Eugene believed that if one could--somehow--tear or cut away the shadows, one would reveal a different sort of universe, an unimagined other world made entirely of light.
His theories were unheard of, or more accurately unlistened to by the broad swath of souls with which he shared them. His daughter's science teacher, his daughter herself, laughed a little nervously as he introduced the idea during a parent-teacher conference. At work, his fellow mechanical engineers had sat politely through his explanations over morning coffee, made no response and forgotten the whole queer business by the end of the day. The staid Episcopalian minister who had baptized all three of his children had looked earnestly into his eyes. Lingering, a frozen handshake, the pastor had with his own raw intensity negated Eugene. His lips had been left quivering but unable to finish a word.
That was the Sunday that Eugene had stumbled, first out of the reception line, down the stairs, along the cobbled bricks in the cathedral garden, and then--in order to escape the vertigo of the delirious Easter sunshine--into the side entrance to the narthex of the church. There while the organist drudged the breathy swamp for one more nameless, too familiar melody from Bach or Vivaldi, Eugene found himself drowning in the tinted light from the towering marvels of these "unfamiliar" windows which had in fact stared down at him for nearly 39 years.
He began the project with himself, separating his own narrow, bony form meticulously from the long morning shadows that streamed off his naked body standing in the window. And just as the molten glass held nothing back, Eugene too became transparent. First just at the edges, the extremities, his fingers and hands: he took on a vaporous quality as if he himself were the sheer curtains hanging there, sustaining some defense against the solar winds. onto the rays projected like cheap cellophane telling the sort of movie plot one would (and should) forget upon leaving the theater.
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