Why Light2matter
What? Photonic Interplays? – asked Eduardo.
Yes – I replied as we both rushed inside the bar.
Truth is, Hispanic immigrants in Montreal don’t casually shoot the breeze in winter. We prudently keep our distance, oblivious to the outdoor pleasures the charming locals are so fond of.
As most bars in the city, the “Bily Kun” was long and narrow. But it did have Ostriches’ heads on the walls, giving it a special twist. We found a table far away from the throat-cutting spell of winter and sat down.
“Inflection events?”
Eduardo invited me to elaborate with a beer in hand. I nodded and had my first sip.
“Imagine a line from left to right” – I mumbled – and for the sake of theatrics I begun to draw a line in midair with my index finger, savoring the moment.
“A line is nothing but an average Eduardo, a misleading way to interpret adjacent states of beingness”.
“Be-ing-ness-” Eduardo calmly spelled out loud, carefully studying every single syllable.
“Why not beingness?” – I raised my voice – “Isn’t it not the purpose of a Poet to re-purpose language and bring what is to come?” To which he argued calmly smiling, “To re-purpose or to vilify?”
I warmly smiled back at him and spelled out, “To-may-to, to-mah-to my friend. Tomayto-tomahto”. We laughed and quickly ordered another round.
“A line is an abstraction then,” – Eduardo assumed after a short silence – “You mean… it does not exist.”
“Precisely” – I quickly replied, putting my glass down – “But inside the line; the dots, the points… those are for real my friend. Let’s call them events!”
A bright lawyer, Eduardo had an elegant and melancholic demeanor. As a prolific amateur photographer he regularly -and obsessively- travelled to exotic lands always bringing back colorful adventures. I enjoyed magnifying them in bars like this one, where I didn’t need vaccines nor my passport.
“I agree. Events happen in time as much as in space. Points and dots are too vague. A moment… maybe is not scientific enough?” -He interjected raising his glass with authority and quickly adding- “Sorry, please go on, you were talking about photonic interplays and inflection events”.
“Photonic interplays to stage inflection events.” – I underlined – “but let’s finish with the line first”.
Eduardo took his glass and whirled it in the air a few times with a boyish smirk while I continued.
“Life Eduardo; is easy for us to see it as a line. Both have a beginning, a direction, an eventual end. But up close Eduardo, and you can’t disagree with me here, when we look close at life isn’t it a chaotic assortment of good, bad and weird events?”
Bowing, Eduardo swiftly pointed out “chaotic… yes, but isn’t every new event bound to the previous one?”
“It could be…” – I replied skeptic – “but any new event could also very well be the dawn of a new paradigm. And that is the point Eduardo, every event could be pretty much anything!”
I exhaled concluding softy “I just want to help people have more significant events. This is all I truly want to do. You see, whenever I work to make someone’s life richer, suddenly mine just gets richer”.
”and who would have guessed that right?” Eduardo joked and we both laughed, a bit distraught.
“I have this recurrent dream based on a Russian novel I read 20 years ago,” – I continued now like a confession – “I am riding a horse alone, through the Russian steppes, towards the unknown. I can close my eyes and the tension of my fists holding the straps becomes real. The dry wind on my face, the thirst to continue, the ardor of life… everything zeroes into the precipice of the now… galloping through the Russian steppes. And faraway, near the horizon, I see a candlelight magically warming up my face!”
“Light2matter Eduardo; that is the name. Light as in photons, light as in hope, light as in intellect and specially as in perpetual dreams!”
“Matter as in material and as in actions, Matter as in significance. And the number 2… the channel connecting realities, the universal void from where every possibility, every event is born”.
“Staging inflection events with photonic interplays; bringing light, literally and figuratively!”
“Nothing but light and shadows…” wisely said Eduardo with a lost smile, staring at the chandeliers.
“Eduardo, don’t you want to have special moments every day?” – I questioned him from the gut – “What says my routine must be mundane? I want light and shadows every single day and every single night. Don’t you? Don’t you want to vindicate routine for yourself? Don’t you want significance? Don’t you want everything -art, truth, beauty- in your day to day?”
“Don’t you want to become Eduardo… an incarnation of art in life?”
Eduardo had been listening, stirring his glass and slowly realizing that this conversation was a bit different. Not playful as usual, this one felt like a guerrilla assault; sporadic, guttural and hungry.
It had also this inspiring intent of convergence. A need to seize and unify. A need to walk a singular path.
There was a sentiment, an aftertaste of Mea Culpa… this idea of awakening and fear, doubt, contrasting feelings and redemption. Eduardo realized that this moment was one of those “inflection events” for the man sitting right across him, who was now clearly absorbed in oceans of conjectures, galloping again through the Russian steppes.
Eduardo finished his beer in silence and put the glass down before looking at me as my senses began to resurface, connecting me back with this moment. Sight, hearing, touch… he waited a second or two and then said to me with the friendliest tone and the largest smile;
“So Alberto; what is that you are waiting for?”