The first luminous thing...

L.Pachter 5.14.12

...on the first day of a year of luminous things. There is a silvery rain falling like needles out of the gray sky today, turning the whole outdoors green and glorious and dripping, making the whole day dreamy and drowsy. This glorious dreamy day is my birthday, and I'm at home with Josh and Tessa, at home and cozy with nothing that has to be done except noticing, and recording, this first luminous thing.


A week or so before this day, my husband Josh said to me—in an offhand and bemused and affectionately exasperated sort of way—that he'd noticed I wasn't happy unless I had something bad to think about. I've thought about that since, and what a dreadful pall it must cast over my world, my holding those bad thoughts so close.


I must practice thinking about good things, I told myself. No, not just good things, but luminous things.  "Lucid, radiant, resplendent, brilliant," the thesaurus adds. "The quality of being full of light." One luminous thing each day. Three hundred and sixty five luminous things from this birthday to next.


I woke to the rain this morning, and rain has fallen all day, steady and persistent. There's been no sight of the sun, yet this glittering rain has somehow lit up the trees and grass and bushes and flowers, all the green growing things, lit them up until the gray afternoon is overfull of a weedy glow, a sort of dampish and radiant St Elmo's fire. It seems to rise from the ground and spread into the falling rain, pulsing under the dark, looming branches of trees. It's held steady all day, this glow and this rain--there is no wind, not much sound, just the closeness of the luminous afternoon wearing on.


The first luminous thing: this day itself, my birthday green and glorious, lit from within.