On my way out the door for an early walk I glanced back and saw this site.  My own dining room in the morning sun.  I see this room daily.  I dust the room that seldom gets used now that there are only two in the house. I often talk about getting rid of the antique furniture and turn it into a den. I gripe about the neighbor’s trees leaning on my fence and shading my grass so it doesn’t grow as it should. But this morning I stared at the way the light filtered through the trees and across the dusty table—and I saw beauty.

I took a photography course once and the instructor said, “Photography is the capturing of light.” I loved that phrase and remembered it.  Morning sun is the best.  It is brilliant and soft at the same time. Early morning light is still cool in the Oklahoma August summer though the rays can be blinding.  But through the trees that morning they produced lacy shadows that fell across the room in patterns.

“We’re all broken, that’s how the light gets in” has been attributed to Ernest Hemmingway. I often heard it as, “We’re all cracked, that’s how the light gets in,” but one way or another, we’re all damaged in some way or another—lacy and not smooth.  And that is what it takes to make us all unique. 

I find writing to be sometimes glaringly bright and other times filtered through lacy patterns.  As I make my way through a new novel, I plow through light both bright and dull, but somehow the light gets through.  Lacy patterns are still light, and they are beautiful and unique in their own way.  Shadow is not the absence of light, but the designing of it.

In your writing do you have periods of light and dark and do they show you the way—or make it impossible? 

What are you reading/writing this week?