Make Room for the Light
Bird Cloud, Lyonel Feininger, 1926, Busch-Reisinger Museum
Make room for the light. This has been bouncing about inside my head for the last few days. At first, when the thought pushed its way into the constant stream of to-do’s and what if’s, I was annoyed. “Yeah, sure. Sooo easy,” is what I immediately responded. But the phrase wouldn’t go away. Make room for the light. Make room for the light. And there is light that has been happening: the milestone of an 18th birthday, art exhibits, theater productions and restaurant research with friends, college acceptance letters, a city standing up for its citizens. But amidst it all, the nonstop scream of chaos and panic, like a fire alarm you can’t turn off, rages on. “What do you mean, make room for the light?” I found myself saying to the voice in my head (don’t act like you don’t have one or two of them in you as well). “I’m blowing up balloons! I’m buying tickets to performances! See? Look at how much freaking fun we are having!”
Make room for the light. Friday, I shuddered through the 16 degree windchill to take the T back home after a lovely wander about the Harvard Art Museums with an old high school friend. One, two, then three people with homemade protest signs warning about the dangers of ignoring science passed me. Faces along the platform stared down at their phones, their brows deeply creased, their eyes sad. When I entered the mostly empty car, I sat across from a young gentleman. He was seated holding a Goodwill bag filled with a mix of unidentifiable items. His clothes were casual and scruffy, but there was definitely thought put into their selection and his sneakers were worn yet decent. As I sat down across from him, he smiled wide.
“Hello! It is so good to see you!" he said to me.
If you aren’t a regular blog reader, you should know that this happens to me a lot. Like all the time. And it is never a mistake or minor encounter. I have come to understand that I’m not talking to JUST the stranger that has approached me as if we know one another. I am having a conversation with Divinity itself. And while this is true of every person we interact with, these exchanges remove the pretense of normalcy and ring the awareness bell: “Hey! Pay attention! There’s a message here!”
Immediately I felt my entire body relax. I smiled back and sat at the edge of my seat, eager to see where this was going to go. “Hello,” I said. “It is great to see you too.”
“My day is so much better now that you are here.”
“Mine too,” I said.
He then proceeded to recite a poem about the two of us riding the train together. Glancing at the few others on the train, they were as moved as the bench seating, which saddened but didn’t surprise me. At the end of his poem, I applauded and he gave me a huge toothy grin.
“Thank you for clapping for me.”
“That was wonderful! Do you write and recite poetry all the time?”
“Well,” he said. “I’m actually half mentally retarded. The other half of me sees miracles in life. They are all around. So I use poetry to navigate the world.”
As he spoke, the air around me seemed to make my skin tingle. I leaned towards him not wanting to miss a single syllable to the squealing of the train’s wheels on the track.
“Sometimes,” he said. “When I have trouble with someone and I can’t understand what is happening, I’ll say a poem and it helps me.”
Awe and gratitude flooded my tired bones. In that moment, I felt as if I was vibrating and I’m sure I was grinning like a 5 year old who’d eaten a stolen cupcake.
“Thank you,” I said. “You are quite amazing.”
“No YOU are amazing,” he shouted back at me. We then spent a minute or two shouting “you are amazing!” “No you are!”, pointing at each other and laughing. As the train rounded the bend into my stop, he pulled a long box from his bag and began to say something about a Harry Potter wand. I stood to let him know that I needed to leave and I was having trouble as the train screeched into the station hearing exactly what he was saying. He said something about the Michael that played Dumbledore, but the train doors were opening.
“Goodbye,” I said. “Thank you so much. Meeting you has been amazing.” He look confused, but waved to me, and I left.
Make room for the light. I think I understand now. There are about six firehoses blasting us with murky, stagnant, fetid energy, and every morning when we wake up, another hose has been added. Because of this, we are desperately trying to catch our breath, find our way to something calm, even if we have to force it in by shoehorning hours of Great British Bakeoff into our brains. But it isn’t that the light isn’t there. It is. And it’s looking for us. Much like floating in water, the way to access the light all around is just to be and relax into it. We are working so hard, straining and clenching to keep the stench at bay and simultaneously force fun into our days, that we aren’t able to access what is all around. The warmth of sun on our faces. The songs of birds returning. Smiling with strangers. Poetry and light are oxygen. Breathe in for four, hold for six, out for eight. Stand still. Feel the ground beneath your feet. Make room for the light.
