Those of you who have read the Emily books know of the "flash." The
"flash" was:
"It had always seemed to Emily, ever since she could remember, that she
was very, very near to a world of wonderful beauty. Between it and
herself hung only a thin curtain; she could never draw the curtain
aside--but sometimes, just for a moment, a wind fluttered it and then it
was as if she caught a glimpse of the enchanting realm beyond--only a
glimpse--and heard a note of unearthly music.
This moment came rarely--went swiftly, leaving her breathless with the
inexpressible delight of it. She could never recall it--never summon
it--never pretend it; but the wonder of it stayed with her for days. It
never came twice with the same thing. To-night the dark boughs against
that far-off sky had given it. It had come with a high, wild note of
wind in the night, with a shadow wave over a ripe field, with a greybird
lighting on her window-sill in a storm, with the singing of "Holy, holy,
holy" in church, with a glimpse of the kitchen fire when she had come
home on a dark autumn night, with the spirit-like blue of ice palms on a
twilit pane, with a felicitous new word when she was writing down a
"description" of something. And always when the flash came to her Emily
felt that life was a wonderful, mysterious thing of persistent beauty.
She scuttled back to the house in the hollow, through the gathering
twilight, all agog to get home and write down her "description" before
the memory picture of what she had seen grew a little blurred. She knew
just how she would begin it--the sentence seemed to shape itself in her
mind: "The hill called to me and something in me called back to it.'"
I seem to understand it, and that is somewhat what guides me to write.
What do the rest of you think?
