this was not death

photo: Chad Urso McDaniel 2016

Light shone all around, glowing, catching whatever it could. To most the light looked yellow, but in truth it was a pale green, filtered through layers and stories of leaves, branches, particles of floating mosses. Its quality was soft and delicate like the forest it fell through. It was easy to understand the misreading of its color.

Blue was the expected color. Blue, grey, brown, various shades of white were the colors everyone had come to expect after so many cold months of longing. So long that the blue, which had permeated everywhere, was assumed to be the non-color of everything, to the point that it seemed to barely exist at all.

So on the strange and foreign afternoon when this warm new light burst forward in a pale green explosion, most eyes saw nothing but dazzling, luminous yellow.

The not-yellow yellow seemed at first to exist everywhere at once, like a sudden decree. For eyes tuned to the blue and grey softness, the brightness came at them like a loud assault to the senses. And in fact the light did bring with it an awakening of many senses, whether one was ready for them or not. Besides its color, it brought a tangible heat to everything. Not that the temperature had actually changed, but the presence of the light created on everything it touched a soft and miracle warming from within. Every surface reacted in its own way. Some, frightened by the heat and strangeness, scurried and curled away to the comfort of darker quarters, where at least they could watch the unfolding newness on their own terms, carefully mitigating the effects on eyes, pores, cells. Perhaps one might consider reaching towards this strange yellow all-ness in the future, but certainly not today. One needed to get used to the idea in one’s own way.

A few would never move directly towards this loud and ostentatious spectacle, but all the same would find themselves comforted beneath layers of soft earth, growth, or shadow, by a muffled and pleasantly growing warmth. Thus in their own way would they turn towards this new and foreign visitor.

But not all in the forest found the new light unwelcome. Most, in fact, discovered somewhere within their cellular makeup an ancient and forgotten intuition, recalling them in various states of awareness to their purpose, or to a forgotten stage they now knew they had been preparing for all along.

In the older denizens, this calling was a clear and familiar reawakening, one that most in their slumber had forgotten for a while, but now remembered suddenly with an “Ah! Of course!” Slowly they began shaking out the dusty corners, waking up each mitochondria  in turn to begin anew its cycle of growth. As each reawoke, pulses were sent throughout the forest floor, past xylem and phloem, cell to cell, network to network, telegraphing even to those still sleeping out of sight of the new & old visitor that change was on it’s way: get ready.

The newer residents, hearing the chatter of the old ones, and excitedly turning this way and that to get a glimpse of this vivid new character tried to make sense of the murmurings, to understand: what did it mean for them? For most, though they could not grasp it all completely, they found themselves reassured at least that this was not death, or even a brand-new sort of newness, but was some sort of ordinary upheaval; natural, even unremarkable in its lack of similarity to anything they had experienced before.

Even the rebellious ones, the new and brash inclined to disbelieve that the old, rigid, decaying, immobile ones knew anything applicable to their purposes, felt all the same a strange and persistent knowing awakening somewhere within their cells agreeing despite themselves that yes, this strange metamorphosis was neither some newly discovered revolution, nor was it a terrible threat to be feared. Even the ones resistant by their natures to heed these internal stirrings, even they felt within them an inescapable natural force moving them forward towards transformation, in tune to an ancient rhythm they were powerless to avoid.