There is a lighthouse just north of our beach, a tall, gray, barnacled tower whose lamp no longer shines for sailors in navigational need.
It is here that we hide our secrets. We tuck our secrets within the walls of the old lighthouse, under the black stairs, in cracks and nooks and niches. We take these frightened thruths from our hearts, hold their naked selves gently, and carefully put them away, held safe within the lighthouse.
The residents of the shore, each of us who make our homes on the edge of the country, have a habit and a custom of visiting the tower. Alone, individually, on a late sleepless night, on a groggy morning walk, sometimes during the lunch hour, we head west from our homes and businesses, track the familiar paths that lead out of town and over the dunes. We open the rusty iron door of the tower, each of us, and climb the black clanking metal stairs that lead to the top. As we take each step, we leave secrets; when our secrets are all hidden, we turn around, step down, and breathe slow sighs of calm as we walk away.
But our lighthouse leaks. The secrets melt from their hiding places, drip down the moist walls, and create pools that flow into the tidepools. Our secrets eddy in the shoals and inlets of the beach, telling themselves to starfish, anenome, and screeching gulls.
These are ths harmless secrets; they are well-known and unsurprising. It is good that they escape the tower and nestle so close to our town. At dawn, the secrets tell themselves to the beachcombers, fishermen, and dogwalkers. By their telling they are freed, and the secrets happily disintegrate into the sea fog.
The bigger secrets are carried out to sea. They gather together into waves and wings, forming massive fronts of mystery and untold truth, The secret storms whirl far out to sea, nearly forever, removed and isolated from their former holders. But because everything returns, the storms eventually return to shore and hit hard, bending trees with the power of a thousand untold thoughts.
A few of us, those who must, climb high to the top of the lighthouse and place their secrets in the sensual curves of the lamp's reflector. The mirrors that once reflected light now transmit our deepest knowledge, casting out these thoughts once saved deep inside our hearts. These secrets are the most unspoken of all: nearly unseen on the edge of our world, blinding, omniverous, dangerous, violent, unable to be contained within our fragile bodies.
In a bright beam that pierces the fog, we shine these secrets into the world. Across the waves, the secret beam illuminates the text of unread messages in floating bottles, lights up the eyes of forgotten castaways and abandoned exiles, unveils the secret of the sun's fire and the moon's cool grayness, and reveals the endless secret of space.
Copyright © 1996 John Labovitz