A Certain Slant of Light

10 Beautiful Things

10. Light.

I wake up to the blinds pulled shut and a dark, dark room. If I peer closely, I can see the outline of books against the far wall, and the faintest reflection on my computer screen. I wake in darkness, thin and fragile. The only light I see slips through cracks in the blinds, which are white and horizontal.

The light enters there. Morning sunshine is golden white, purer than the purest metal. Those fey strips of brightness are strangely lovely against the dark. They are neon letters written in a dead language, still alive and vibrant but unreadable. Someday perhaps I will understand what they say. Then, I know, I will have lived.

Slants of light decorate this strange Earth. In a prison cell in Somalia, the morning sun creeps through gritty bars. And a prisoner wakes in the darkness to watch the light. He doesn't know why it's so fascinating. The Sun has risen for millions of years, has cast all manner of rays on objects near and far, alive and dead. Yet this slant of light is special because it is his slant of light. The beautiful thing is not that the Sun is shining, but that the Sun is shining on these bars, in this place, on him. It is the loveliest thing he's ever seen. It is as delicate as hope.

Enter now the pink-bedecked bedroom of a five-year-old girl. Unicorns prance in wild lines across the walls, obscured by shadow. Her nightlight burnt out, plunging the room into darkness. And so she wakes with tentative blinks, wondering why there is no light to guide her, only the sunshine leaking beneath her floral curtains. It scares her. Her heart beats faster in an well-known rhythm. An ancient dance. Even as her mind registers fear, her eyes soak in the light. She doesn't know why it calls to her. It is a siren's song, these strips of piercing gold against the velvet dark.

Somewhere deep in the snowy mountains of Northern Europe, a thin woman wakes up late. She pushes up from the hard bed, resigned to the work ahead of her. Then she stops, her gaze caught on the sunshine creeping between boards in the wall. It is an ugly house she has, but it serves her well enough. Winters are spent hunched around a fire until only embers remain. Summers are spent chopping wood with callused hands. There is no time to waste staring at a trick of the light. But the way it shines carves pretty patterns on the wall, reminding her of all the things she dreamt of, until her dreams died beneath the weight of life. She is reminded of that weight every day. She never thought about her dreams until now, remembering what it feels like to plan and imagine a life beyond the constant cold and ache from work. The light stirs the shadows in her heart.

Light, that light, the light that throws away the dark of reality and reveals the truth nonetheless. Because that which is true is not always real. And from a little girl waking in a pink room to a prisoner watching the bars of his cells, they all feel the brush of light through the cobwebbed shadows.

A stir of brightness, a certain slant of light.

"Like a glimpse of eternity instantly forgotten. She is gone" (A Certain Slant of Light).