Growing up I had a very favorite toy: a small white unicorn named Moondancer. With pink hair and a star symbol on her side, she was always the hero of the story when I play with my toys. Sometimes it was quite the story arch as she would be an outsider, the pony who didn’t just moved to town, or maybe one with magical powers she didn’t know how to use quite right. By the end of the story (or whenever I got bored), all would be well with all the ponies friends and hanging out together at the pool together. Yea!

I had other toys that would be the favorite for a day, a week, or some other short time. Like the motorhome my Barbies all packed into for a trip to the living room. Or ballerina toy that moved around her studio thanks to a magnet key in the floor. Toys would be front and center for a while, then go back on to the shelf to be rediscovered months later. Moondancer, and her pony friends, were the most consistent characters in what my mom referred to as “La La Land”; the imaginary world I’d create in my room.

For the past few weeks, I feel like I’ve been back in La La Land, but this time it is because my city (Portland) has been in the center of the media’s attention. We have been the unfortunate favorite for the president and multiple media outlets as political and philosophical views clashed near federal buildings downtown. The news each day declared that we were a city under siege, while I looked outside my window to watch neighbors doing life as we have been for the past few months under Covid-19.

I’m grateful that the federal agents have withdrawn from the city and that the protests downtown get to return to their original focus on Black Lives Matter and police reform. We are seeking a new normal.

And I am seeking my little pony. Maybe Moondancer is somewhere under my bed, playing with the dust bunnies that I haven’t gotten quite bored enough to clean.

“We are the spark, that will light the fire that’ll burn the First Order down” (Poe Dameron, Star Wars: The Last Jedi). – #52sparks is my year-long writing series for 2020, based on an art prompt challenge. The spark that lights a fire to toast a marshmallow or to ravage a forest begins in the space of an inch. This series is to explore what hundreds of inches and words can do.