I am blinded by the red glare of Austin, Texas gridlock. ... I'm rendered deaf by the cacophony of rattled and erratic heartbeats— each of them beating loudly in my ear like crickets in the night but sounding more like a crowded international city every day.

The light that I often invoke can be elusive. It is most assuredly *not in a car's break lights or an ill-timed traffic light. It’s the ethereal warmth of the moon in it’s fullest form. It’s the first break of dawn. It’s the unexpected glow from a fire fly in the early evening. The pulse of a life-affirming heartbeat from any living creature. A kitten on the internet. A kitten in real life. A botox filled marketing executive with a chipped nail before her big presentation. A ranting drunk in the bank lobby who just peed his pants, who might be a hobo but could also be a pillar of the community. We all have hard days, after all. The above-it-all barista who just got dumped by her aloof boyfriend and fails to see the irony. A pen of fighting roosters on the east side of town. The hipsters with neck tattoos and civil war beards eating local and organic and advertising their righteousness. The woman walking around with her cell phone stuck in her tits under her lululemon cami top and proud about it.

All these heartbeats… swirling this morning.. each in their own car.. driving single file to nowhere in the tyranny that is traffic. It’s unclear where they are headed.. but at this pace they might get there tomorrow, when they’ll wake up and do it again. …. go toward the light, ya’ll.