Points of Light, I'm well aware that I'm a point of light, I haven't a choice. As a point of light, I strive to share with all of you the same thing I'm continuously in search of - beauty. I mean, in my "famous" blog you always hear me mention, I once wrote this, "I've heard some people say they don't care for sap because sap doesn't occur in real life, at least not enough to matter. Real-life is hard and art should reflect that hardness, I've heard some people suggest. Then there's me and I've heard from the time I was a child how you have TO TAKE TIME to STOP and smell the roses. I mean, of course, the roses are never going to bring their smells to you, but you can make a quest to find them, and in finding them, you can then enjoy their fragrance. I guess I've intuitively known this from an early age and have always made the effort to employ it, especially when I've wanted to express a little art in writing something. Let's take a little look-see *(then I offered up some things that I had written) *...
-- Anyway, whenever I was in school and we had that time when we could draw pictures with crayons, I mostly drew pictures of being outside and I would never forget to draw the grass green, the sky blue, the clouds puffy and white, but especially the sun big, bright and yellow with those warm yellow rays coming off it. My April, my yellow sun.
-- First, and of course this has to be true, he shares with his family and friends that he is a thinker who thinks. He does this by writing in a ridiculous style and by choosing words to make his reader think. In doing this, he knows the readers who think the deepest will see beyond his words, finding a feeling, a part of himself that if they chose, will stay with them for a while. Second, he hopes with his words he’s painted a picture, a beautiful tapestry, made by him, a present for them, his family and friends he loves so much and longs to touch, deeply touch. Thus, Tod writes.
-- “You and me” are the three most precious words in the world, yes? Holding hands as we lie in our double hammock we listen to the gentle rain as it serenely taps on the tin roof, softening the moment, making it seem like we’re living in a beautiful, romantic novel.
-- You’ve been here so long, soothing my brow, kissing my cheek, running your fingers through my hair, singing your song that brings along mollifying grace and calm. On the way, my tongue would never burn dry for you bringing me in a cup the cool of the nearby spring, nor did water barely begin to drop from your eye that I didn’t reach out, wipe it away and bring you strongly to my chest to have and hold you in my arms.
-- For a second he found himself wanting to stay here, he wanted the second point to stay also because he felt, and in the feeling he saw her to be as bright as the sun and as multifaceted as the best cut flawless diamond all in one package making epic colors of light, violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, gold, and red dance, pop, and zip in ways that brought glorious ecstasy into his mind and plunged the deepest depths of his heart."
In my continuous striving to find beauty, one of the ways I do this is to write. Writing affords me all the wealth I need to find all the beauty my heart desires. This desire of mine, well it's both unquenchable and unyielding, but I don't find that desire to be a harsh taskmaster. Instead, that desire is a tender lover driving me to do and to be better.
So as for having no choice but to be a point of light, as per Einstein, light always being a constant, the only choice left to me is in what colors I allow family, friends, and any strangers who see me in public or reads my blog see emanate from me. My choice is to give anyone I just mentioned light so bright that its colors are only ever beautiful. I want that for everyone because that is what I want to receive from everyone. Easy, peasy. But....
But I often say life isn't simple nor can it always be simply understood. In that truth, I find David in the DNA of Jesus. I remember the words to a couple of songs -
1. When you reach the part where the heartaches come, the hero would be me. Heroes often fail! And you won't read that book again because the ending's just too hard to take.
2. Men weren't meant to ride, with clouds between their knees.
I'm only a man in a silly red sheet, digging for kryptonite on this one-way street.
Still....
Still, I'll never allow excuses for my light to show you colors that are "dark, dull, drab colors that will only paint pictures that shine discordant vibrations too difficult for you to gaze upon." But you might ask me, "Tod, didn't you just write to us, and you told us this, ""I do have a mean and cruel streak residing within, I suppose we all do."" To that, I can only answer you truthfully, YES! Still, that statement isn't an excuse for me or you to act poorly. It is, as I often do, hyperbolic words written to entertain and provoke deep thinking. That is, "mean and cruel" is anything not nice, or, said another way, it's not light that shares bold, bright, vivid colors that lend themselves to become portraits of beauty - instead it's light that reveals dark, dull, drab colors that will only paint pictures that shine discordant vibrations too difficult to gaze upon. Even with that overly stuffed mouthful, I choose not to mitigate, minimize, or to lessen my responsibility for failing to give my wife Angela Kay Price, the only woman in this world (who's not my flesh and blood) that I love with all my heart, beauty. To her, I say I'm sorry, I failed you, I was wrong.
I talk a lot; I write a lot (I should write more - I sense the eye rolls). In one of my blogs, I wrote this about yet another song...
Light In The Smoke Of A Past Life
Updated: Feb 27
Points Of Light, on November the 20th of 2019, when I heard this song for the first time, I couldn't help but think about a book that could have been written about my own past lived life. That book would tell a tale to its reader about a past I spent in deep emotional pain while I felt surrounded by what I believed was pitch-black darkness.
But I also thought about how I've spent a lifetime writing little stories to find light in the very midst of all that darkness. Then I remembered my post, "Sometimes We Find Beautiful Light In Thoughts", where I wrote this to share with you how "Sometimes it takes looking at what's going on in my life, the thing that seems to be a negative maybe is a negative, bad, wrong, and bothering me, then paint myself a visual picture of that thing while I build a narrative around it, telling it as a story that can go a different, new, and better way." In those words, I want us all to understand that as we find our way through our emotional pain, we can eventually find a place where we can leave all that pain behind. I've always accomplished this by finding a place in my heart where I see even tiny fragments of light and using those lights colors to paint beautiful word paintings so I could find happiness in my life lived. When I've done this, I've found it always helped put a smile on my face.
Points Of Light, this song is suggesting that that book about my past lived life, that I can rip out its pages, page by page, and along with its binding, I can burn it! In doing that, all that past becomes no more than smoke that goes away as if it's being blown away in the wind! As I listened to this song, I heard a story's narrative being written in light with its own colors, telling me its own beautiful story that sort of mimics my life. The thing is, there may have been that book of Tod's past lived life full of pain and darkness, but I've chosen to tear out its pages to burn them along with its binding in a fire, and yeah, I watched as the wind blew away all my life's crap just like it was no more than smoke being blown away in the wind. Now, just like I said, I can write my life's story with a narrative that has a new and better outcome, and Points of Light, I want to strongly suggest you can do the same no matter where you are in your own life lived.
I'm actually doing a poor job at representing my heart to you, that, and how this song is speaking to me as it concerns our blog and each one of us as Points of Light. Perhaps I should let the song speak for itself -
Smoke
by Ben Folds
leaf by leaf and
page by page
throw this book away
and all the sadness
all the rage
throw this book away
rip out the binding and
tear the glue
and all of the grief
we never even knew
we had it
all along
now it's...
smoke
the things
we've written
in it
never really happened
all the things
we've written
in it
never really happened
and all of the people
come and gone
never really lived
and all the people come
have gone
no one
to forgive
smoke
we will
not write a new one
there will
never be a new one
another one
another one
here's an evening
dark with shame
(throw it on the fire)
here's the time
I took the blame
(throw it on the fire)
here is the time
we didn't speak,
it seemed for years and years and
here's the secret
no one will ever know
the reasons for the tears
they are...
smoke
smoke
smoke
we will
not write a new one
there will
never be a new one
another one
another one
where do all
the secrets live?
they travel in the air
you can smell them
when they burn
they travel
those who say
the past is not dead
stop and smell the smoke
you keep saying
the past is not dead, well,
stop and smell the smoke
you keep on saying
the past is not even past, and
you keep saying
we are...
smoke
smoke
smoke
As Always,
Love and Peace,
Tod w/only one d
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