Beside
this big old bed is a paper lamp. It is a column of orange light whispering to
someone I can’t see as I sit on the edge of the bed and wait for my thoughts to
stop. I know something I cannot say, can’t even begin to articulate, and the
orange light holds that knowledge in its secret supernatural voice like clear
water in a metal bowl. The story of light has been trying to let me know
something in my dreams. I have been resistant to it, like everyone else before
me. But there is no denying the reality of its narrative, its power, its tricky
strength, its trajectory of claiming. Filaments of orange light peer through
little holes in the paper lamp’s cylindrical body and I think of a column of
fire, a tongue of flame dancing and insistent. Something burning but stable and
unchanging. When will I know what to do? When will the silent fire decide to
speak my name? I sigh and slide between the cool white cotton of the bedsheets.
The lamp’s glass bulb flickers like a candle, goes out for a second, then
reappears, tinged with a purple undercurrent that is impossible to identify
with my eyes but is somehow undeniably present nonetheless. I sit up and listen
for the wind, for the way the branches of the shedding red oaks sound against
the glass of the big windows that open onto the forest. A shower of acorns
pelts the tin roof and the lamp gutters like a torch and goes out. Breathless
but not exactly fearful, I close my eyes to hear what the fire has to say,
adding a layer of chosen darkness to the hologram of orange and purple that
inhabits the new dark of the air around me.
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