/yesod

Tag: light

  • light

    In the house behind ours, the light in the high attic window keeps turning on and then off again every few minutes.

    Disconcerting.

  • morning visitation

    …and as I open the door leading from my office to the front of the house, I see a pale shape, not much more than the impression of a white dress moving through the light coming in the windows.

    IMG_9583.JPG

    It flows from right to left.

    I stop. I blink.

    It is gone.

  • flake

    Packing up for the day, getting ready to head for home… I reach for my cell phone and watch in amazement as a bright flake of light, a translucent chip of yellow-white light about the size of my fingernail, floats up from the screen towards my face.

    I blink, shake my head. It is gone.

  • the short

    We’re in the back bedroom, my wife and I. Fucking.

    It’s hard sometimes to find the time, the moment. Children, work, day-to-day life — these things conspire and distract and exhaust.

    But we find the time, when we can. We find the moments, synchronized, together. And it is good. Perhaps it is too brief, too short. But we know each other so well now.

    Like tonight. Together in the bed in the back bedroom — my absent son’s bedroom converted to a guest room for the time being.

    The room sits in the relationship corner of our home, according to my understanding of feng shui. So, I suppose, it’s good that we don’t leave it empty. It’s good we fill it, from time to time, with each other.

    As we fuck, the window rattles — the expected ice storm has arrived.

    Reaching the end, of our short time — doing my best to hold out as long as I can, to stretch the moment and the movement as long as possible — I look up at my wife’s beautiful face shrouded in shadow. A moment later there is a flash of light and she laughs, suddenly visible.

    The bedside lamp has turned on by itself.

    It flickers, then goes dark.

    This happens, more or less, five or six times before we’re finished.

    It almost seems to be an accompaniment to my wife’s final burst of lovemaking, a response to her rising and falling.

    After she heads to the shower, I inspect the lamp. I try to find a reason for the erratic interruption. Nothing I do will replicate the odd flashing.

    I unplug it, just in case there is a short.

    For the rest of the evening, even now, I’m fighting the feeling that someone is just behind me — quiet, waiting.

    Outside, the ice storm seems to have passed. It is cold. My hair is on end. I do not know if I will sleep tonight.

  • flames, new and old

    [This is directly transcribed, without changes or edits, from a journal entry dated June 16th, 1998]

    …and, somehow, in my dreams I hear a huge crash — metal and glass — ignoring it, I dream on…

    …a flickering light from outside — flash of orange through the blinds — send me up to the window, women’s voices, laughing and talking . . . and I see them gathered around a fire, a smashed and twisted wreckage to one side, smoke from the fire rising through the branches above . . . I run out to comfort them but…

    ..I’m awake, my son crying in the next room…

    …dreaming again, this time the Queen of Middle Night puts in an appearance of an old girlfriend from years past — the red haired dancer. Old flame, slowly kindled, surprisingly warm. Her family home, my son and I just passing through . . . she embraces me, a big sister, a past lover — though she was, in reality, neither. Passing through the rooms, everyone sleeping quietly, I see a black puma chained in a dark corner. It blinks once, green eyes blazing, hungry. I walk away. Slowly.

    We move on and, when it is time, I go. Her farewell kiss is surprisingly sweet…

    ..and, in darkness, I am awake once again.