Do You Feel Lucky?

(and feel free to comment! My older posts are certainly no less relevant to the burning concerns of the day.)

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Light and Color: Dismissal of Assorted Theories

I am unreasonable in ways, such as I love you.

I walk through life arrogant. You people have seen. I've always sort of enjoyed that about me - I know, it's an ugly word to some! But I balance it with specific virtues, SUCH AS: I love that word! I love the sound of it. Arrogant.

This more than balances out that it's an ugly word to some.

Yet in my less self-possessed moments, this pose of arrogance - sincere as it is, it's definitely a bit of a pose. Like, a superhero pose, leaping to take flight, or like a rock star, one foot on the amp throwing shapes in the spotlight? You know the kinds of poses I mean! Those are just arrogant. You know? And sure, maybe the rock star is only playing - excused. And maybe the superhero's only playing into that role, that he or she and the world as well pretty much do see him in and love it, or her in of course.

Yet in my less self-possessed moments, when I stop looking to see; when everything blurs - or not blurs, really, since much of the detail is actually sharpened - but when I stop looking. My recognition blurs, at least, and the picture that's lit before me (generally, this occurs on or about the same spot of West Cliff Drive in Santa Cruz CA, looking out over Monterey Bay towards the mists and mountains of Big Sur - what a nice walk!), I don't really see objects. So much as shapes, patterns made and joined, of color in hard-to-exactly-name arrays, in a beautiful and bewildering composition of dims and rich hues, hung in tapestry under an invincible blue, with brilliant brights dancing upon deep darks. Blinded by Monet, maybe. And it doesn't even matter what things actually are. Let alone how. It's beautiful.

In those better, mind-free moments, I can't see how any other response can be appropriate to life, except: gratitude. Gratitude and humility. Humility, because I didn't deserve to be here. Because nothing I've done, and nothing I am, entitled me to this. No virtue, no strength, no talent, no skill, no achievement even, nothing solid or valid or true you could cite, except perhaps: birthright.

But I know I didn't deserve to be born. And for that reason: gratitude. Thanks mom! And dad. And "Our Father who Art In Heaven," too, if you're up there. Whether you are or you aren't doing art in heaven, you definitely do down here. You Art down here. So thank you!

I thank God now, just in case I don't get the chance later.

And people are just the same way. And some days, even to a far greater degree than landscapes, even the prettiest ones you could look for, with their seascapes breaking in and over and upon them. People are just the same way, and some days even moreso. They are a play of light upon a fantastic canvas. You can see it in them, and where to look. They say there is only one light [ who says? citation ], but to see the light of life dancing...! - oh, you atheists can be coy about it, if you choose - and rightly so, but you see it too. You just attribute it to a different place. Yours, too is a great good place. You attribute it to a wonderful place: to us. To humanity itself. You consider humanity itself to be a vessel of such light. To give such light, to cause such light. And so be it, may be! I can't see causes and sources in a thing like this, and I don't care to. There's the light to look at, and to see by, and it's lovely and evident, ain't it? Who needs to know how filaments work when you run currents through them. Who needs to know how hydrogen's heart grows heavy in the meeting with its mate hydrogen, bringing forth helium and illumination in an explosion of light. You see the light.

I mean, things such as electricity, and electromagnetism, and thermonuclear fusion and everything else you could know about a given sharp shard of light, its provenances and origins - they are beautiful to wonder about and wonderful to know, aren't they? But the light is self-evident, and more than sufficient. It is more beautiful and far more wonderful than however it happened to work.

All I care to see is so self-evident to me that I can't stop seeing. Each pair of eyes your eyes chance to meet, as you talk or you laugh, and as you make, and then break, and then remake contact - shyly smiling maybe! Or narrowing. Suspicious! Or leaning coyly forward - each pair of eyes has the same light dancing behind it. And yet not: for all the colors and tones are changed, in the brightness that comes shifting and shading in each, so that each light - is its own. Or maybe, is owned. Is made its own. In a choice to shine or to throw shutters, or maybe just to flick the dimmer a bit - mood lighting! It is the same light that dances, but the dance does not belong to the light. A dance does not belong to the music. It belongs to the dancer; it is made by the dancer, a gift: and it is given in celebration of the music. It is because the soul, I think - with the eyes, famously windows. Really, though - I say "eyes," but it is the whole face that lights up, as far as I've seen. And when it does.

Although we are bright, lit from within, each person, each face, each soul is also lit by what each looks out on - always and always and always from its own unique point, from none other. Each point unique, of view and of you. Each its own perfect center of an infinite circle, each circle an infinite universe that you haven't seen. Because how could you? You can't have, you have never seen the first of it, and can't possibly know it - can you? But here it is in front of you. And it seems...so much like you know. Like you do know, or can. Or are going to.

For right now, for this time, the time being, the moment. You get to explore, and tour through to your heart's content - and maybe tear through your heart in the process! Maybe tear your heart's content in half, as part of the price of admission. So worth it. Admit yourself. Go ahead, tear yourself in half: that's the ticket. For as long as the other cares to offer their generosity, or honor your curiosity with their company and consent, so worth it to go in! Get comfortable, and let the lights come up. Or if only to converse! This will be a face-to-face encounter with that which you've never known: or whom, would be better. Will be better. In whom you will find a mystery worth an awe far beyond the unknowable, as you find yourself face to face with the knowable.

I am unreasonable in this. Or maybe, because of this. It seems unreasonable to me, the things we get to see in a place we have not deserved to be. It staggers reason, and for that reason I plead drunkenness.

No, not right now as I type this. I am sober as stones, but my stone's in the sun, and I do declare! As I live and breathe, I feel a warm glow coming on.

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