“The very queen of colours, which bathes with light all that we see, wherever I may be during the day, comes down upon me with gentle subtlety through many media, while I am doing something else and not noticing it. But the light makes its way with such power that, if suddenly it is withdrawn, it is sought for with longing. And if it is long absent, that has a depressing effect on the mind…”—Saint Augustine, Confessions[i]
_____
James rose and began again in the dark of pre-dawn morning, reading lamp and lit candle on chairside stand before open window of silver stars spanning open sky absent early-settled moon.
In his chair, he read, contemplating and reflecting on the words that came, a book began so many times but only shallow delved before abandoned or redirected. All the times before, the story didn’t speak.
Age, experience, moment; something in receiving changed.
He read of another man’s struggle, balance of faith and pleasures, Godly Love and human lusts, and a spirit of strained position in between. In conversion and surrender, the writer succeeded at last, advancing in Wisdom, repose, will, and insight into discerned transcendent truths even as the ache of old ways held and ached with vestigial effects among body and spirit.
Dawn began, faint line of gold under ember sky catching morning wind that breathed life and light into catching dawn.
He stared, watching sky change moment to moment, instant to instant, in revelation that never ceased to strike and inspire something in his spirit.
He read on, passage telling of light and color and God’s appearing in such signs in old:
“…Light which Tobit saw when, with his eyes closed, he taught his son the way of life and walked before him with the step of charity, never erring!
Light which Isaac saw when, despite the state of his bodily eyes, weighed down and dimmed by old age, he was granted to bless his sons without recognizing them, yet in the act of blessing to distinguish one from the other.
Light which Jacob saw, though because of his great age he had lost his eyesight! With light in his heart, he shed radiance through his sons on the generations to come whom they prefigured. On his grandsons by Joseph he mystically laid crossed hands in blessing…
This light itself is one, and all those are one who see it and love it…”[ii]
Contemplating, he closed his eyes, sensing the rise and revelation in warmth and radiance in sensing through closed blindness.
He thought of a miracle, moment with body and form, and he wondered how it was God manifested to affect and change hearts and spirits of the living; and in this contemplation, he heard her rise, footsteps light in floor above that carried through the open space of home.
By sound, he followed her movement from room, balustrade overlooking onto room beneath, and then beginning down well of stairs leading from the upper story where she slept to level of ground where James read.
Turning, he witnessed Annie standing in descent of stairwell’s way. Beside her, sunlight’s rise shone through leaden window of antique craft, prism refraction changing the light of the sun into scattered prism cast over well and into room, and in it’s center, she, wearing white robe loose-bound covering but showing low on form path of body’s centerline, long legs, striding slow beneath before pausing in stand, centered in the light.
Around her, the prism colors breathed, weak then strong, ebbs and swells of light as, outside, a heavy leafed maple branch swayed in a morning wind filtering, blocking, and allowing free as its subtle movements affected and scattered light of an almost autumn dawn.
She smiled and his heart strained in affect of both spirit and the flesh, and he gazed at ethereal impression, vison, as she stood, radiant, in kaleidoscopic corona as if sun and source of light herself.
To him, she was.
Moment and vision moved into memory as present lived onward. She moved from transfiguration back into the world, returning from on high into descent of him with ground and earth as prism stayed in cast and spread from leaden window of the well, breathing, swelling, waning, and returning back as branch of maple beyond continued in its subtle dance in rhythm to heaven’s moving current.
Annie poured a cup of coffee, then sat beside James at quiet table. She looked on the book he held, smiling soft wondering on the contemplations that it stirred. Over James’ shoulder, she saw the spectral show of divided and flooding rays pouring breathing from window of stairwell’s fall.
She held her coffee close, warming in its hold and in facing towards the light, and she smiled soft, corners of her mouth light curled as smile shone greatest from her eyes, fixed upon the light.
“That is beautiful,” she spoke, “I don’t think I could believe it if I did not see it.”
James’ face warmed, a rose beneath the tan, as he held and formed then spoke, “You should have seen you in it.”
Annie’s eyes held to the sight as her face warming and reddening soft as James’ beneath, not knowing and having nothing for replay; only her smile and a warmed and showing affection.
Annie looked again to his book before reaching and opening her own which she had not yet the heart to read and enter in. She wanted to be with him, to hear his voice and know his thoughts, illumination of awareness as they rested together under rays of spectral cast.
“How is your book?” Annie asked, leaning in seat nearer to James.
“It is good, took me about twenty years to get into, but maybe there’s a reason for that.”
“And what might the reason be?”
James smiled, looking down first to book then Annie’s meeting eyes, “I’m still working on that answer.”
“Will you write a story from it?”
“Likely.”
“I hope you do, and I’d love to read and learn what it becomes.”
The light changed, sun rising higher in arc and path of onward day, and in breath and blow of the maple branch, prism vision disappeared, colors returned and restored into a single one of molten gold framed in concentrated bound of the stairwell window.
“It’s gone,” Annie spoke in witness, a lamentation in her voice. “Maybe you could write a story of it too,” she spoke staring on the frame, hoping for return of a light that would not show until another dawn.
She rested her head upon his shoulder, each quiet in the moment, needing and wanting nothing more than time and closeness in the moment.
He thought again to contemplations, to words and vision read. The words were exactly as it lived; but she was not absent, and he was not depressed.
All was alive and beautiful, even as light and vision were departed for a while.
Queen remained.
Beside her, spirit gleamed.
Light of love framed in the golden window still showing power in its keep; and he wondered why it was that the words came in a reading precise to moments and visions lived.
He wrote the story as she asked, recorded revelation gifted of her light.
_____
“Why then do I set before you an ordered account of so many things? …I am stirring up love for you in myself and in those who read…I have already affirmed this and will say it again: I tell my story for love of your love…”[iii]
[i] Saint Augustine, Confessions X xxxiv (51)
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Ibid. XI i (1)