More Light
In a small, unregarded house near the intersection of Kingsway and US 92,
not far from the intersection of Interstates 4 and 75, outside the city of Tampa, I sat
alone in a dim room, thinking of her. I had been waiting for her many days, all my life
it seemed, always waiting, quietly and hopefully. Many nights I stood in front of my
house, waiting vigil, but she did not come, the street remained silent, the night, still.
I turned on my television and saw, wonder of wonders, a likeness of her, a worship,
televised from the heart of my city. Her worshippers were clad, I saw, in white, thronged
about a stage. Many tens of thousands they were, in joyous communion with her. Upon
the stage, a tall man, blond haired and sharp-featured, with vivid blue eyes, spoke of
her. This priest knew her, he must. He was close to her, he spoke of what he knew of
her, and it was so much more than I. He radiated brilliance, cast a light, his intellect
shone so bright. So warm, so caring, so intellectual, so wise, so bright, so endearingly
he spoke. It seemed that he spoke only to me, so kind of him to perform for an audience
of one. The words echoed through the crowd and through my head. The multitude of
words, a vision he made, wove a web about me, made a glow that enveloped me. My
head was clear now of the fog of 16 years of darkness, it spun upon seeing clearly,
overwhelmed in a new enlightenment. I turned off my television, filled with purpose, and
dashed to my car. I slammed the keys into the ignition, hateful of the delay. To my
suddenly cleared mind, the jingle of the keys against the Dragon keyring was deafening.
I left my neighborhood in a blur, my mind racing in the warm ether of new knowledge,
reveling, swimming in it. The dark ribbon of asphalt unfurled before me, delineating the
sad, vast darkness on either side.
I rode the ribboned border on, on, past the darkness, towards the city. Vast and
bright, it threw a glorious panoply of color upon the low pall above it, a halo. A wise man,
I was carried to a New Nazareth, guided by an electric Quintillius. At my command, the
maddening pace grew yet madder, my word accelerated me, furiously joyful, wondrously
alive, into the yawning edifice of the city. I crossed through, and felt my old life fall away,
and knew a new one was beginning, where the light would shine on me and give me force
to live anew, and show her to me, that I might know the reason I so wished to live. I parked
my car and left it. Even here, far away, I could hear the voice of my savior. With great
purpose I walked not giddily, but exulting, towards the gathering. Rather, I flew as a moth
towards the light, bouncing, jolting through the night. At last I came to the fringes of the
crowd, held their fellowship in my hands, drank it, and was rewarded with a seeing
drunkenness. Miracle of miracles, somehow I was pushed to the front of the press, and
there I beheld my priest. He was speaking still, of her goodness and the illumination she
could bring. Then he knelt on the stage, and extended his hand to me. I extended mine to
him. His grasp was sure and strong, but more, rather than my hand, he seemed to clutch
my heart. He pulled me up before the host. He asked me, in a voice deep and great,
"Do you love her?" and I replied, bravely, "Yes!" and looked upon the
crowd. To my reply, a rousing, warm cheer rose from the host, affirming me in their blood
and spirit. I was flung in a million different directions, my heart and mind exploding in a
shower of brilliant, cleansing light. I knew her then, and knew this her priest, who knew her
better. I knew she would love me back, and know I lived, and give me an answer to the
questions I had. My dreams were come to fruition. I spun to thank him, to embrace him,
hold him, fall on my knees and kiss him. As my gaze met that of his bright blue eyes, they
were transformed into windows, magnifying glasses. I saw pain in him, pain like my own. I
saw a soul denied its love. I saw a soul denied its knowledge. I saw a body claming to have
found her, and offering to help others do the same, and a soul, hid far beneath, looking for
the answers still. By ars arcana, he knew I beheld him as he was, and I saw his face melt
from stone to flesh. I did not see his lips move, but I heard his voice, pleading with me not
to betray his secret, not to destroy those he had deceived, not to shatter his house of mirrors.
In the same instant as this unspoken communication, the eyeswere lights once more, the
face carved of marble, and I felt his rage. The pain I had seen... had tripled after I had seen
it, and tripled, and tripled, a thousand billion times. His pain... the pain that I had seen
course through him... the pain that I had caused by knowing... was transformed by the
wicked alchemy of the heart to rage and hatred. This I had wrought, and through the
psycho-Newtonian physics of a thousand assembled mental levers, the rage became mine,
also. Rage at another Judas. Rage at the ghosts of pain that were to have died when I
entered the city, and now flooded back to me. I ran, I bolted, no other action fitting. I
scrambled through a sprawling maze of life and light, everywhere, halogen and neon and
pink sodium burned away the darkness. Air seared my lungs, raggedly I ran on and on,
interminably or an instant, and each time my feet impacted, they resonated out and up, a
grim parody of a heart, torn, bleeding, broken, dying. I could run no further; I fell to my
hands and knees. My breath came in spasms; I retched. I fell prone, in front of a television
store, facing a hundred images of my False Prophet, blaring silently at me through the night
air. Streetlights glared down on me from all directions, my accusers gloating, taunting me,
reminding me of my failure. They exposed me, knew me, reveled in their unblinking,
blinding victory. I laid in the grit and dirty water, prone, and sighed, sacrificed to the Gods
of Light and Knowledge on a phosphor altar. A last act of defiance, I crawled into a near
alley, long and dark, promising some refuge from the hideous gaze of my conquerors. The
floor of the alley was cool and smooth and damp, no grit or trash to see. There I hunched
between two dark derelict buildings, in silent communion with my brethren, these buildings.
I hid like a small animal, another speck of life, in the midst of so much life, just another, no
more, no less. I laid back against my brother, musing over such poetic justice, the kindred
of myself and these gutted hulks. We shrank from the probing, harsh, light from exposure,
revelation, hiding in a forgotten sector of a forgotten city. The building was smooth, it felt
like smooth marble or granite.
The tears came then, tears for the nameless man I loved and hated, tears for me, tears for
her, tears for what might have been, had I only known her soul. Tears for all these things
I cried, the summation of the pain of ages, with no catharsis. I crept further back into my
alley, my sanctum sanctorium. I was out of the baleful gleam of my accusers, deep in my
alley, shielded from them by my silent friends on either side. The air was cold, my breath
threw ragged plumes. A raindrop fell, unheralded, upon my tearsoaked face, and was
followed by one of his brethren a few feet away, then two more, then a million of these
glorious creatures. I looked up, and through a hole in the thick pall that limited the sky
above the city, walling off, pushing down, through a portal in the pink-stained haze, I saw
the moon. It glowed, softly, bathing me, radiating soft light, gray light, mixed with the stuff
of darkness. The moonlight glinted off the falling raindrops, bathing the creatures in twilight,
reflecting in a million places from their scales, and it was as if the stars had fallen. Just as
quickly, seconds later, the pall returned, shutting off the moon, banishing it to a place far
from that which men might know, limiting comprehension to that which it girdled., dividing,
oppressing. Denied their dancing-partner, the creatures left their play, and fled. They left no
trace, barely even dampness, that they had come and gone and lived and died. No trace
save the mark left on a 16 year old boy, crying in a dark alley, in a forgotten sector of a
forgotten city. I sighed, and thought on this portent, and time passed. Later, the air was
much colder, the ground was cold, also. I yearned for her comfort. But I did not know her,
it was no use. Just then, a strong gust of wind scoured through my alley, spinning, twisting,
alive, the West wind, the wind of autumn. Somewhere, I cannot imagine the place, if chanced
upon a leaf, and played with it, as a toy. The wind dangled this talisman in front of my face,
enveloping me, holding me. Still the Oak leaf dangled there, by magic known to no man,
only the wind, and I felt her cool, soft breath upon my neck. The wind left, with promises to
return, and dropped the leaf, fluttering. I looked down and was surprised to see that I
clutched it desperately to my breast. When I looked at the leaf, I smiled in the dim, because
I knew her.
Copyright ©1995 J.W.McNichol
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