sweet auburn | 2024 volume II
SOLSTICE LIGHTS
How to tell you what we found there ? In the unaccustomed dark , it seemed far to reach the chapel ’ s glow , but , circling , we found the front swirling with light . Were those clouds heaped across it ? Then vines were mounting turrets , sprouting into tree canopies ; cornices and arches were sketched in electric colors that spurted into sweeping torrents , all so filigreed with changing light we could hardly take it in . It was as if our bodies filled with colors : lavender , rose , blue , and gold . I thought of Monet painting these colors onto canvas for the cathedral in Rouen , mounting eight easels to capture evanescent light . He wrote to his wife
Each day I add and subtract something I had not even known how to see before —
painting light moving over a sacred facade . Here , surrounded by the buried dead , what did light-painting show us we didn ’ t know how to see before ? Who can say what light-magic taught us about radiance , our own mortality ? All I can tell you is the dazzle calmed us . Teetering on the Solstice between light and dark , standing among each other , just for a moment we could breathe in deeply the slow , implacable dark .
— Cathie Desjardins
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