Points of Light, 2017 became the first year I believed this man could write a short but sweet and beautiful story worthy of giving to someone as a birthday gift.
Facebook reminded me that Kim, my friend's birthday had arrived. As novel as the ideal was to me, I took to my keyboard and tried to type out something both wonderful and worthy for her. My only desire was that it showed her all the beauty she'd shown me when she'd given me just the right kind of encouragement at just the right time in my very near past. Honestly, I wanted to write to her the most beautiful and special words my heart could find feeling she deserved nothing but the very best I could give.
When I started writing for her, the words didn't seem organic or original. Instead, they seemed still and derivative of everything I'd ever written before by finding myself writing to her something about the beautiful blue sky and the bright golden sun in that sky. That made none of the words deserving of my expectations for Kim's birthday. So, I became frustrated and almost gave up on the hope of writing and giving her anything at all.
But Tod can be stubborn. Before giving up entirely on this gift of writing, I thought about what I knew about Kim, what did I know to be on her heart. That's when her heart's desire touched me. She's long had a deep wish to travel, getting herself out of Evansville. She's talked about going to South America, a very tiny nation-state in Europe, and even South Carolina among other places. When all this came to me, I thought about a story I'd written in 2013 about an abstract thought in my mind which became this tiny story about two simple points that meet by mere chance. One point was stagnant and stubbornly stuck, still in time-space. The other point—a shining, bright beauty full of energy and movement, inspired the first point to get out of himself with his stubbornness and get on with his life, to move through time-space. At first, the first point would be sad if the second point moved on, but he eventually realizes all the light and color the second point would bring to other people, and he wanted them to experience all her beauty, so he serenely acquiesced his desire to her heart's desire. It seemed a metaphor apropos to the moment, so I shared this in place of originality. But it was this entire endeavor with this very outcome I'd look back on when
I write her original gift on her next birthday, and this will be when my meaning and purpose in life is lovingly and so beautifully revealed to me.
This was the story I gifted to her for her birthday in 2017 -
It's funny how life works. Two points in space having only the singularity of time in common. Neither point shall ever meet the other. One point is in need of the second of even a seemingly imperceptible sign that time marches on. In some unimagined way for the first, the second manages in a very spiritual way, to prove to him she had always been here. But the first was impatient. Time was standing still for him. One point, one time ever still. Ever impatient, had he not remembered a point in a different time? Was it just a pleasant dream? The second point never did anything uniquely for the first point, but he saw in her the real meaning of goodness in kinetic energy. And in this proof, he realized how impatience was unnecessary and unreasonable, keeping him static in a dream that never moved. For a second, he found himself wanting to stay here. He also wanted the second point to stay 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. There she was, making epic colors of light—violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, gold, and red—dance, pop, and zip in ways that brought glorious ecstasy to his mind and plunged the deepest depths of his heart. But as the first point was experiencing the complete fullness of this rapture, he began to move, and in his movement, he knew the second point had to move. At first, he was sad, as they would each move on and her space would once again be different than his. Then slowly he came around to understand the beauty she possessed of being like the sun, the diamond, and the wondrous Terpsichore of mesmerizing colors was woven tightly in her DNA; and, as such, so many other points in time and space would see it and be made happy. Finally, due to his newly discovered joy, he moved on. In time-space he moved and never looked back, but the colors would never escape his heart.
As Always,
With Both Great Love and Peace,
Tod w/only one d
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