Entry 7: Resonance Field
September 7, 2025
NOTES FROM THE BALCONY, ENTRY #7
A sound bath in Emotional SYNESTHESIA: where a musical key opens a memory lock
Tonight, we meet at the door to the balcony, which has been transformed into a sacred space. Please remove your shoes.
In place of our usual armchairs, we have yoga mats and tealight candles on the floor. The overhead lights have already been dimmed, the incense lit. Do you hear the soft chime in the distance? Do you smell the tea? Far away from here, deep blues pressed to closed blinds flutter with the room's gentle breeze, and I am suddenly aware of all the mirrors around us.
The practitioner enters: she says to get comfortable on a yoga mat in any position. I am on my back, knees up, feet pressed softly to the floor. Firm, grounded. I close my eyes. 
She pumps the bellows of the shruti box and it lets out a vibrating arc of intense red to purple, surprising me. Not ten seconds had passed from the time my head met the mat, that I was sent spiraling into an oblivion of symphonic color and memory by the single touch of her hand, pressing a key in reality and turning a key inside of me. Inhale, exhale. The shruti box sighs again in a warbling groan, producing another arc of the same hue that flutters before me. I ask myself if anyone else here feels this unstoppable wave of sound in technicolor. Before I get to feel too self-conscious, I am swept under another surge from the shruti box. It feels like I am being waterboarded--saturated hues rushing violently through every pore in and out of my body in the shape of an infinite universal helix. Current after current of magenta flow lengthens as she pulls the draw out a little longer, and then out of nowhere a sharp green-yellow throttles through my core...and as we rise from this position, the yellow becomes explosive, so bright the room loses total visibility. You cannot see your own hand, even held mere inches away. A voice booms from every corner, and the Narrator appears onscreen in a startling sea of red. Look down at his silhouette as he pulls us backward into the year 2000, where a group of kids wait eagerly outside an iMax movie theater.
(Appearance of the narrator) Still from Fantasia 2000, released 1999 by The Walt Disney Company
A yellow school bus is rumbling next to the curb and the driver pulls off as the diesel engine leaves a trail of smoke and rain drops begin to fall. The weather, being dramatic already, somehow made the whole affair feel more theatrical, surreal. Teachers act as ushers. Every seat is filled down the center of the theater with excited grade schoolers and hushed murmurs blur into an orchestral drone from the massive speakers around us. 
We forget about each other, becoming one with the screen, colors, story. The Sorcerer's Apprentice is conjured by the Narrator from out of darkness, his tale of woe beginning with scenes of spectacular magic conducted by his magical mentor. Sprays of light shaped like butterflies and explosions of color emit from the sorcerer's hands as his apprentice eagerly watches this demonstration of power in alchemical form. At the expected moment he sees master retire for the evening, little student is up to no good. He fetches the hat embedded with powerful magic, naively thinking he can get out of his chores by directing a broom to do all the work while he naps.
(The unsuspecting apprentice) Still from Fantasia 2000, released 1999 by the walt disney company
If you know this famous scene, you'll remember how the rest goes: our friend Mickey Mouse falls asleep, confidently dreaming of himself as a sorcerer more powerful than his own teacher. In this interval, the broom he had put to work carrying buckets of water from a distant well had flooded the entire room. The whole scenario feels like karmic revenge. Furniture already floating, the apprentice instantly panics and fetches an axe, chopping the broomstick to smithereens. He goes off to nap once more, thinking the problem is solved, and is awakened from his own audacity by a swarm of broomsticks revived from the shards. As the broom-zombies repeat the directed task, the inside of his underground chamber fills as quickly as the checkered room with Alice's tears, when she realizes she is too big to escape through the keyhole portal, unable to turn back home, unable to follow the rabbit any further. The locked door mocks her and she cries out, "I don't think it's so funny. Now I shall never get home!" She is trapped, Mickey is trapped, we are all trapped, and right now this world feels like a bad karmic glitch.
(Mickey Drowning with the spell book) Still from Fantasia 2000, released 1999 by the walt disney company
(Alice drowning herself in tears) Stills from Alice in Wonderland, released 1951 by The Walt Disney Company
Like Alice, for a long time I have noticed my spiritual and emotional size not fitting in most rooms, which feels isolating and awkward, in simple terms. Her questions, lamentations, and tears are relatable, but it is the ending where she accidentally falls into the same bottle she drank from, the same bottle that had gotten her into this predicament that I find most relatable...and guess what, the bottle becomes her boat. Like a genie bottle that was touched by curious hands, her sorrow activated the device, granting her ultimate wish for escape. From inside its protective translucent shell, she confesses: "Oh dear, I do wish I hadn't cried so much". The uncanny glass boat floats her safely through the mouth of the keyhole, and out to an open sea. She regrets crying, but let's notice together: it was the tears that crafted a pathway out. 
Sitting at the edge of my consciousness is the woman with the shruti box. She is mysterious, wise. She is a mother just like me, and I can feel her compassion, not just through her unconventional symphony, but her warm energy. The colors, all of them, vibrate intensely not only in my eyes or body but we are one, inseparable, and I can almost feel what it is to be the light spectrum itself. I have crossed over: into the prism, the bottle, the rosary box, the greenhouse of my past. Surges of this wild charged red-magenta to green-yellow pulsate through me and then in one swift motion, they stack themselves into the form of a tall knitted hat.
Beneath the majesty of this weathered fabric crown evoking Haile Selassie himself is the man who effortlessly gives the hat the magic it holds. A profile view of his cheek, a shape belonging to the Maroon people of Jamaica, a place with solid roots known to represent peace and power, the birth of reggae music and the legend Bob Marley. Soft beard, round ears, dreadlocks twisted and covered under threaded yarn, a presence and a voice that cannot be ignored. He feels ancient, like a stone I cannot read. Inhale, the shruti box expands. Exhale, my eyes fill with tears, my heart with ache. I hear, “free yourself from attachment, there is nothing in the world more precious than your heart”. I let the sadness of that first moment of truth flood me all the way to the core. The sun shines brightly, it is crisp fall air, early November. We are sipping hot tea on my porch before it is too cold to sit outside anymore. Sunlight flickers through the tree branches. He says “Technically, I am married, but she’s more like my roommate…” I hide my eyes that are instantly blurry and all the world peels away. Om shanti…color waves…knitted hat…color stack…our hands overlapped once... clouds and sun, seasons outstretched, the moment floats away and I feel time expand beneath me. A chasm of blank space everywhere, I squint at the sun I am dreaming of, the whole scene becomes a golden sky and then out of the periphery emerges another character in our story: my mother in the form of a cloud, her unkind energy and words pass overhead in a cluster, and I think about how every interaction with her makes my jaw clench. I notice this even now without her in the room, and I need to let go before the anger and resentment swallow me up. I need a distraction before the broomsticks start carrying in water, so I let my mind shift, building a way out of panic and buckets of tears with rocks and treasure trinkets.
(Brooms descending) Still from Fantasia 2000, released 1999 by the walt disney company
Pause. Tibetan bowls take the place of the shruti box. Each size in succession, building a staircase of giant gold coins from the substance of each ping sound, one after another. The sky has opened up and it seems I discovered a way to escape all of this. Like Alice through the keyhole, I see the gold shimmer above, and bravely stretch out my foot.
Ping- I step to the first coin and hear an echo.
Ping- I step again and almost slip off the edge.
Ping- I look up and there is a hole in the ceiling, raining in more gold coins like a waterfall, and I can see a thick canopy of trees above it.
Ping-All that I own is on my back, and I carry my children, too. Absurdity of risk and chance take over as I have to jump to the next gold saucer. It feels like I am balancing between death and opportunity, and each step is torture and joy flowing through my vasculature. The only way up is to let go of any hesitation, like a professional athlete or confident video gamer, and allow the universal flow of energy rock through my body, guiding my every movement.
There isn’t much time, as the path falls away behind me. The cave walls begin to bend and crack. Words are beginning to appear like prehistoric graffiti. I realized just now where we are standing. Have you?
In this place, my Cave of Wonders, gold darkens to blue as the sounds lower in tone, and morph their shape into heavy stones falling like rain into water and I descend now rather than ascend, no matter what direction I wish to go. Was I lost? Did I actually do this on purpose? Dropping everywhere, each rock containing a memory from my life, the objects flying past are heavy, scary, unstoppable. Pieces drop into the surrounding depths, some close enough to catch. I look at them quickly, wondering if there is a pattern in what they contain. I see lessons, people, places, memories, regrets, too many to look at, too many to carry. And even though the rocks all look the same, some are much heavier than others. The rasta man enters my psyche again, but from a different angle. His face when he is mad, his face when he is satisfied. Another ping, and thick tears hit the mat. His face when he is sleeping, his face when he is looking at another woman. Ping. His face when our son was born, his face when we were across the aisle in court. Ping. Deeper, deeper go the octaves as the tempo speeds up and we reach the mighty blue gong's climactic performance. It is suspended from a reflective chrome pole, swaying a little with every beat. The gong and coins are so similar, I start to confuse them, but the sound begins to separate, becoming distinct, giving way to a threatening rumble. -I hear a thunderstorm in the distance. I see grey clouds to the west and all the rocks transform to tennis balls scattered across an empty court. 
My grandfather and I zip up the racket bags because we are going home for lunch with Granny before it rains. She is making chicken soup, corn, and slicing fresh watermelon. Then…another rumble, we are running through the back door into the greenhouse before the rain hits us, laughing, and I can smell her food already. Heavy summer droplets darken the concrete. The cherry tree loosens its grip and the sound of pattering on the roof triples under its assault.
I look up at the sky and back again, now seeing an open field to my right and my ex-husband on my left, driving. We are about to stop at a gas station in Texas, witnessing a sublime spectacle in the distance while our daughter sleeps peacefully in the back seat. She does not know yet about the storm that is waiting. A deeper boom comes from the center of the gong, scattering metallic blue through my chest sending my eyes fluttering open and I stare at the twinkling lights above, hypnotized. Pause. Breathe. And then…boom, a soft unsettling transition into chimes that sends me back to my teenage bedroom where I’m looking into a snow globe, shaken, playing music box songs in a twinkle, miniature confetti swirling against the interior. I see my own eyes, young and vulnerable, in the reflection of the glass. Samantha's eyes, not Sparker or even Sam. Her spirit in pure form, not refracted and broken.-There were nights back then when I would awaken at some strange hour, and would see the snow globe flashing shards of color without any perceivable source of light or human touch, and it scared me. This felt like it was happening constantly and without my consent, like some spirit was doing it as a trick. Lying in bed, I pull the covers up close to my nose even now, barely peeking out. Remembering it, conjuring it in my mind’s eye is enough to evoke residual fear. Can we look into it together?
Rotating inside this crystalline sphere, I think we will perceive different things. You will gaze into an image that reflects your heart’s deepest desire, and I will do the same, because that's what this hypnotic thing does to people. In mine, I see a mom and a dad holding hands, they walk with three children together to a park. Their backs are all turned to me, but I know they are happy because I can feel it, and that is all that matters. Not their names or faces, or even their backstory. The whole scene feels as dreamy and unattainable as the storm of glitter it lives in, which is probably why I was too scared to look at it alone. And when you look at it, do you see something that scares you, or something else? What appears once the glitter shards settle to the bottom? Will you even look at your own eyes?-The twinkling sounds of the chimes bring me back to simpler days, crystalline, I am sitting on the school hallway floor. We read a book about a frog's adventure, but I cannot recall much else. What's that? The color of the glitter is shifting from silver to gold... I see it too. The feeling of being watched by eyes I cannot see gets stronger. The shards grow larger, rounder, their edges softening as they spin. What looked like glass daggers only a moment ago are now petals, thin and translucent, catching light suspended in dust. The snow globe blooms in its breakage—all the fractured pieces unfurling into a thousand flowers midair. What I had feared as violent rupture reveals itself as a strange flowering, beauty born between my hands. I smile to myself.
The duality of the bottle is like so many of life's scenarios, so many of the people we encounter--we didn't know it would serve a multitude of purposes. At the start of this story, we were not aware it was more than a container for spells or a raft for floating on tears. It is a prism refracting color all over the walls, a flashlight revealing the exit, and a totem to remember it all by. The little bottle is something to add to the souvenir shelf. Like any object, it holds its own power. I stare at it sometimes, wondering if, like Alice, I will ever get a chance to ride inside it, out through the keyhole and into my freedom.-
If you have made it to the end of this session with us, I sincerely thank you. It means so much to share these stories, lifting more than ten years of silence. For now, we will gently bring your attention back to the room. Our theater attendant is cleaning up for the next show, and they're trying to kick us out. I hope our sound bath this evening was as satisfying to you as it was to me. And remember, confidence without wisdom is just a broom with no master. Namaste.xx