- Reset
- Repent
- Restore
- Reveal
The Light Keeper
Once upon a time, there was a man who was stationed at a lighthouse. The tower was raised to be a signal of hope for those coming from a long journey and longing to find home, and it was to be a warning to the mindless, greedy fishermen of the rocks that hid in waiting, cloaked for their destruction. Everyday the man tended to the light, and over time with skill and diligence, he saw the lighthouse’s purpose and his love for the beacon made his work a joy. He knew the reward of the labor was determined by the light’s ability to pierce the darkness and shine beyond the horizon to reach those travelers for which it was intended. And over many years, the man in the lighthouse could tell the light itself was eager to shine.
But one day, a storm blew from the east and the wind destroyed the prism & lantern pane and threatened the light. The Keeper knew the light had to keep shining, but with few resources, the repairs came from the man’s own house; a temporary fix was set in place and although the old window was stained, the light was excited to shine through the etched glass.
After a few weeks it was clear that the proper repairs would be a long long way off, and the brilliance of the light required a different setting, for the temporary window was already about to crack under the manufacture’s requirements of the beam; for the light to shine the way it was designed the lantern base would have to be lifted. The man found a prism that could redirect the light so that it could once more illuminate the landscape and the sea. But the prism required a trade-off, for the light to shine farther it had to be allowed to follow its natural refractive tendencies and it could end up being bifurcated. But with no other option, other than turning the light off until a new cupola could be built, the Keeper, with an optimism about the fix and an urgency to get the rays around the weakened window, set the new prism so that the light reached out and once more brightened even further over the fields and through the open air. However, the prism base wasn’t the right fit, and required extra attention. The man found that the storm’s damage was vast and the imperfect repairs were becoming fatiguing. The splitting of the beam that was the consequence of the storm made it so that as the spindle revolved some light was lost as it was internally reflected by the temporary window.
The coming autumn chill required that the temporary fix be put away, and the frame of the old familiar lantern pane was reset and taped together with many adjustments and precautions. But the light was still divided, and with the old frame on its original setting some of the light hid in shadow and the rest was mis-focused by the prism that was earlier positioned to avoid the window. Ironically it was the pillars that propped up the old frame that made this light dance up towards the inner building structure, rather than shine outward as hoped. The keeper couldn’t remove the prism housing because the light wouldn’t be focused to shine, and he couldn’t change the lantern pane because its glow would flicker off in the cold. Day after day he scratched his head seeking a solution. But there wasn’t any. The storm had found a defect in the lighthouse’s design, as all the efforts of repair only divided the light more.
It wasn’t long, it happened faster than the man was even aware of, but soon, his walk up the stairs with tool box in hand to try to keep the rotating mess shining, was joyless. The work became a burden as with every new attempt more light was inadvertently lost, and he could see the divided light’s diminished capacity. He couldn’t accept a malfunctioning lighthouse, and he couldn’t convince himself that it was ok if the light went out – after all people don’t really use lighthouses anymore, they just like to take tours of them and pictures of them. It is a difficult thing to be stuck. The creature that is bound will ultimately hurt itself in its effort to find a solution. To struggle and twist is to cause injury, and to give oneself up is death. The man bowed his head and sat down next to the malfunctioning light as night began to fall.
The divided light was becoming paler, its separation had made it weak and overexposed like a narrow beamed fluorescent. The flickering shadow that it cast across the ground seemed to blink angrily in judgment over the humming rays that were stuck the ceiling beams and blocked by the pane’s pillars, and those scattered-rays lacked any strength without the rest to barely make a glimmer at the shoreline. In exhaustion the man drifted in his mind as he sat, he could hear the gentle waves lapping, and barely noticed an unfamiliar ache in his back and legs. Just before he fell into another wearied dream he was startled by the blinking light on the floor as began to speak to him.
“This is your fault.” “If you had only refocused with the right prism we wouldn’t be down here in the dark.”
The rafter rays heard the flicking’s discontent and a quick response came from above, “You had better not refocus us with the lower light – if you even try, we will just refuse to shine altogether.”
“It’s because you don’t care, isn’t it”, the lower light quipped. “You don’t have to answer, it’s obvious. Anyone who would listen to the experts would know there is clearly a right way to do things and a selfish way to do things.”
“What would you know about what’s ‘right’?” the ceiling demanded. “You’ve already forgotten that light can’t be contained and restricted by prisms – it a basic luminaries right to be free from that kind of control.”
The man looked up and then back down at each of the frazzled glows.
“Well?” “Are you just going to leave us down here?”
“Don’t even try it”, came the threat from above.
“I wasn’t talking to you, I was talking to him.”
“Oh, he doesn’t even have the answer. I’ve watched him try, he doesn’t even have the guts to just tell you what your real problem is.”
The two beams proceeded to bicker with one another and only occasionally offer an indirect demand or insult to the light keeper. They mainly just spoke about him in the 3rd person as if he couldn’t hear what they were saying. It’s funny how memories fade when joy is gone. The man thought about the storm, and wished that it had never come. In some ways it seemed like those hurricane winds were only a day ago, and yet at the same time, he had a hard time remembering what it was like back when the lighthouse was radiant. The voices seemed to fade into the background, as they both had become polarized in a metronomic repartee whereby each seemed more convinced and self-justified in their respective camps.
The man jolted from his slumber with an involuntary twitch of his leg, as he was awakened from a restless night with the morning sun now shining on his forehead, he thought heard the sound of tour bus doors opening, and air brakes releasing. As the engine rumbled to rest, a voice called from down below. “Hello?” The sounds of feet shuffling across the gravel and accented conversations increased. The man lifted his eyes up to the blinking lantern in the middle of the room and someone asked, “Is this the old lighthouse?”