Sunbeams
The beam in the eye.
I had a very nice childhood. My grandparents had a summer house on a beautiful lake.
Ray Stephens has a funny song of a kid - running barefoot all day long, climbing trees, free as song - I had that sort of experience at Loch Lomond outside Saint John.
We had a rowboat with a small Seagull outboard, I used to like lying on the bow as we'd motor along on a calm day and watch the sunbeams in the water.
They were wondrous and terrifying to watch.
I'd see beams of light that seemed to be going into the depths but all converting on a deep spot that I couldn't see.
The terrifying thing was the urge to dive in and go see what was there. The wondrous thing was a feeling of - wow- look at that!
One day my cousin Doug took me across the lake to a big rock cliff called The Minister's Face. The face looked to me like a slab of roast beef- always wondered why that was connected to a minister - but I digress.
I dove from the Minister's Face - the other shore was 500 meters away. Doug followed me in the boat. Everytime I looked down as I swam I saw those sunbeams inviting me to the depths. Presently I was past the deep water and soon I could touch my toe to the bottom.
Made it!!
Doug cheered.
I've encountered sunbeams in less challenging circumstances. Walking through the woods in cold air on a foggy morning at sunrise offers lots of sunbeams shining on the hoarfrost.
I live in a city now and those sorts of beautiful experiences don't really come up often. Now I'm surrounded by glass covered buildings that reflect sunbeams in lots of interesting ways. There is a building a mile away that sends me a bright sunbeam each day when it's not cloudy. I can see it as a blinding sunlike spot on the building. It casts a sharp shadow when I hold my hand to it. It sends a beam into the part of my space that never gets direct sunlight.
Once you notice them, the city is full of sunbeams reflected off windows coming from all directions. I've read of buildings whose facade curved in just the right way so as to concentrate the beams from many windows onto one (moving) spot. The focused sunbeams produced enough heat to damage the paint on cars.
In ancient times sunbeams were observed by big structures like Stone Henge. I think there have been variations on that theme all over the world.
The idea was that at dawn on a certain day of the year a sunbeam would make it past a bunch of objects to shine on a special place.
Sorta like the sunbeam that makes it's way to a dark corner of my room. The ancient's knowledge of all that was way more sophisticated than mine.
They could use the knowledge while I just observe with pleasure..
Once I noticed that the dapple of sunbeams coming through the trees above was a dapple of crescent shapes.
I'm pretty familiar with pinhole cameras and realized that each dapple was acting like a pinhole camera.
In the past I'd used a sheet of cardboard with a hole poked in it to project an image of the sun on another sheet as a safe way of observing an eclipse.
I realized that the crescent shape must mean that a partial eclipse was occurring. I wonder what the ancients would have made of that kind of phenomenon.
What do you think?
I present regular philosophy discussions in a virtual reality called Second Life.
I set a topic and people come as avatars and sit around a virtual table to discuss it.
Each week I write a short essay to set the topic.
I show a selection of them here.