#bent light

[shopliftersofthew0rld]

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[openlifestylecollective-blog]

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[karmasreel]

[customire]

BENT LIGHT

My whole life I have lived by the Highway 41.  I remember wondering as a kid just how many of these cars I heard were actually going to Florida, where the highway somehow ended.  Sometimes, now that I’m older and my comrades like to experiment with negativity, I would be asked, “how could you ever get used to that noise?” or “Don’t those lights bother you?” My parents must’ve had friends like this too; they put up a berm to hide from the sounds and glow just before I started high school.

              While our back property line lays tangent to a bend in the highway, our front yard wraps around our street. I will always call Onwentsia “our street,” despite my longing to tell friends in my youth that my family and I lived on 41¾after all, it was a much larger roadway.

              Just past my house Onwentsia becomes Awahnee. Even though that defining road sign was only a foot outside our lot, our block parties never included anyone across that line.  It seemed normal only because I was scared to ask why we did such a strange thing. It’s obvious that like questions would only inspire even more confusing ones.

              It was one night, though, that changed most of this. Since I got my current room to myself I didn’t have to pretend to sleep while I waited for the cars with their brights to drive down our streets. The drooping Ash and Maple trees in our front yard would filter out patterns of leaves’ shadows against the back wall in my room and I would watch the various patterns slowly move and disappear on the wall.  It was always so sharp-looking.  I never realized it would take just one night during which I was particularly energetic to stay up for something very new.  It was foggy.  Up to and above my second-floor window.  It was thick enough to discourage the usual “me” but like I mentioned, not much could have stopped me this night.  I swung open my window’s blinds and was immediately showered with the warmest yellow light one could imagine.  At my elevation I assumed the only vehicle that’s brights could get so high would be a semi, but there was no painful source to this light. It was just constant.

              Then I remembered the color. It was the same synthetic warmth that made even snow look comforting on a January night.  It was from the highway.  It wasn’t a particularly difficult conclusion to come to of course, but that is like seeing all beauty.  It is pleasantly obvious. There is no doubt that there is intrinsic beauty in travel and the tool that allowed the passing cars to go home or away was limited to no one. That light, as it had shown, would bend and bounce forever, and do so with ease, to show something not yet seen.