I find myself inexorably drawn to Light in it's myriad forms. On a deceptively mundane level, I can't help but collect flashlights. I have flashlights as varied as a medium sized utility fills your hand like a small piece of firewood flashlight, to tiny keychain light that requires only one tiny battery, to a spotlight on a compressor contraption that charges off the wall. I can put on my hat with the built-in LED's in the brim to search for one of the many free Harbor Freight 9 LED hand-sized flashlights I've collected. Somewhere I have a couple Maglights I used to carry on my belt with the included sheath that always falls apart after a year (sad, I know). Yesterday I was given a gift of a sleek looking black flashlight with a belt clip built in, which I adore.
I don't know if it's the light itself that attracts me, or the things it allows to happen. Everything you see is Light. Each color you see is a different vibrating, quivering portion of a band of light. Pigments simply capture that portion, or spit it back at you. Growing up in my dad's Vacuum Deposition Lab, where he and his partners pioneered Dichroic Glass, I thought it was such a perfect melding of science and magic to be able to separate the light spectrum like that, and to actually see the colors that light is made up of. Did you know that in the glare of a full spectrum light bulb you may have screwed into your fan-light is pure encompassing Cyan? Or a Gold that will stop your heart? Or a Magenta that can enchant you? Or any other color you could imagine because they are all wavelengths vibrating at different speeds hidden in that ray of light?
On a philosophical level,possibly a psychological one(if they are in fact two different things) you could say that I crave the ability to shed light on a subject. I want to have within my reach the light required to cause things to take their shape. Without light everything is just lumps in the dark. Light breeds understanding. (it goes without saying that darkness is equally important to the whole in ways I'm sure you've ruminated about about, and which we won't go into in this discussion of light, as that's a whole other subject we could talk about at length...) When I have my flashlight on my belt, no corner I encounter will remain dark and unknown to me.
At this particular time of the year, my thoughts run to the symbology of having light available in the darkest portion of the cycle of the seasons. It is not only a tool, but an assurance that Light exists, and a quietly whispered promise of the Sun's return...
