Verbs of Light
You’re either writing the script, or you’re being written.
We began from nothing. Nothing we can point to is our source. If matter existed before the Big Bang, we don’t know what it was, can’t precisely name it, can’t confidently crystalize its nature.
There was nothing, and then there was something. We call it Hydrogen. It wasn’t solitary long. From its uniqueness, Hydrogen yielded Helium and together they initiated all kinds of mischief. Dust, photons, suns, planets, galaxies. Blades of grass, flowing streams, us.
All from Hydrogen and Helium. Which came from nothing.
What turns nothing into something? Action.
What transforms something into something else — something more? Action.
What makes a heart race, your mind evolve, our love bloom, my grief endure?
Verbs.
A sentence without verbs, isn’t. A sentence composed exclusively with verbs can be. Go! Wait. Breathe. Rise. So irresistibly commanding. A life without verbs can’t exist.
You’re either writing the script, or you’re being written by external forces to whom you’ve abdicated. Either way, action — a path taken or averted, a ‘yes’ spoken or ‘no’ declared — the verb you choose is the burning core of everything you experience.
The sun is like a frenetic particle, hovering, baffled and besotted by you.
This world, the afterlife, and everything else is a dew on lips longing for your ocean.
~from Fifty Poems of Attar translated by Kenneth Avery and Ali Alizadeh
The day’s bleak and the house, empty. Crutches lean against the wall while my propped leg both aches and fears to move. Dirty dishes ferment in the sink. Not much worth eating in the fridge. No company coming by anytime soon. I’m sitting at my table staring at the red cover of a book of poems that has reliably inspired me, with no desire to open it.
Breath by breath, I’m dismayed and dreary. Quicksand fills in the vortex of my indecision. The harder you struggle against available resources, the deeper into darkness you descend. A craving, subtle yet nagging, spurs me to give in to the appetite of my soul.
What I want is light. A reason to smile, something to look forward to, a way through the bottomless pit of this moment to the inverted, illuminated peak grazing sky on the other side of my aloneness.
Uncap the ballpoint pen.
Touch the blank page. Feed the craving worthy vowels and consonants. I write the word: LIGHT.
Now what? On its own, with no impetus or instruction, the word is nothing more than inky matter. Pointless.
I write DANCES. Light dances.
I want to be dancing.
Before the injury, dancing was my way through just about anything. Whenever I felt too weary to talk myself out of a grim mood, I turned up the volume in my living room or went out with friends and danced. When I felt elated, when I was confounded, when I felt lonely, when I felt loved or neglected — in all of these varied states, I danced.
On crutches I can’t do that. But light can. When I think it, I feel it. The light in me is moving.
What else does light do? It shines. (Yeah. Okay, sure.) Right now I need something stronger than a glimmer of hope. So light pulses. It travels —wicked fast. It penetrates and reveals.
Verbs start surging. With each new action I jot down, I get high on discovery, solving questions previously unknown with answers that are infinite. The list builds momentum as the verbs develop muscle.
Light beckons, seduces, leads. It interrogates and entices — sometimes falsely.
Across the universe, it travels unbeholden, weightlessly turning on all matter in its path, sparkling clues in its wake for those who lovingly look back.
“Light, Amie, can be blinding when it first comes on. Lasers can be deadly, even when streaming from benevolence. We need perspective. We need it to seem wiser than us, tested and tempered by time.” ~from THE LOOK
Where do transformative actions come from? From the Hydrogen that is me. From my mind. From nothing. I am making these verbs up. They refract within me as I name and claim them.
When light dances, I dance. When light reveals, I show up.
If light blinds, I am lacking vision in the glare of misguided intensity. Realizing this, I begin to see.
I can be blinding — brilliant — luminous and focused. I can let loose, elevate potential, become the “c” in Einstein’s equation and accelerate forward, reframing my identity at 300,000 kilometers per second.
And I am in no particular hurry to get to the end of my beginning.
Thank you for kicking of the first week of a brand new month with these “promptastic” prompts, Diana C. :
I’m so glad you found “Verbs of Light” today. If you’re up for more, try this:
