Hold Up the Sword of Light

In the white light that glows here within my room…….the bright white light that is all that fills the small void of darkness, the edges of the white fading to a soft blue….I see things. Not the way I normally see them…but I begin to notice things.

As we all do we assign meaning….we believe that some miracle is occurring at every second….each event is preordained…that God is watching us. Things were just meant to be or not. That is the way of things and those who do not believe in such things are never quite as bright when things go well but never quite as low when they do not.

Right now I am more fascinated with the way my hands are dancing across the keyboard than what I’m really writing…though I am always conscious. I’m hearing the music in the background, noting the time….and seeing my hands pale white and they are all I can see….everything else is dark around it….the light is not very good from my monitor at all.

When I look out the window…..I see the sidewalks and the grass and the trees below turned orange from the street lamps…..like glowing souls….forever imprisoned within the glass…..there to illuminate things normally left unseen. The blue lights of the security posts flicker and as I really concentrate I notet that at 12:46 in the morning, there are still more lights on than off in the windows.

Everything is still outside, however. We all are sitting in our rooms studying or watching TV and not even remembering what the dark is. People hate it. They hate the dark with a passion. It is there where they sleep and while they may like the night…they do not like the ability to not be able to see….

What if I was blind? I think about these things as I think about all things…..I think about too much more than most…..though I’m privileged to know a few other neurotic people who make me feel not quite so alone. Perhaps that why being blind is so feared….because you are alone. No faces, no images, no knowing anything. One can learn to adapt, one can move without fear of damage or danger….but one does not feel like they know quite so well as the rest of the world…..

And to go blind in the middle of a life of sight may offer the chance to not feel quite as distant, but at the same time one knows what they’re missing. People stare through things….they don’t look at all. They don’t see. People don’t even notice I have new glasses….they don’t notice haircuts or anything. People are astonished when I tell them what I remember and see or notice……and the fact of the matter is….it’s because they aren’t looking. I don’t understand it myself, being slightly alien to the world, but how can one in a world lit up by a glowing orb not see the things around them.

Doesn’t anyone wonder how the form of a tree came to be? Doesn’t anyone admire the brick and cement buildings and think about all the work that it took to build them. Doesn’t anyone examine their own body and watch as their muscles flex and pull their fingers and move their body parts? Doesn’t anyone ever notice nature or beauty and really look at it?

Maybe that’s why so few people really understand where I come from when I talk about love. Because it is very hard for me not to fall for someone who is beautiful….in one way or another. Maybe it is their grace, their poise, their eyes, their smile…..always the eyes, however. One cannot have ugly eyes….if you really think about it that’s the last thing people really look for in women and men. They always say that….but that’s not it at all. The fact of the matter is eyes are an after-effect….always powerful….always lasting….if a man has good eyes, he may hold onto a woman for longer than normal, and the same is true in opposite….but people don’t like to be stared at especially right in the eyes…they don’t like to look and see if there is a spark there, or a flash there…and that’s why people are sometimes uneasy around me. Cuz I stare.

Just today I got to stare into Marissa’s eyes and I loved every minute of it. We had to stare without breaking face into people’s eyes and we each stared into three different pairs of eyes. Denise’s wouldn’t stop switching back and forth between mine. Cordell’s were bland…but Marissa’s had that spark….that fun spark. The kind that always says lean in for the kiss…..

I always think in odd forms like that. I wonder how my eyes are…I wonder if they’re strong enough to hold someone….to capture fancy….I doubt it. Nobody ever notices them. Sometimes I tell people what color my eyes are and they just accept it….they don’t check, they don’t know.

Now where is all this going? Nowhere really. It’s just an entry that echoes in my mind as I listen to Thomas Newman and find myself in the dark, all alone….staring at the half-moon that is my white face reflected in the window by the light of the computer screen.

All my life I have images scalded into my brain…all made out of nothing more than the playing of light as it bounces around the world…..and yet far more powerful than holding someone’s hand are their images……..

A great goal in my life is to become rich enough to build a great mansion….but not any mansion….I want to build a piece of art….a Neoclassic, Gothic Revival….sort of inbetween piece. I want to design it and work the entire thing and make it into the beauty that I see in the world. I want to create it so that the entire Jennings dynasty will have a great heirloom of artwork…I want to make it to have a lasting effect on the world….I want to make it so that I do not die…..and I want to make it because there is no more such building of great and memorable art. All we have left is technology.

Before we could write online so that the entire world could find it and read it…we needed to see. Sometimes we forget that. When the sun goes out, all is lost….not just sight but everything….sometimes we forget that because we’ll probably all be dead(race I mean) before it happens. But who knows.

To beauty then and good night.