The rules with the Soap Box Derby were very specific about building your own car, and this one I built with my own design for the 'perfect' racer.  Dad built houses and had great power tools like a band saw which I used to cut plywood strips between the bulkheads of my racer, using a belt sander to even out the sides. It was a laborious way to build weight into a small car, but it won best design out of 52 race cars.

Local champs from all over the world raced in the nationals at Akron Ohio.  Big stars like Rock Hudson and Paul Anka walked among all the champs at the camp called 'Derby Town'. I even interviewed Paul Anka with a miniature reel-to-reel tape recorder, one of the first hand-held recorders, that I won in the Troy race. All the champs wore beanies and traded their hometown champ buttons. I left with a beanie full of buttons.

I only won my first heat at Akron. Being in a growth spurt, I built the car too small, and stuck out too much (win drag).  The weight wasn't close enough to the 250 pound limit (gravity deficit), and the center of gravity between wheels was off the optimum, 3 inches front of center. But what an experience that was!

For years afterwards, I rode in Troy's 4th of July parade, the morning of the Big Race, sitting up on the back of a new Corvette convertible.  Each year another champ would ride in another new Corvette, waving to future champs.

It all gave me a big head until the eighth grade when I was hit by a car on my bicycle while speeding through downtown Troy to get to school on time.  That was before helmets, and the skull fracture and brain concussion left me with amnesia for a week as I lay watching the ceiling sponge in and out of focus.  I was never quite right in the head after that... not for a long time.  But thanks to the neuroplasticity of the brain, so well documented now, I created new neural pathways in my left brain to compensate for the primary damage to my right hemisphere.

We shape our neural networks
and then they shape us.

The shock was like a near-death experience when the brain reboots in a way that contemporary science is only beginning to grasp. In my case, my left brain somehow became more dominant in "geek  mode" (linear-visual thinking) to compensate for spectral autism in the "right brain" (nonlinear-audio feelings). My emotional maturity was stunted, but fortunately, I finished the year winning the junior high chess tournament and scored the highest on the final 8th grade science exam. 

My parents must have thought I had some kind of gift because they enrolled me in the Dayton Art Institute art classes on Saturdays.  Each week I went with a kid who had real art talent. Michael later became a professor of Art at Ohio University. But I felt like a geek out of his element. I had always been good at paint-by-numbers and painting model cars and airplanes, but painting a bowl of fruit wasn't working. I was a frustrated artist.

I could make a point about kids having different spectral consciousness gifts, but 'light language' as a metaphor for spectral gifts and talents has been dimly framed by contemporary focus on the negative 'spectral autism' rather than positive spectral gifts of an enlightened nature. As long as the medical system focuses more on pathology than wellness, we'll get more pathology than wellness, but I digress.

Painting with light gave me a way to 'process' reality from behind a camera and then in a darkroom. Socially awkward and painfully shy, I learned to see all over again with photography in my senior year at Troy High School.  Appointed to the high school annual staff, I created a role for myself as school photographer, building a photo-lab in a big closet beside the chemistry room.

As a left-brain geek "BC" (Before Computers), the photomechanical process fascinated me. In the process, I learned to capture special moments with 'light', processing that moment well, and expressing my artistic intentions through photography.

Steve Rhodes catching a touchdown pass;
page 91 of Troy High's 1967 Yearbook.

The language of light became a second language to me, learning to see all over again as I processed negatives into positives, free-lancing in photography in college and as a beach photographer at Daytona Beach, working in full color from then on.  

 
So focus on what's important.
 Capture the memorable times.
     Develop negatives into positives.
    And keep taking your best shot.
 Or as the Melanesian folk say:
 "We have no art; we do every
thing as well as we can." 

The more I learned to 'paint with light', the more I saw parallels between the photo-mechanical process of 'light control' and the actual processes of consciousness at the quintessential foundation of 'self-governance'.  Not just 'correct' exposure and development from negative to positive, but also pure intention for composition and focus throughout this process.

This discipline involves technical mastery that corresponds to mental mastery; awareness of the processes of consciousness whereby we are fully 'present' (prescient) and 'get the picture' (objective reality). 

Creating a 'perfect picture' is thus a perceptual process of co-creation with light language. It's a process of creating patterns of perfection in one's own mind; the 'art' of seeing perfection to make it so.

The 'visionary arts' for creative mastery correlate
exquisitely with image-making skills.

‘Brightness control’ defines that picture in every stage of its creation and ‘processing’ from conception to ‘exposure’ of the negative, and then, processing of a 'positive print' via good 'exposure' and its development. Underexposure or overdevelopment in any phase of the process causes loss of details in the highlights and shadow areas.

This is the technical nature of 'painting with light'
 as corresponds to processes of consciousness.

This process is the essence of problem-solving that begins with a good definition of the problem for good processing of a solution that is realistic. Get the picture?

We shape our worldview, and then that worldview shapes us. The whole picture of one's 'reality' is how we see things. We all have 'visionary' capabilities', and an enlightened civilization would culture 'light language' from childhood.

If 'art' is doing as well as you can...
(pure intention)
  and if we all can naturally do better
 to the extent that we know better
(focus attention)
than 'science' is to know how
'co-Creation' actually works.
(conscious ascension)

Painting with light is another metaphor for 'Co-Creation with Creator' in 'The Field' of Creation. To understand 'The Field' is to know the order of the universe as the 'Kingdom of Heaven' (Unified Source Field) within you.

Each moment, we paint the 'brainscape canvas' (holodeck between the ears) with the light of consciousness, and that 'painting' is framed by the 'Big Picture' of all previous 'paintings' in your 'memory body' (soul record). As we become more conscious of HOW we are conscious with the language of light-as-consciousness, the genesis of Conscience naturally matures.

We are what we believe, think, feel and do,
HAVING BECOME
what we believed, thought, felt and did.

Ultimately, in the larger scheme of soul evolution, this 'painting' involves and evolves our individual and collective 'Conscience' with a capital 'C' as with 'Co-Creation' in the image and likeness of the 'Creator' that some call 'God' or 'Higher Power' or Divine Love'.

Conscious evolution is thus a process of 'Co-Creation' as
painting with patterns of perfection in 'The Field'
 either with the visual arts or with music or with both.

Gregg Braden calls 'The Field' the 'Divine Matrix', and the prescience he brings to this subject in his video at 'The Field' is extraordinary, including the many names for the 'Quantum Source Field' that are defining and refining the 'Aquarian Frequency Shift':

Indigenous cultures worldwide have understood
The Field as the "web of life" :
 
"Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it.
Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself."
~ Chief Seattle

Liberating "the web" with social Conscience in our local/global social networks begins with enlightenment regarding the 'whole truth' of our individual and collective relationship with 'The Field'. This is, in fact, the initiation of the Aquarian Dispensation with the language of light for painting with light in our local and global social networks.

The dream of a global golden age is rapidly awakening in the web of consciousness that our new instant-everywhere and interactive Net reality has created. And in the process of humanity's conscious evolution revolution Revelations, the accelerated ascent of our Net reality with a unity-in-diversity Conscience is a defining moment for global enlightenment.

Personally, I dream of international summer retreats for kids worldwide who want to learn how to paint with light, using the light tools that are shaping social Conscience with more light.  The leaders of tomorrow will be the communicators who can create online videos that speak for themselves. And the same light language that shapes that communication process corresponds to the cyberEthics e-valuation criteria that will involve and evolve social Conscience in our ubiquitous social networksfor the Family of Man in our global village.

We've got a perfect place for this near Chico Hot Springs just north of the North Gate of Yellowstone Park.  Classes in the morning could be balanced with wilderness trips in the afternoon, ranging from white water rafting to hikes up Emigrant Peak or around the Big Park. Country waltz and swing dancing could nurture relationship skills that balance high tech with the 'high touch'. Many kids would thrive in such an environment, perhaps even learning to see again in a more enlightened way.

See: WildWestComputerCamp.com

  In my heart of hearts I know that our world will become a
    more enlightened place when the Currency of Conscience
 becomes the currency of the realm. And as that process
  progresses, those who were hoarding money and power
 will naturally invest in enterprises that culture civilization
 with more light of a true self-elevation (salvation) nature.

    
MetaPhysician