Light in the Valley

It hasn't happened before or since. Just the one time, and most don't even know about it.

It was a cloudy night, I remember that. We'd been sitting there for some time. Just sitting under that tree. We'd run out of things to discuss, but neither of us wanted to go back. So we just sat there, under the clouds, and we stared over the side of the cliff at the river below.

It was dark. You couldn't really even make out the river. Maybe if it hadn't been so cloudy, maybe there would have been some reflection. Like christmas lights floating in the water. But it was cloudy, so there weren't any christmas lights, just a dark slightly darker than the darkness that surrounded it. The kind of definition you get when you look over the edge of a cliff on a cloudy night.

So we were just sitting there. I thought about putting my arm around her, but it didn't really seem right. She wasn't my girlfriend, and it wasn't that cold. I just wanted to reach out and touch her. You can feel so alone, even with a person right next to you, especially in the dark when no one is talking. But it really wasn't my place to go putting my arm around her, so I didn't. I never thought about whether or not she would have wanted me to.

That's when it happened. At first, it seemed like there was a light, off in the distance, past the end of the river where the water bubbled up out of the rocks. I just thought it was a little lightning in the cloud and ignored it, but it didn't flicker. Instead it glowed steadily, and it got brighter.

The clouds began to part around it, and still it got brighter. Thoughts that maybe it was a plane or a helicopter were gone almost before they were formed, certainly before they were spoken. It was just too bright, and too big now to be anything like that.

Still, we didn't say anything. I wanted to ask her if she saw it. She had to be seeing it. She couldn't not see it. But she didn't say anything. Then again, neither did I, so maybe she was wondering the same about me. Neither of us said anything, and the light grew brighter and brighter.

Soon it was filling the sky, but it didn't seem focused on us. Sure, it was getting closer, but that almost seemed to have more to do with it getting larger than anything else. I wasn't afraid, I wasn't even really curious. It was so strange, and so vast, all I could really do was sit and stare. Soon there wasn't any room in my mind left for fear or wonder. In the face of something so unlike anything I knew, so much more vast than anything I could comprehend, there wasn't room for anything at all. Just sitting and staring and not talking.

It was like what they always tell you in school when they talk about blue whales, how one whale is so much larger than a human. You can't really understand it. The idea of any animal being so vast is more than you can really truly grasp. So they tell you it's like three school buses run on end. They tell you it weighs as much as a hundred cars. They tell you it's bigger than anything else ever was.

But to the kid sitting in his desk, that's all nonsense. You can compare it to whatever you like, he'll never understand the reality of it. He can't. And I couldn't understand what I was seeing that night either.

If you asked me to describe it, I'd use similes. I'd say it was like the sun came down to the earth. I'd say it was like all the light in the world filled the valley beneath the cliff. I'd say it was like being in a lightning storm. I might even say it was like seeing God.

But I can't really tell you what it was, any more than I can tell you what it was like. I might as well say it was like three school buses run on end. It doesn't make any sense to you, any more than it does to the kid in the desk. It's a huge unknowable thing, and when they say you had to be there, this was what they meant.

Then it was gone. It didn't leave any impression behind. There wasn't any damage to the valley. The clouds moved right back in to cover the sky. It didn't even leave an impression on my eyes, like when you stare at a light bulb for too long. It was just there, all unknowable and vast, and then gone.

The entire thing couldn't have lasted more than a few moments. I finally turned to her to ask if she saw it. I knew she would say yes. She had too.

But as I turned to her, I noticed she was looking at something in her hand. A rock she'd picked up earlier in the day. I'd seen her put it in her pocket. It was just a small brown pebble, smooth and flat, just like countless other river rocks by countless other rivers. Suddenly I knew that she hadn't seen it. She'd been staring at that rock. It didn't make sense, surely the light would have caused her to look up, but I just knew that if I asked, she'd tell me she hadn't seen a thing.

So I didn't bother asking. We'd sat there in silence so long anyway, it wasn't worth breaking it now, not when I knew what she'd say anyway. Maybe that's why people stop talking. You know what I mean? Because they know what other people will say. So they just quit.

Anyway, I didn't say anything. I just sat there. After a moment, I turned back to the cliff and looked out over the edge at the river below. There wasn't anything to see there, just the darkness, and after a while we both got up and headed back inside.

Without a word.

On Disobedience

Once we were young. We sat in smoky rooms in small groups and talked about important things. We were going to change the world. We were going to be a part of it. We'd get high, and discuss philosophy, and religion, and science. And we knew things.

We aren't so young anymore, but we still know things. We don't get high, and we don't get to talk as much, but we still know things. We know how to write a letter that can't be understood except by the person it's written to. We know how to blend into a crowd so that we aren't noticed. We know how to hide a knife in the palm of our hand so that they don't see it coming until it's too late. We know how to build a bomb, and how to bury it so it goes off when they drive their tanks over it. We know how to bandage a mortal wound, and how to make one.

We learned fast in the early years. It was either learn fast or not at all. When the first tanks rolled into our cities we thought the government would protect us. Then we heard about the strikes. Tactical. Nuclear. No government left after that.

Some people advised caution. Negotiation. Appeasement. But we weren't having any of it. So we started to fight back. That's when the learning process began.

We learned real quick that you can't just run up to a man and shoot him, because he has nine other men with guns right there with him. They had better weapons, and better armor, and we weren't going to win through force. We learned you can't poison their food and water, because they have equipment that tests for that, and they're inoculated regularly to protect them from most poisons.

The hardest lesson we learned was that you can't convince most people to stand up and fight, no matter the cost. No matter the loss. They just accept it and move on.

We couldn't blame them really. For most people, it was meet the new boss same as the old boss. They went about their business. They made goods. They sold goods. They bought goods. They paid their mortgages and fed their families and clothed their children. And they didn't really give a damn which god they were told to pray to at the end of the day, because god had never been there when they needed him anyway.

So we didn't blame them. Not most of the time. Not most of us. But we did blame the men with the guns, who rolled into our cities in their tanks, and slaughtered our leaders with their bombs. For us, it didn't matter who the new boss was. We didn't ask for him. We didn't want him.

So we learned that some people don't need convincing. They fight because they can't see any other way. And more and more those people came to us, to learn our ways.

We started as a small group. Only about a dozen. Men, and a few women, who couldn't sit by and watch the nation they grew up in salute a foreign flag. It wasn't really patriotism. It wasn't really heroism. We just couldn't stomach it.

I suppose it was a kind of pride really. The kind of hubris they speak about in college courses on Greek tragedy. Whatever it was, it kept us up at night. Studying.

So we learned. And we shared that knowledge. And over time, they began to learn too. They learned to keep their safeties off. They learned to look over their shoulders. They learned to fear.

So now we sit in dark rooms, and we gather in small groups and we discuss philosophy, and religion, and science. But we learned fear too, or at least, caution. So we get quiet whenever we hear a noise outside. And we never meet in the same place twice. And we don't use our real names, just in case someone's listening.

Because they are listening. They're always trying to find out who we are. Where we are. Because they want to put a stop to our behavior, but mostly, they want to make an example. They want people to see that resistance can't succeed. More important, they want to go back to believing they're invincible. They want to go back to when they didn't have to look over their shoulders, or test their food for poison.

And it's our job to make sure that never happens. We know we can't win. That wasn't ever the point. We know we're outnumbered, and outgunned, and outfunded. We know they have more materiel, and more time. Ultimately, they'll win. For every one of them we kill, there's ten thousand more, or a hundred thousand. Every one of us they kill puts us on the brink of extinction.

But we're not dead yet. So we leave posters on bathroom walls telling people how to make simple bombs. And we leave guns in public parks with instructions on how to use them. And we put bombs in their homes and cars and leave graffiti at the site to let people know who's responsible.

And maybe it won't matter. Maybe someday, people won't even remember what happened. Do you remember who lived in Rome before the Romans? Who lived in Egypt before the Egyptians? Who lived in China before the Chinese? Maybe historians do. Maybe they don't. We don't.

But we know one thing. We're in it now. We're living it. And the Bard put it best.

Let the world burn, we aren't young anymore.