Night Lights

On the long dark night of winter solstice each year, a local rural school celebrates with a light festival. There are fire dancers, plenty of braziers, pizza ovens, and a magical lantern walk. The highlight, literally, always used to be the mass lighting and release of hundreds of paper sky-lanterns. Queues of excited sky-lantern launchers lined up to learn how to unfold their flat-pack paper lantern, find the fire-lighter beaker secured within its wire stretchers, light the flame, gently hold onto the lantern rim and.....wait. 

Waiting is what it takes for the heat of the fire-lighter flame to slowly puff the paper lantern out into its pregnant shape. Then there's more waiting. As the air inside the paper ball heats, the lantern becomes alive with both light and with lift. It starts to surge, like a dog pulling gently on a leash. Its belly swells against a backdrop of hundreds of star constellations that seem to be watching....and curious. Could these illuminated ground bubbles be young seed-stars about to be released as a new cosmic family?

For the humans, there's a fine discernment in knowing when to keep hold of the restless living lantern as it expands and readies for lift-off, and when to let go so it drift up to its lofty but short-lived destiny. One year, I was at the light festival with a friend who had a senior family member across the Tasman in the last days of her life and struggling to let go of the mortal coil connecting her to this planet. Several times my friend tried to let go of her lantern, and several times it teetered, started to lift, then toppled back down to the earth-bound security of her hands. Not quite ready to let go. Wanting to go but still attached to this familiar plane. Not quite enough lift yet....Until...it quietly hovered, buoyed by its own heat power, then after a few confidence-gaining seconds, the sky-lantern floated free of any last links that bound it here. Un-tethered. Free to fly now.

 

This painting, 'Uplift', is born of that moment.

We watched as it rose up to join the dozens of other recently released sky-lanterns floating higher and forming clusters. Existing star constellations watched in wonder as these seedling star-lights found their place in the sky. 

A sky-gazing child nearby, was looking in awe at what were now hundreds of sky-lanterns congregating in their own cosmic clusters against the backdrop of time-honoured constellations. "Look.....we've made more stars."

But like supernovas, the sky-lanterns burn for just a short time and then their patch of sky returns to darkness. With tightening fire-safety and environmental regulations, sky-lanterns are no longer part of the school's light festival. I quite understand this. But I miss them, and the wonder they ignite amid the dark solstice night.