthest frame to the left. Here I am in a all grins, showing off my shiny braces. My hair alone dates the photo, All surrounding my face in a circle it is cut short and curled, but in the back it grows long and straight, this was long before the natural look became the standard. I am laying with my arms crossed over a flattish landscaping rock. I am twelve. I am wearing my party dress, for this photo was taken on my twelfth birthday. Though the biocube belonged to the family, it quickly became my love, and my favorite place. On the rock is my birthday present, that I am cuddling: a white fluffy bunny to live in my cube, and a note from my father explaining to me that the cube is now largely mine to landscape and populate, my own little world to create. No twelve year old could be more happy, nor adore her father more.
Like most youth I was fascinated with life, in all its diverse forms, my biocube was a celebration of all different forms of life.I searched high and low, and asked my parents to schedule vacations in their vacation condo in places where I could get new bugs, plants, and animals for my mini world. I had a passion for the heirloom and the unique long before it became the trend. That was what was so special about this rabbit, this white rabbit was a genuine vintage American rabbit, I had the genealogy to prove it. Some old grandfather died, and his children not knowing what they inherited, and the future profit potential of the vintage American rabbit, sold the bunnies in the nickel add for ten dollars each. My dad was the one who was smart enough to ask them to search their fathers records for the genealogy report. I had my own little profitable business for a while, before my bunnies died from some human cold that the genetically engineered bunnies could withstand. Alas for heirlooms, they are superior in many ways, but my close friends could not understand why I bothered with all that vintage breeding stuff, especially after my bunnies died of something so simple.
When I grew older, and my biocube was more established, it became more of a retreat. I would step carefully around the vast field of unique and dainty flowers that were hard won. I would then climb on a sitting stone I had placed in the center, and I would look about at my beautiful world. I would reminisce at each unique element of it. The lizard I bribed the local boys to catch for me. The flowers I collected in that funny patch at the end of the mountain road, twenty minuets off the beaten path. The praying mantises I made friends with and named, that I caught on the brick wall above my mothers thick iris patch.
Soon I left home and life became all about adventure and discovery. My biocube was walked through like a museum when I came home to my parents for visits. There it stayed until my parents decided to move. I am glad for it now. Now it is my little haven of escape. Some day my children will take more notice of it and I will have to share it with them, but today, today it is all mine, and my escape, my alone place.
