The charity of light

A day ago , by Richard Lutz

from RICHARD LUTZ

In the morning, new light pours through the old coal door. We never use it anymore. It only opens to a side passage where we put things we don’t need immediately- tarpaulins, old seed trays, buckets, pieces of indeterminate wood.

But on each new day, it offers a clear message from the east: that light will spread down the hall.

Through the mottled glass there is a charity to this free light show as it wanders down the ‘short’ oak floor toward the ‘big’ oak kitchen floor.

On the other side of the house, facing the sea, facing west, the new sky is still coloured by dawn:

Not so much the ancient rosey fingered dawn as remnants of a pastel-fingered morning. Beyond the solid church and its stonewalls, there’s the perfunctory road signs, a trace of foreshore and then, across the waters, the outline of the Isle of Arran.

The window sill decorations, by the way, come via my friend Rusty with his stained glass and a turquoise screen print gifted by my sister in law Kim.

We often peer through them when the light from the west turns technicolour as sunset draws in as late as 10pm:

It’s nuclear. And here is how that fire of the late western evening appears through the glass flower:

The early light though is all I really need. Eventually it spreads across to my small back garden, a bit of green by the sea, a sea as blue as my father’s eyes.

No matter what I try to grow in this patch splashed with a vague sun, it is a certainty that wild nasturtium will pop up. They overrun flower beds, borders, entwine themselves in hedges, erupt in pavement cracks and through patio slabs. Many times people hopefully take away the rough seeds. But they never flourish. They need the salt air, the southwest wind from nearby Ireland and, of course, that charitable touch of Scottish light.

One person from my high school days who was blessed with a lightness in his eyes and charity in his blood was Charlie Dennis. He died earlier this month. He was a choreographer and film maker.

He was a good man. Liked by many. He was graceful too and he didn’t so much walk as elegantly roll down a corridor or a street.

Charlie played ice hockey; not many did in those days in New York. One morning he rolled into school after a midweek night game. ‘How’d it go?’ he was asked. ‘Hat trick…’ he said.

I never had heard that expression before. But he had a huge grin etched on his face. I knew it was good news: there was a light in his eyes and, I assume, that charitable lightness in his hockey playing kind heart.