I used to build stained glass panels. This is one of them, assembled many years ago when I was just learning. I took lessons in a studio alongside other students who got their designs from pattern books and made panels of mermaids and angel fish and flowers and smiling suns.
This design was my take on a smiling sun. It is not a good smile. I was not in a good place. Around that time, I'd been reading a book of science fiction short stories entitled "Tomorrow Lies in Ambush." That's about how I felt about life right then.
I'm better now, I swear. Figured out that everything happening around me was not under my control; I could do what I could do, and no more. But at the time my feelings of daily uncertainty, even dread, inspired that panel. "Yes, a new day has come," the crazy sun seems to say. "And it doesn't like you…"
The crazy sun hangs in the middle of our living/dining space as a sort of room divider. Space in an exterior window would show it to better effect: but first, it's too wide for our windows; and second, I dare not. At night in a window, with the room lights shining behind it, the panel projects malevolent joy down the street with the power of a searchlight. Somebody might file a complaint — with a brick.
I still like the crazy sun panel. It is an opposing argument to cultural stories that lull us into complacency, tell us that the world will always be on the side of those who work hard and do their jobs. Maybe once, if you were the right color and sex. Not anymore; the crazy sun laughs in your face.
I'll tell you this, though: if I live long enough to see a free and equal society where the mass of men and women do not live in insecurity and fear, I will throw a party. I'll explain to my guests what the crazy sun panel means, and why its message is obsolete — one hopes, for a very long time to come.
And then I'll don protective clothing and goggles and informally disassemble the thing with snippers and a big mallet. We'll take the pieces and make a stained glass mosaic depicting a happy people dancing under a gentle sky.
Primitive magic is always the best kind.