Light

Light: (noun) the natural agent that stimulates sight and makes things visible; understanding of a problem or mystery; enlightenment; a device that makes something start burning, as a match, lighter, or flame; a window or opening in a wall to let light in.

Visible light is electromagnetic radiation whose wavelength falls within the range to which the human retina responds, i.e., between about 390 nm (violet light) and 740 nm (red). White light consists of a roughly equal mixture of all visible wavelengths, which can be separated to yield the colors of the spectrum, as was first demonstrated conclusively by Newton. In the 20th century it has become apparent that light consists of energy quanta called photons that behave partly like waves and partly like particles. The velocity of light in a vacuum is 299,792 km per second.

http://oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/light?q=Light
_____________________________

Last night the synchronistic world spun me again.  I'd decided early on in the week that I wanted to write on light for this week's blog, but despite knowing that clearly, when I sat down to do the writing nothing came...at all. 

I found a photograph on Etsy this week I'm holding in my cart (I am an Etsy.com dork-and-a-half).  I'm rather attached to it, so much so that I started looking for other ways I might incorporate the elements of that image into my daily life. The photograph shows a bright blue sky and a bird flying through the flowering branches of a cherry blossom.  For those of you who've had the chance to read my piece in The Survivor's Review (http://www.survivorsreview.org/features.php?vol=14&art=202), you might recognize that this picture sounds reminiscent of the skylights above the chairs in the chemotherapy wing.  In that piece, light plays a large part. In that experience, being and remaining present played the largest part.

So how, you ask, did the synchronistic world spin? Just as I was getting ready for bed last night, my sister-in-law posted a picture of an art project she thought I might enjoy (because she, like so many others, knows I'm also an art project dork-and-a-half)...and that project involves creating paint flowers very much like cherry blossoms using the 'blooms' on the underside of soda bottles.

Take this a step further: One of my goals for month two as I seek an organic, yet thoughtful, place of health, wellness, acceptance, and love, is to begin working again in the room I'm converting to my studio space. This space, one where I'd planned color set off by calm, sits with a single coat of paint and has been this way for months. I've been stuck, unable to move forward and complete this room of my own (that 'other' Virginia was correct in the need for us all to have such a space). When the final coat of paint goes on, and dries, I planned to paint a tree reaching from floor, and then onto, the ceiling.  Perhaps now, I need to let enough light in so that cherry blossoms bloom on the branches. Perhaps continuing in the room is contingent on allowing myself to swim within the present.

When I'd lay my head back mid-chemo treatment, drug A, B, V, or D moving through my system, and look up to, and then through, the cherry blossom skylights, I went back and forward in time, yet managed to stay connected to that present for a number of reasons (not the least of which was because I was connected to an IV, hung from the IV tree, the roots of which carried medicine, hydration, and steroids to the sore port in my chest). Uncertainty in a threatened life, like uncertainty when creating art, leaves you with 'your feet firmly planted in mid-air.'  The air there is full of light pushing its way through,  provided you sit patiently watching for, and believe in, the possibility it will come.

My bedroom window is open today, the potential of a new season being heartedly chirped by a pair of cardinals. I woke to stunning light. This week I will try to believe that light can stay and that I, like the light, deserve to shine visibly. 

P.S. I might also work in my room.

P.P.S. I might also buy the photo from Etsy ;)