Out of the gym and into the fog and a dying, damp and raw light. Grey sky. Deep charcoal concrete. Black-brown vacant, wet trees. This is the kind of night I thought when even a cave with a small fire would be a thankful shelter.
I turned on the radio. I’ve been listening to the classical music station lately. Notes from a violin rose from the speakers.* The notes spiked and declined, threading through one melody and combining it with another, but always climbing. Then a full orchestra overwhelmed it, but it appeared again like some welcome face in a doorway – going up and up, bright and heartening.
Goethe’s last words were reputed to have been “More light, More Light.” What he actually said was “Do open the shutter so that more light may enter.”
I prefer the second version not only because it happened, but because it is less dramatic — it captures an enduring desire in all of us for light, all kinds of light, and that even in that darkening parking lot, just a touch on a dial could summon it. Bloody wonderful.
Up the hill through fog and rain and almost home, other lights hovered and then became solid – just strings of Christmas lights on a barn’s silo in the shape of a tree. No, justdoes not do them justice, even though there was nothing dramatic about them, but I braked the car to a stop and lingered, watching them, and then turned toward home and more light.
