Ah, the things one learns in life from the presence of -- or
absence of -- light.
I mean, here I was last night, sitting in my house, watching
a classic French film called "La Belle Captive." It's a mystery,
an homage by author/director Alain Robbe-Grillet to the works
of Rene Magritte, and it's heavily laden with imagery. *Not*
symbolism. Magritte didn't deal in symbols, clues to "solve"
the mystery of life. He dealt instead with images, the things
we perceive as archetypes, and which, when pursued, lead us
only deeper into mystery. Magritte was a smart man.
Anyway, I'm watching this film, in a room lit only with
candles (to further deepen the sense of mystery), when I hear
outside my open window the unmistakable sounds of a cheezy
French cabaret band. For a moment it was a mystery. It could
have come from the overly-amped-up sound system of a passing
car, driven by a similarly overly-amped-up teenager with bad
taste in music. But it was too loud. So that "solution" flew
away as quickly as it appeared in my mind, leaving me to
ponder the mystery further. So I did, finding no more success-
ful "solution" to it than the first one.
Finally, too curious to let the clue just pass without know-
ing its "meaning," I pushed the record button on my Tivolike
box and wandered outside. Only a few steps from my door, the
mystery first deepened ("What are all these crowds doing out
on the streets of my sleepy medieval village at 10:50 on a
Friday night?") and then resolved itself into a solution as
I remembered *which* Friday night it was. Le 13 juilliet, the
day before le 14 juilliet, Bastille Day. Aha, said the detec-
tive in me, putting the clues together to find a "solution"
to the mystery -- it's one of those parties that the French
government throws for its people every so often.
I wandered further into the village, to find that the cheezy
French cabaret band was playing live, on a bandstand erected
in front of the Mairie, and that hundreds of people were
standing around listening to them and dancing to the awful
music. This reminded me of the sobering fact that some mys-
teries are better left *as* mysteries, and that the magic that
one perceived in them as long as one *considered* them a
mystery tends to flee the moment one "solves" the mystery.
So I'm standing there by the old 12-century city wall, watch-
ing French girls move rhythmically to the music and French
guys doing the white man's overbite, with all the rhythm of
Americans, and then the current song ends, and the lights
go out.
All of them. Even the street lamps. The medieval village is
suddenly plunged into a darkness it hasn't seen very often
since the invention *of* street lamps. Another mystery.
And then the fireworks start. Aha, says the detective in me,
solving it almost immediately. I stand looking out at the
river and watching les feux d'artifices climb into the sky
and explode for a few moments, thinking back to the past,
and how incredibly mind-boggling and awe-inspiring the sight
of the first fireworks must have been for Europeans when
they first found their way here from China. They explode and
create momentary paintings of light in the sky, which in turn
create momentary paintings of light and shadow on the walls
of the medieval village.
So I'm standing there with the crowds, eyes to the sky, drawn
to the only light in town just as they are, when it hits me.
The village is dark. They've turned off all the lights.
And the mystery that I had "solved," and thus resolved into
a convenient (and boring) solution reopened into a greater
mystery, and the potential for great fun. I looked around at
the crowds, at all the lovely women looking for love in (for
once) all the right places (my village), and considered the
possibility of hooking up with one of them. And then I con-
sidered the alternative...turning my back on the crowds and
*taking advantage* of the one night of the year I could see
Sauve as it would have looked in the 12th century, in total
darnkess, unlit even by torches.
The decision took me less than a second. I left the crowds
to focus on the play of light that they'd found in the sky,
and I wandered off into the back streets of the village, to
explore the play of light that one finds in darkness.
It was really neat. The night was so dark that in some of
the winding back alleys I had to walk along with my hand on
one of the stone walls to find my Way. And then one of the
skyrockets would explode, and illuminate the alley with
artificial fire, for just a moment, just long enough to
reveal the next alley, and the next mystery. One moment I
would be standing alone under a stone archway in total
darkness, and the next there would be a flash of light,
and I would be joined by my own shadow on the cobblestone
streets. I'd wave, and it would wave back, beckoning me
deeper and deeper into mystery. It was really neat.
Ah, the things one learns in life from the presence of -- or
absence of -- light. Some people view life as a series of
symbolic clues to follow so that they can "solve" the mystery
of it all. Others just look on the clues as invitations to
enjoy the mystery *as* mystery. Just predilection, I guess,
but I'm sure glad that I wound up with mine.
