Title: On the Discipline of Light
I have been thinking about the heart again, not as metaphor, but as condition.
We speak carelessly of giving our hearts away, as if self could be misplaced. But heart is not surrendered by leaving the body. It remains. What it does, quietly and relentlessly is shine altering the world it touches.
This pendant began with that thought.
The opalite heart does not shout its presence. It holds light way memory holds feeling refracted, softened, never fully disclosed. I wrapped it in copper without conquest. wire does not restrain; it accompanies. Each curve was chosen as one chooses words carefully, knowing that excess ruins truth. Coper is patient. It remembers every movement of the hand. It refuses haste.
At the top, glass flower and leaf, titanium-treated, carrying an aura-like glow, not mystical, not symbolic, simply physical: light altered by surface and heat. Growth is not decoration. Growth is consequence. The heart shines; something must follow.
We say our hearts break. I doubt this. A heart is not fragile in that way. What breaks is our access to its light. The illumination dims, temporarily, as all lights do, not from weakness, but from exhaustion. Yet light, once born, does not forget how to return.
My own heart shines upon my children like a lighthouse, constant, directional, indifferent to storms. At times it becomes spotlight, sudden and overwhelming, illuminating others whether they asked for it or not. I no longer apologise for this. I do not dim it. I surender to its nature and let it move as light always has.
We do not see light itself. We only perceive it when it strikes matter be that stone, metal or skin. Shadow, too, is only legible because light exists at all. This pendant is not belief. It is observation. It is the experience of wearing something that gathers brightnes, warms against the body, and reminds us that endurance is often quiet.
Made slowly.
Made honestly.
Made to shine without asking permission.
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