How to Find the Light
When hope is a hazy smudge
Your eyes aren’t deceiving you - pareidolia has taken on a new form. Welcome to A Certain Slant. You can read more about that here.
How to Find the Light
Put two feet on the floor. Peel away the window covering, let the morning wash your skin. Shake the debris from your dreams. The day is hours old and it comes to you like newborn hope.
The first word you utter is a magic spell. Make it a good one. Do not start the day with an apology.
The word light - comes from the Old English leht—the bright, radiant energy of things. Pour something warm into a cup and follow the path. Bask.
Notice when the clouds cover the sun. Feel the source drop away. Hold your hand to your heart—feel your ribcage tighten. Feel hope flutter in your chest before it blinks out. In Emily Dickinson’s time, two things could prevent you from entering heaven—despair and presumption. Understand that light is fleeting and cyclical, paradoxical—the way it angles through windows and trees and vines. Dickinsons’s shadows held their breath. Yours at least move with the shifting light, dancing like hazy smudges, blurring into the paintwork.
Look around. What else sits with you in the dim day? Blue robins flit back and forth for bugs. A dragonfly lands heavy on a bowing branch. A frog sits at the mouth of a storm drain, a long gurgle in its throat. A millipede creeps over your book, rearing up at the dogeared page. Despite all of it, life meanders on.
Love is not consolation, stated Simone Weil, it is light. There is no disavowal from the universe’s gaze, no detachment from love. But sometimes love makes us wait. And so you wait.
Light may not touch the very bottom of the ocean, but just before you reach the disphotic zone, you may be able to spot a pinprick. It might be ambient or weak, a bluish diffusion. But even if it feels mocking, or oppressive, look up. Study your sadness. Turn it over in your hands. Feel the muscle in your chest drop to the floor. Wait for the shine of silver. Breathe, even if it’s a sob.
Play some music while you wait. Put one foot in front of the other. Hitch yourself to the rhythm. You don’t have to call it dancing. Smiling isn’t a betrayal of your sadness—besides, it’s not as if the birds can tell anyone. Take your shoes off. Put your bare feet on the ground. Let the earth hold you for awhile.
Avoid digging for meaning, or forcing conclusions. Instead, pick a tree, touch its papery bark. Its mycorrhizal wisdom is more ancient than yours. It has seen more sunrises than you’ll ever see, and more darkness than you’ll ever know. Let yourself come full circle, let the clouds tick over, the shadows sharpen, and let it all flush warm with meaning.
ring the bells that still can ring
forget your perfect offering
there is a crack in everything
that’s how the light gets in
— Leonard Cohen
I don’t wear a watch, so when I’m writing outside, the olive tree shadows usually tell me what time it is. When they blur, it’s easy to feel disconnected—untethered from my own chronology.
I often use lists help to organise my ideas and give shape to the fragments drifting in my head. This particular morning, I just named what I saw, and let the thoughts cluster around them.
Tiny Glimmer: Write your own list piece, starting with How to Find the ______. Gather ten fragments—memories, lyrics, facts, overheard sentences. Don’t think too hard. Let them thread themselves together.
Hope you’re all having a wonderful week. Go stand in the sun. x
