The Secret Light

There is a light behind light. It is a secret light. It is not seen with the eye. It is not processed by the right, or the left hemisphere of the brain. It does not register on oscilloscopes in overheated labs in Rochester New York. You cannot be taught to see this light by someone with several degrees from institutions of higher learning. This light is playful and shy and will hide from you if you chase it. If you try to flog it into the most expensive equipment in the world it will just laugh at you and dance away in a cold spring breeze over the prairie. If you become very serious and study everything that is understood by the grand spider priests of science, it will mock you and show up only after you have quit and your camera is back safe in the bag. It can wait for a thousand years. It will watch as we poor humans discuss and network and plan and execute and cajole and push and burn and dodge and reboot. It is not found on old silver plates or Lica’s collecting dust in small Manhattan shops where only private shooters go. Do you know what it is waiting for? I do. It is waiting for a special kind of person. A person that doesn’t see with her eyes. It is waiting for a person that says “I will know you on your own terms, I will know you with the thing that you want to be known by.” The secret light can only be seen with the one thing you will never think to look with. It must be, and will only be seen by the gentle heart of an artist that allows the wisdom of the universe to speak in its own language. A foreign language that is tuned to the frequency of a specific soul. It is a song played infinitely, for all time and when a person hears it she can never again be lost. How can you be lost when you know you are always home, and you always know you are home because you can see the secret light. My friend Lisa could see it. I’m not sure I ever did except maybe through one of her photographs. Old men at counter underneath, looking looking. Ancient grey greens, and a spooky blue of a night street somewhere, haunting the mind madness of a place caught in time. Moving relentlessly moving inside the picture house of images created by a gentle heart. Little toes that cry warm tears, but love never really goes to sleep. Love will be there always, I promise it will. I know for sure because, if a heart can see the secret light then that heart is immediately now and forever everywhere all at once for forever time and beyond. My friend Lisa could see the light always. I watched it dance on her eyes. She saw it dance around her babies shoulder and off her husbands arm. I’m not sure I ever saw it clearly but I watched as Lisa saw it. I watched her listen to the light as it showed her what was good and beautiful in a life, here with us the living, the ones left. Just know this, there is a secret light and it is part of things that are magic and not rooted to a time or place. Not bound by mass or density. Bound only by love and truth. If you ever get lost and find yourself not believing anymore, do yourself a favor. Look at one of Lisa’s pictures but don’t look with jaded sad eyes that have seen too much of a world in pain. Look instead with your heart. Ok I know it’s hard but here try this. Close your eyes and think of things. Think of pictures. Think of pictures of people you love. Think of times when you spirit smiled. Let go now. Let the light the secret light that my friend Lisa could see make a picture for you inside the doorway to the secrets, inside you heart.

Sleep, Sleep, dream, dream

I’ll tell you one more tale; the secret light is inside you too right now. It knows us all, forever and always. Just trust, just this once. Let the light dance with you, inside your heart, just this once

For my friend Lisa

D.R.Schervish

April 19, 2008. Lisa Garner.