lights

I can't believe it's been 9 days since my last post. As the holidays approach my depression has been clawing at me a bit more than usual...but I can't give up my writing again. This is what I love the most...using words to express thoughts and emotions and hopefully to connect with you, the reader...to bring you some of my experience, to share my soul as much as these words will allow. Anyway, please accept my apology for not writing these last 9 days. I promise to try to do better.

So I saw this thing from ABC Los Angeles today...it was an aerial shot of the holiday traffic. There was one huge band of red dots (brake lights) and one huge band of white lights (headlights). Both bands looked to be about eight lanes wide...I'm not sure which highway it was, as I'm not familiar at all with the City of the Angels. But what struck me was the fact that each of those tiny lights represented at least one life, and probably more, since many of the cars I'm sure held more than one human being (and probably not a few animals as well). As an empath, I had a sort of epiphany while watching these bands of light.

I realized that each red or white dot represented at least one human life. There were literally thousands of cars in my view, and as the helicopter panned out further and further, the bands of dots stretched for miles. I was overcome by the fact that each dot had a story. Each dot represents a struggle of some kind, a joy, a conflict, perhaps someone falling in love. Each dot containing the hopes and dreams of at least one human being. All those lives. It just overwhelmed me...and I'm still overwhelmed just thinking about it.

I feel like I'm not conveying the enormity of what I felt/saw, so I will now borrow from an old friend, Kurt Vonnegut. In his masterpiece "Breakfast Of Champions" (given to me at 13 to read by my brother Jim, and one of the finest things I ever received from him), Vonnegut introduces us to the Modern Artist Rabo Karabekian. The artist has come under fire at a display of his work -- a canvas with one lone strip of paint (I don't remember the color, alas) on an otherwise blank canvas. Rising courageously and righteously, Karabekian explains his work. He tells the assembled crowd of art connoisseurs that the band on his canvas represents the sum of the life force of a single being. Were there two people, there would be two bands, and so on.

I recall what Karabekian described...that each soul was an "unwavering band of light". I find that such an elegant description of the force that animates us all. Call it the Force, call it a spirit, call it a soul...every living being is at base an unwavering band of light. I recalled Vonnegut's words as I stared at the rows upon rows of light, red and white, and the way they morphed together into bands of red and white light as the chopper rose and rose. All those stories. All those souls. All those unwavering bands of light.

The way the bands solidified gave me hope, for just a moment, that perhaps one day we can harness ourselves one to another to create those awesome bands of light. Imagine what peace we could wield with our souls blended together in this way. The hippie in me (still very much alive) thought of the John Lennon song "Imagine"..."Imagine all the people living life in peace". With that, I find myself running out of words, so I will conclude. I've added a link to the YouTube of this song...my hope for you all, friends, is peace on this Thanksgiving day, and in your lives in general. May your bands of light be forever unwavering and true.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVg2EJvvlF8