Oh Day

The sun is beamish bright, my lads, when it is shining on the glass, reflected back and streaming through.

So does the light split? Is there an economics to the trail of light? When the light falls radiant on the top of the Wells Fargo Center, that most beautiful, proud building, does part of it stream in the windows to fall on the inside and part of it get reflected back? I would like to think it is not something that can be calculated, but only that it is something people imagine they can calculate but really can’t because when they try they fail to take everything into consideration like the light returning out the window and mingling with the light reflected dazzling. I would like to think something so dazzling would be boundless, outside of the scope of the pernicious measurements of those economists, sophists and calculators of their own unwitting participations.

* * *

I sat in a class looking out the window and across the city to where a socialist-looking building squatted under the clouds. On top a flag flew in the wind, surmounting all. And then after a while the sun came out and the flag flew in the wind and in the sunlight too, more bright, free and proud surmounting all and indifferent above all the collectivists and calculators, sophists, economists and frauds below.

* * *

Driving home in the dark I remembered when I was a kid, sitting in the back of a car or jeep or van and watching the light from the lamps enter and then leave the car like breathing or a heartbeat. We were not late people, in my family, and this was seldom, and after a long day, and I was weary, and there was something indescribable about the passing bands of light, the swift ensuing darkness, the unending alternation. It was a hint of monotony but also a hint of eternity, a sort of spinning caused by being borne on spinning wheels over the road.