My Empty Bottle Shines a Blue Brilliant Light

“Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all the others were making ships.”~Charles Simic

“Keep at it, you can write. Don’t let anyone talk you out of it.” I smiled and looked down at my coffee cup, but I knew my ex. was right. It isn’t paying the bills. Just hard to find work in this economy. I sipped my coffee and looked out the big bay window. The view was spectacular, enough to make me forget my financial woes. An old light house, sitting alone a few yards away on Situate point captured my attention. Like me, it was looking out at my friend’s back yard, the wide Atlantic Ocean.  Its blinking light shot out like a spot light focused on a stage built of sapphire blue. I was  admiring the sparkling hues that were glowing along the ocean’s edge, when my friend returned from his kitchen. I recognized the colors that painted the early evening sky and knew it must be time to head back. Even though I wanted to linger by my friend’s bay window, I gathered my things and hugged him goodbye. Stepping out into the night air, the January wind made my body jolt, from the sudden drop of temperature.  I quickened my pace, wanting the warmth of my car, when I noticed the blue blinking light again, stretching it’s reach out over the sea, like a mother’s arm beckoning it’s child to come home. Despite the chill, I stopped to watch the light’s circular movement as it streamed over the tops of curled white wave crests. The night was quiet, only the rolling ocean hitting the jetty and the hum of the light house motor could be heard. I love the sound of the sea, but it made me think of a far away place that I had not seen since my divorce.

Lupins on PEI

The sound of ocean reminded me of the island and how much I missed it.  I used to watch the blue blinking light shine on Cove Head Bay at night. It was so beautiful. But he got the summer cottage after the divorce.

There’s something about a lighthouse. They stand alone,weather every storm, support others without looking for any accolades. A strong beacon shining it’s light to guide those lost home, and giving hope through the storm’s raging. Since I was a small child, light houses have fascinated me. So I stood still watching the light, and decided not to think about the chill in the air. Instead, I thought about the Island and a book I had read my last summer there.

I used to sit by myself on the deck of the cottage and stare out at Stanhope light. The lighthouse across the bay was alot like me; lonely but strong. I’d sit on the deck and watch Stanhope, wishing I had a different life or at least hadn’t married the controlling , mean man who sat only a few yards away inside the cottage. I’d wonder what it would be like to be married to a husband who loved me, but like the light house, I’d never know and just stared out at the water for hours at a time.

My last summer on PEI, I read a book by Virginia Wolf, called To The Light House. There was a scene after a dinner party where Mrs. Ramsey and her awful husband made small talk. He wanted her to tell him she loved him, but she just couldn’t do it.  She tried to get out of it by smiling and changing the topic. I remember thinking we had a few things in common; unhappy marriages and a summer home by a lighthouse across the bay. I understood Virginia Wolf’s message. Nothing stays the same with the passage of time. Her character believed a marriage could either make or break a man. Well in my case….I was too stubborn, maybe too scared to look at my brokenness. But even if I tried to deny it, I always knew it was there. When I finished the book, I remember thinking I didn’t want to end up cold and bitter like Mrs. Ramsey. I felt it would be better to be like Lily Biscoe, another character, who used art to heal her brokenness and make sense out out of buried memories.

Lily Biscoe viewed her artist’s brush as “the only dependable thing in a world of strife, ruin, chaos.” Lily changed in the story with the passage of time, and I knew I was changing too. Time does that. She found her voice and that gave me hope I would one day find mine. Lily, the artist, “ traps the grain of sand while it is still dry before the wave of life strikes it.” She recorded her painful past using her artist’s brush and once her visions sat still on cavas, time no longer threatened her, but made sense. Maybe my artist brush is the keyboard and that’s where I’m struggling to find my voice.

I love Hemingway’s quote; “There’s nothing to writing, all you do is sit down at the typewriter and bleed.” If that’s true, then I really ‘hemorrhaged’ during my marriage. Thankfully, that chapter is over. No more living in fear, being ridiculed, intimidated or bullied. I’m free now, just feeling a little lost, at the moment. I wish that bright beautiful light would shine on me and tell me where to look for my safe harbor. Where is home?

“It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.”~Virginia Wolf

After that thought , I felt a warm tear roll down my cold cheek and it made me realize that time was slipping away. I had to retreat from the cold and get home to my kids. During the car ride, I thought about Stanhope Light. Maybe I was becoming more like a light house everyday. Recognizing this as a real possibility gave me a warm, happy feeling. Like Stanhope, I weathered many storms but I didn’t break. I came out a little scratched but I’m still standing tall and proud. Maybe my friend is right. “Keep at it, you can write.” No one has noticed my shining yet, but one day I’ll shine so brightly, they’ll have to see. I know I have a book inside me and I hear it shouting to get out. Just like Lily, I need to make peace with Father Time.

Excerpt taken from the classic: To the Lighthouse by Virginia Wolf: “-She could see it all so clearly, so commandingly, when she looked; it was when she took her brush in the hand that the whole thing changed. It was in that moment’s flight between the picture and her canvas that the demons set on her who often brought her to the verge of tears and made this passage from conception to work as dreadful as any down a dark passage for a child. Such she often found herself-struggling against terrific odds to maintain her courage; to say: ‘But this is what I see’…”

“We are told to let our light shine, and if it does, we won’t need to tell anybody it does, Lighthouses don’t fire cannons to call attention to their shining- they just shine.” ~Dwight L. Moody

More entries of the journal can be found by clicking; Just Thinking

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