trans::lucent/parent/

1.  materials which do not allow for the absorption of light are called opaque.

2.  In the field of optics, transparency (also called pellucidity or diaphaneity) is the physical property of allowing light to pass through the material without being scattered. 

3. 

Herr Stimmung on Transparency

BY KEITH WALDROP

To those of a certain temperament, there is nothing worse than the

thought of something hidden, secret, withheld from their knowing—

especially if they suspect that another knows about it and has even,

perhaps, connived at keeping it concealed.

    D. H. Lawrence seems to have been irritated no end by the thought

that people were having sex and not telling him.

    Freud too.

   —Ah but then Freud arranged it so that everyone had to tell.

    His psychoanalysis lights up the depths, makes our tangled web

transparent, to the point where I can see all the way down to It.

    And the process moves outward in increasing rings:

    The Master analyses his disciples. Who thereby—transparent

now—become masters and, in turn, take on others, patients or

disciples, to analyse.

    So that eventually there are no secrets.

    Except, of course, those of the first Master, the Self-Analysed.

    Which is to say, the only private One, sole Unrevealed. Opaque

center of His universal panopticon.

    While we see only His words, His daughter, His cigar.

    Poor Lawrence.

4.  on the sunday after prom, it's traditional for mormon boys and girls to wear their formals to church, complete with boutonnieres, corsages, and wrist flowers.  bedraggled updo's.  last sunday a plethora of modest prom dresses rustled into church--the cap sleeve is the sign of orthodoxy in our most orthodox (or, perhaps more aptly named orthopractic) of neighborhoods and congregations. down the hall i spotted a girl in a peachy-pink gown, sleeveless, a mini-dress ensconced in a sheer maxi overlay.

elizabeth smart

it's been a week of discussing the perils of emphasizing the mandate for young women to be modest, to avoid tempting (not temptation, so much) to sometimes hammer at and punish young mormon women for dressing "immodestly", which could lead to becoming an already chewed stick of gum.

i was thrilled at this young woman.  her dress was beautiful, she was beautiful, and i applauded her unwillingness to bow to the dominant culture.  it gave me hope that some of the damaging, unexamined orthodoxies of our sometimes utopic culture might drop away.

5.  one last thought:  as the months of struggling through darkness have dragged on, with small pricks of light helping me to hang on through yet another depression, i'm starting to wonder how much truth, honesty, transparency has to do with the darkness i'm living in.  what would it be like if it were easier, more common to speak the truth, to think about the actual rather than the ideal?

if light could pass through me without scatter.

Theme for the Week: Transparency

I will always be inspired by dresses.  The following story was inspired by a frock from this local designer: 



Transparency

           This mom--one of them--held up the thing that was to raise funds at the fundraiser.

    “That?” I said, because it was barely anything, but then she held it up to herself and it became something more..

“Consider this over what I’m wearing,” she said, and that was what the dad standing here and I did.  This mom wasn’t dressed for the party.  The dad and I were in jeans, both of us, but we looked better than she did with nothing extra over.  I didn’t need to buy a thing like that, even if it was for the kids.  

I wanted to tell the mom this:  no one would have noticed the thing in a different fabric, one that anyone could see, “which is why you--you know--you love it so much.” I wanted to say, and then I would lift my cup and toast her.

“I’ve never,” she said, “seen anything like this thing.”

Around us, parents were drinking.  This dad was drinking.  Alcohol had been smuggled into the school, and we parents, for once in our lives, were having fun.  Blocks our kids used during the week had been built into a bar.  Some parents tried to knock the block bar down. The parents that liked it weren’t sure if they should.  

“Nobody’s fault hers,” the bartender said, waving his glass at the principal.

           “Sshhh,” the principal had told all the parents in the planning committee meaning. “Pass it on.”

    On the clipboard in front of her, that mom wrote her name right down for the thing.  This was called “placing a bid.”  “I hope I get this thing,” the mom said, unable to unbunch it.  In her fist, all together like that, the thing almost became something the dad and I could get behind.

           “Don’t leave it alone,” I said.  “Stay with it.”

            I moved down among the other things that had been gathered from all over our city for the kids and this brick building in which they all kicked around in.  I wrote my name under some of the things.    

There are things about me I haven’t told anyone.

Sometimes I am mistaken for a man.  My handwriting.  My legs from the knees down.  

    My voice often gets so deep, I’ve learned to keep it low.

Because for a silent auction, everyone was being loud, and in the school cafeteria, there was a band, banding away.

            How could I be expected to concentrate on these things?           

How much could the kids be expected to handle if we didn’t?

Parents moved their plastic glasses to and fro under the low hanging fluorescent lights.  

The trouble we could get into.

    “I think I’m going to get it!” the mom called out from over there.

           Soon she would know for sure.

          At the block bar, the bartender switched out my last drink ticket for water.  I leaned over the bar, blocks tumbling, his shirt in my hands. "Just one more," I said.