An attempt at capturing the spirit of things

In the glass bottle whispers a glimmer. It is but a flickering light, a dancing flame. The light moves at times gently like the waves of an ocean, and at other times swiftly, as though agitated. It is a captured spirit. One might wonder where this spirit came from, or where it has been, for all things must begin at some place and soon go to another place. Nothing, not even a spirit, may remain at a fixed position. The dunes of a desert shift, and the leaves of a forest fall. So surely the spirit has changed in not only its location.

This spirit came from a deserted place. It arose from a solitude bleak, casting aside the curtain of loneliness by its very presence. And just as the moon's phase waxes, so did the life of that place, becoming greater night by night, until the spirit could not be contained any longer. Only then did that spirit depart, soaring into the distance without a care. That place from which the spirit came continued as the moon does, waning into nothingness. This is what the spirit seems to say with its every flicker.

But that spirit remains within a bottle. Perhaps its movement is an attempt to break free. Perhaps it is simply within the nature of a spirit to shift its shape, now greater, now lesser, yet never holding the same form. At times the light seems to beckon earnestly, demanding to be released, even exonerated. And yet when the bottle is moved, the cap poised for removal, the light shrinks as though agonized by possibility. And so it is in its very being a paradox; to ever be changing and morphing, but to never truly leave the bounds of regularity. So is the spirit.