Light, Dark, and What You See When You Close Your Eyes

On closing your eyes

“But, if I keep them open,” asked bird, “won’t I see everything?”

“That’s the point,” replied bear, “that’s exactly the point.”

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📷: Redpopblue spinning in the magical home of a truly good human in Brooklyn who wrote, “This too, shall pass, and we will rebuild better, and brighter.”
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Where do your thoughts go when you close your eyes?

Mine often find me on a bike, rolling singletrack opening up and stretching beyond as far as I can see.

Dark, loamy soil under knobby tires, silt and sand and clay that smells of earth, and decay, and mystery, and that time when.

I see thick, shadowy forests tight on every side, light barely squeezing between branches, cresting breathless climbs, cold air christening pink cheeks.

When I close my eyes, I feel gravity pulling me down steep descents, a world passing in the clearest blur.

I see everything. I see nothing. Past and future dissolving. Now and now and now all that matters with every crank of the pedal.

It is bliss.

Recently, however, when I close my eyes, my thoughts are often of dark things, contracted things, ugly things, like ignorance, like evil, like apathy.

I see a world that doesn’t make any sense, the opposite of sense, and when everything in me wants to turn away, to keep my eyes closed, I know there is no safe place within if there are no safe places without.

And so I open my eyes, and choose to be engaged, knowing that protect the freedom of my thoughts, your thoughts, the thoughts of generations to come, is a calling that we must heed.

The light *is* there, even when you close your eyes. It's trying to squeeze through dark places, but it needs our help.

If not now, when?
If not this, what?
If not here, where?
If not you, who?

What do you see when you close your eyes?