When I woke up this morning, White Tail, the yellow cat with the white tail, was on the night stand monitoring my movements, calibrating. Is he going to get up and feed us now? Dawn had not yet arrived, we were still in the realm of darkness but I could see his shape and infer his presence. He had spent the night somewhere on my bed, curled in among the sheets. When I sat up, he purred. When I picked up the phone, it lit up. The room became softly illuminated. I had created light. I imagined White Tail perceiving me as some kind of a light maker, some kind of a magician in his cat-brained perception of things. Cats don’t know about electricity but they do know that I had made the darkness go away and brought the light.
I got up and went into the bathroom, light appeared as I made some tinkling sounds. I moved to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator door, light emerged. Soon the whole kitchen was full of light and it was time for breakfast. White Tail jumped down, ran into the dining room, stationed himself by the cat bowl and purred. There was enough light spilling out from the kitchen that I didn’t need to make more light. Except for the back porch, I made light there so I could feed Bob, the feral one and the fish. I’m the light maker.
In the book I’m reading, ‘Mutant Messenger Down Under’ by Marlo Morgan. people change their assigned birth name whenever they want to. At any point in time if they feel they have entered a new phase they just go before the tribe and say . . .
“Hi, I’m Great Wonder, you all know me as Great Wonder but now I am changing my name to Hits the Rock.”
“Hi Hits the Rock.”, the tribe responds in unison. And so it is, they’re Hits the Rock.
We kinda do that with our titles and accolades, “Oh this is Suzi, she won the Oppenheimer Award for best pianist in Sweden.” “Dr. So and so, hello.” “Bill Rutherford, I’m an attorney. How are you?” But we don’t really change our names just because we feel like it, because we feel like we’re a different person today and have a different perspective and want to be recognized a different way. There’s alot of legal baggage involved in changing your name. Documents and forms and formal proceedings and legal fees. The FBI might like to know about it.
In her book, Marlo Morgan, goes on a walkabout thru the Australian desert with an Aboriginal tribe wearing no shoes and learns the secrets of their culture. Well some of them anyway. The ones they want to share with her and the ones she is able to understand.
She had been invited to receive an award by this particular tribe who heard of her work with Aboriginal youth and as the story begins, her ‘chauffeur’ picks her up in front of her hotel as arranged but then drives out into the desert. No air conditioned venue, no ceremony and no award luncheon seem to be forthcoming, instead there’s a rendezvous with a band of Aborigines who summarily take her for a walkabout in the desert. Four months later they return to the edge of civilization, drop her off and disappear. Great book.
Anyways I’ve changed my name to Light Maker, atleast as far as the cats are concerned. I can make light, “Hi, I’m Light Maker, you used to know me as Rohn”. Of course cats don’t use names so it’s of limited usefulness but I think it’s good practice and besides that’s what I can do really well. I make light wherever I go, small brightly colored flashlights are stashed at various places all over the house just for that purpose, in case I have to dispel the darkness.
Of course there are other light makers too: the stars in the sky, the cars driving by before dawn, but I would like to think that I am the main one atleast for White Tail, I would like to think that I appear as some sort of a god with supernatural powers, if cats have gods. I mean I dunno.
Here’s another Light Maker: d. ellis phelps. A friend of mine who does amazing paintings. Vibrant, luminous, explosive, joyous. I asked her if she was underwater when she painted this and she said “inside the primordial ooze: chit ganna, what makes the worlds…” I don’t know what chit ganna is but what cha gonna do?.
“Let there be light.” said God at the beginning of time. ‘And there was light.’ That was solid, I mean that wasn’t solid, that was before anything that was solid was created but that was awesome. Way to go, God! Your got it going on. Without light you can’t see anything. Not the birds and the bees, not the Garden of Eden, not the firmament, not the waters below or the waters above.
In 1945 scientists at the Los Almos Laboratory in New Mexico detonated the first atomic bomb. They were light makers. A blinding flash filled the sky and created a shock wave that knocked people down 10 miles away The mountains rumbled with thunder.
“It was like being at the bottom of an ocean of light. We were bathed in it from all directions”, recalls Joan Hinton one of the physicists who witnessed the blast. “The light withdrew into the bomb as if the bomb sucked it up. Then it turned purple and blue and went up and up and up.” She was 25 miles away hiding on a hill.
“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” said Oppenheimer afterwards as if he had stumbled on a secret curse instead of intentionally building a bomb with the power of 2,000 tons of TNT and then blowing it up. All kinds of light makers.
There are bioluminescent algae floating around in the ocean flashing their blue lights like some kind of semaphore. I’ve seen them.
“Where does the light go?” is a question your child might ask when you’re turning off the light and preparing to leave their room. “Go to sleep child. It goes back to itself” you might say without thinking much about it.
There’s the self-effulgent light talked about in the Vedas. Light you can see with your eyes closed.
Angels are creatures of light, light bearers.
Everyone carries some light inside of them.
Everyone makes light.
We’re all light makers.
Music for the podcast: Aqua Venue from the album ‘After the Turn a Storm’ by Hello Meteor. Buy it on Bandcamp.
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