Some of us are old souls; we live with the caution of the ancients. We’ve a reverence for ritual and a soft spot for tradition. Had we robes of some order we would wear them; had we old Latin chants, they would herald our coming. Hum with me your dirges, your requiems; perform with me your sacraments. Ecstatic with the choir we lead the congregation in the harmonies of the hymns of time and space; religiously we practice the liturgy of this tiny sphere. The breath of the wind is incense to us, and all the world an altar.
The stars are the candles, of course, but as I lie beneath them they look more like glinting diamonds hung from fishing lines of different lengths. Some closer, some further away, the sparkles above me look like the lines could be cut and they’d rain down on me, little jewels bouncing off of my skin and settling in the dips of my body. The shallow curve where my hip meets my stomach as I lie on my back, the well of my navel, the crease of my eyelids, the meeting of my lips, the palms of my hands, the hollow just beneath my throat; all full and crusted with the diamonds that broke their strings. Or maybe God cut them, because He knows I like sparkly things.
Occasionally I see one of the Perseids fall horizontally across the sky, but so far none have fallen on me. I am quiet; I listen for them, though I know I won’t hear a thing. If I did, though, I imagine they would sound like a single string of a violin being played with tenebrous vibrato. I wish it would really make those sounds. I wish nature made music. But I guess God meant music to be special for us. Nothing in nature by itself makes true music. You could say the wind in the trees, the rustle of the grass or a chorus of crickets, but none of those provide the melodies and harmonies that move the soul in the same way that our music does. Nature doesn’t really make music. Only we do. It is not a mimic, like most man-made things. It is not a copy of something that was already there. God put the music in us special, at least it seems so to me. And it is as beautiful in its own way as the silent stars.
I once painted stars. My professor told me to surround them with hints of color so that they came to life; so that they vibrated from the canvass. He told me never to paint them pure white, because pure white is flat. It doesn’t invite the eye to go deeper the way colors do, the way even a quality black does. God must have known that when He was making the stars, because if you look closely, the edges of some are haloed with reds and greens. And He made them different distances from the earth, giving depth to the sky. Artists are always looking for depth; always looking for an invitation to explore another dimension.
I think it’s the old in their souls searching for the ingredients of God. Little do they know they are all around them, for they are standing in the chapel that is the entire universe.
I'd tell them, you know, if they wanted to know. I'd tell them all sorts of things.
I just wrote a poem about the sky, stars, and painting as well. Must be on the same wave length. We old souls do that.
ReplyDeleteThis was great, as usual!