Month: August 2022

WORDS LIKE LIGHT

Tuesday, August 30, 2022

     Earlier today, when I was worrying myself silly about some supposedly large problem, the word ‘effulgence’ floated up in my mind, and fairly suddenly there was the light of relaxation instead of the darkness of distress. It seemed, for a few moments, like all of life was actually full of brightness. Even my worries seemed strangely dazzling, as if they were shiny but harmless specks of light. I was sitting in a doctor’s waiting room, and the yellow walls looked luminous. I felt like I was floating in a strange kind of splendor. I saw an old, disheveled truck pass by outside, and even it seemed to glitter and gleam. For those few moments this morning, the lustrousness of life was so clear, even in the doctor’s quiet, ordinary, but oddly bedazzling office.

SHINING THINGS 

One morning 
he saw a silver coffee cup 
shining on the edge of his sink. 
Soon he noticed other shining things 
in the house. The old stove seemed 
to be living in light again, 
the mouse beside the keyboard 
was covered in a blanket of brightness, 
and his socks seemed lit up, 
by which he knew his bicycle 
would shimmer down the streets that day. 

WORDS LIKE LIGHT

Friday, August 26, 2022

         A friend recently bemoaned the gradual disappearance of privacy, but I’m not sure it should be grieved over. One dictionary says the word “private” refers to something that “belongs to some particular person or pertains to and affects a particular person or a small group of persons”, but is there really anything in this universe that is private in that sense? Yes, I realize that I ‘own’ a certain amount of money, but does the value of that money belong only to me? Did I alone make that money valuable, or was it not, rather, the hard work of countless strangers, over many years, that made the dollars in my pocket worth something? Yes, at this point in time they are in my pocket and my bank account, but they have passed through innumerable hands to reach me, and their journey will continue far into the future after I spend them. In a sense, I don’t ‘own’ my money; it doesn’t belong to a particular person named ‘Hamilton’. I just use it for the time being before it passes along to others. In that sense, it’s not my own private property. The material goods I ‘own’ are also not strictly mine – not a personal, exclusive possession. Like my money,  my wife and I  are only ‘borrowing’ the couch and chairs in our living room (even though we paid cash for them). The craftsmen who made them and the people who may use them after us surely own them as much as we do. The furniture is ‘on loan’ to Delycia and me — and so, as a matter of fact, is everything else I theoretically ‘own’. ‘My’ heart certainly does not ‘belong’ to me. I did nothing to earn it; it was freely given to me by the Universe some 80 years ago. The same goes for ‘my’ lungs, ‘my’ muscles, even ‘my’ thoughts and feelings. Ideas and emotions aren’t ‘made’ by me. They’re not my private possessions, things I can own and be proud of. They come from the vast world of ideas and feelings that’s been re-creating itself for eons and eons. They’re created from the books I’ve read, the people I’ve listened to, the movies I’ve seen, and so on. Like all of us, I’m lucky enough to share in an immense and very public wealth of thoughts and emotions. So what’s the big deal with privacy? As far as I can tell, we live in a universe in which, the dictionary notwithstanding, nothing “belongs to some particular person” or “pertains to and affects a particular person or a small group of persons”. Everything belongs to everything, everything affects everyone, and everyone belongs to everyone. Privacy would seem to be essentially impossible in this kind of universe, so we may as well bid the charade of it a grateful farewell.