Sunbeams and Starlight

SUNBEAMS AND STARLIGHT

We were in a bit of a quandary, needing a title for our group. Someone suggested Sunbeams – as there were more than one of us and a plural word seemed appropriate. It was also a nod towards the bright young things in our group.

Someone else suggested Starlight with its glow of wide-spread amorphousness, a singular thing even though it was generated by a myriad tiny prickles in the night sky creating together such a soft effulgence that represented as well as filled our communal soul. On the other hand, Sunbeams would have indicated separateness and a strength greater than Starlight, even if sometimes they merged as a sum of Sunbeams to make one huge spotlight at the end of several plaited shafts - as if inside a cathedral picking out an island of light on the ground around the altar.

For the dark ones among us in the group, Starlight barely suffused, while Sunbeams lifted others out of their own darkness, thus to become strong and separate luminaries. But then one bright spark suddenly had an idea. Our group title didn't need to be either/or. We could be represented by both Sunbeams and Starlight. That pleased most of us, whether we had either felt we were dark merging souls drifting like tangled wormholes or become discrete pixels of existence that played in the air of the meadow like invisible fireflies on a summer's day. Bright young things, most of us, though.

Soon, however, some of us older ones took exception to this something-and-something form of title. We were set in our ways and we wanted to continue pitching Sunbeams against Starlight. Competitive to the end. I glimpsed over to my old friend Lucifer whose eyes shone with a laser force, twirling and twisting as blades fencing with elements of tunnel vision. And it was then that it dawned on us that we needed someone from outside the group as a moderator to settle the matter.
Sunbeams
or Starlight
or Sunbeams-and-Starlight
were in fact three choices, thus implying a third eye in each of our heads to join the other two as spiritual torches to help us negotiate the Nirvana for which our whole group, at heart, yearned as a counterintuitive impulse.

You pointed to the title you had given us at the start. SUNBEAMS AND STARLIGHT, it said, and it was underlined, as if it was incontrovertible, imbued with eternity, indelible as the co-incidence of light that threaded through us all, whether old or young. There was thus no point to this story, no point to our tussle with titles. It had been writ all along by the moving finger of light. A fate in hindsight, even if started by free will.

Laughter, as we each eked out an ungenerous moment of yearning, to feel your teasing finger of ignition within our nether darkness. The pointillism of life.

Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin.