The sound of light.

I saw and so I heard.

I saw to hear and because I heard, I saw.

They say all you have to do is listen. They say all you have to do is listen, and you’ll hear it.

I always wondered what “it” sounded like; music? A still small voice perhaps? Thunderous claps of reality?

All I could tell is it sounded. It was a sound. I reasoned all I needed to do to hear it, was listen. I had never been so wrong.

You heard by seeing. You heard with your eyes. Your ears had nothing to do with it.

 

“They” described “it” as one would I reckon- a brilliant understanding derived from a secret mystery explained. It was more of a dialectic and less of a conversation and more circular than linear. It was the past, the present and the future envisaged in, before and after every single statement of explanation. The understanding came from trying not to, and antithetically so. You saw the pages, paragraphs, sentences and letters after you understood the story, and only after.

After a while, I forgot this process. I forgot because I grew up. Grownups know nothing. The more they learn, the less they know. In an utter misconstruction of everything, I started asking that the pages speak. I arrogantly sought the right to hear, as my conscience shook it head again and again in reprimand. I had failed to perceive it. All I knew is, I could. I had to. Surely.

I combed each page again and again, with every word and sentence changing form immediately my eyes moved from them. I was in a nonsensical wonderland. The red queen howled but I wasn’t awakened from the allure of my stupor. I knew myself to be Alice, but I had forgotten who Alice really was.With that I was dismissed from the unbirthday celebrations. I failed to find Mr. Rabbit and his watch. They were nowhere within me and rightly so, for they ran from the internal dissension that was to follow.

First, everything became too loud, too demanding, too painful and too real. I was commanded to feel and so I did. I felt everything. I felt the war begin. I felt the swing of the sword and its resounding efficacity, with the dying cry of its next victim.  I was at war within myself. I had mutinied my own ship.

My mind wringed itself dry of all the blood it was drowned in. it gurgled and spat, hating the salty sweet taste; but my heart in pain and anger gushed and gushed, and burst, perforated and seeping. Its walls turned metallic to those of a labyrinth. The smell of the sweating alloy haunted me each day I wandered those echoing halls, for sign of life. I feared I would be imprisoned within myself. My heart was dead, and my mind was bitter and cruel now.

So, I started crying and hoped I would drown in the peaceful deep of my tears. As I cried, I saw a little door under which my tears escaped. I wondered. Curious and curioser it seemed to be. As I reached out for its handle, my mind laughed in mockery. It was curious as well and diabolically desperate to realize another failed adventure and dream within myself. It gloried in the office it lorded over me. It was the captor, and I was me.

In such despair, I sung. I screamed. I ran. I jumped. My breath left my mouth misty and white, but rang out into the landscape and plains of my inner city, turning all the metal into fertile soil. There was no going back. Let fate be fate. Let God be God and every other man accursed. He will have mercy on whom he will and compassion on them that he will. And then I said, Amen.

I pressed down on the handle, and then I heard it. I heard it with my eyes; the eyes of my heart heard the sound of light, the light of life. With each phrase and cadence, in articulation it shone brighter. My heart held its eyes and I laughed in blissful joy! No one, would tell me I hadn’t heard. Not even myself. It rang out through everything, in my hopes, dreams and aspirations. My longings, contentment and peace. But it was loudest in my pain.

It was a megaphone in my pain, that I sing along to. I will be held fast.

And from that fullness, I have received grace upon grace.

One day, I tell you, I saw the sound of light.