Road to Damascus

What a difference a single detail can make in how you perceive things. The other evening, I was coming into my building when I happened to notice that a house across the street had its porch light on. I don't know whether the owners had changed to a different, brighter bulb or whether they usually have the light turned off at that hour, but the change noticeably altered the appearance of the house. Suddenly, it flashed into my mind that the whole setting--the still bright sky above, the house and trees silhouetted against the light, and the darkening street--looked remarkably like René Magritte's painting, The Dominion of Light, which I have written about before.

In the many years I've lived here, that thought had never occurred to me previously, and I don't know that it would have except for that porch light being left on. The view across the street is a pleasant one, but there is nothing in it that has ever made me think of Magritte. If it's a cosmic joke, it's a good one, because one of the dominant characteristics of Magritte's work is its surrealism, the way it takes the ordinary and gives it a fantastic twist, blurring the boundaries between ordinary consciousness and a dream state. I take Magritte's surrealism as an invitation to look at things more imaginatively, to realize that the seemingly solid appearance of things often masks another reality.

When you have experience in looking at things from the perspective of myth, the idea of seeing beneath the surface becomes second nature, but even I was startled by the sudden change in perspective. I have always found the views of the rooftops and trees in my neighborhood to be charming and reverie-inducing, particularly at sunset, when they show to best advantage against the changing light. There is something pleasing about the solidity of the houses and the varied angles of the roofs set amid so many tall and shapely trees. The scene is comfortable and established but somehow leaves the door open to the imagination, possibly because your eye is drawn up toward the liminal space between earth and sky, away from the traffic and the street so noisily present below. You can imagine Mary Poppins sailing in over those rooftops with her umbrella or perhaps sailing over them yourself one night in a moonlit magic carpet ride.

More than anything else, this episode makes me realize how important the detail of the light is, not only in the scene across the street but also in the painting. It's the central image in the The Dominion of Light, literally and metaphorically, standing in for, as I interpret it, the spark of consciousness that's alive and observing in each of us, the point of connection between spirit and matter, the awareness that's awake even when dreaming and that sheds light in the face of ambiguity. It's not a blinding light that forecloses any possibility of nuance or complexity but rather a soft, steady light that neither overwhelms the dark or retreats from it.

The other thing that impresses me about this incident is how quickly one's view of something can shift with the addition of a single element, like a piece of a puzzle falling into place. That light coming on so suddenly seems to say, be ready, because even something as familiar as the intimate scenes you look on every day holds something in reserve. There's always something unknown even within the known, always more to know than we realize at the present. If you think you know as much as you'll ever want to about a given subject, person, place, or thing, get ready: an increase in consciousness can be life-altering. In the face of uncertainty, plant your feet, turn your light on, and wait.