The night cometh, when no man can work, says
John. But
how long has this been
true? We as a species have
sought the light, and where there is
none, we have
fought for its
appearance. Slowly,
we are driving back the night.
Light
after dark is more
personal. The
sun in the sky shines over us all. But at night, the
small flame of a
candle illuminates only a
small sphere. everything else is the
darkness, the
unknown. It seems
only natural that we would
huddle around such
motes,
carry them with us, let the
feeble flame shield us from the
terrors of the night.
How much of our best work has been done
after dark? A
candle or
lantern lights the desk of a
writer or
revolutionary, long after the
turning of the earth would have blocked the
sun's light from
gracing the whole room. And perhaps that
solitary light is the
inspiration. Like the
writer, the light is
alone; through the work, the writer may bring a light of a
different sort to the rest of the world, to chase away the
dark when the great
light in the sky is no longer there to guide us.
Years ago we were driving down a
side road within the
forests of
northern Arizona, not long past
midnight. The driver soundlessly pulled to the
side of the road, and we all got out. The
stars were nothing like we had seen before, at least not the
two of us raised well within the limits of one of the world's
famously brighter cities. we stood there for
hours, shivering in the
chill October weather, fascinated.
Perhaps one of our long-distant
ancestors stood, similarly
rapt,
spellbound by the millions of tiny lights that seemed to hang from the
domed curtain overhead, or the
strange cloudlike trail that passed among them.
The shadows
cast by the small
glow of the lights we carry can be as
amazing as the lights themselves. A
common trick is to hold a
flashlight under one's
chin; the shadows thrown
distort the face into a monstrous
visage; the
familiarity is still there, but it is joined with the
unknown, with the strangeness of the dark, that it is perhaps made even more
terrifying.
It is
interesting to see what someone chooses to
illuminate at night. walk down a
residential street one night. the lights you see pick out what is
important. "
You need to look at me", say these lights. Everything else is
cast into the void.
They are unimportant; you do not need to see them. Even in
dim lighting, brighter light is used to
highlight (
there, even in the word itself) the important and diminish the
mundane.
There is a strange
blue glow that comes out of the
window sometimes. It is the
electric light of the
television. we use the
powers of light and shadow to our own advantage here. the
eye is drawn to the only light in the room, the flickering
paths traced by the
electrons across the screen. The small details of the
room are obscured by shadow, and we instead find ourselves drawn into the scene,
forgetting where we are.
The
interface between light and dark is far more
sharply defined at night. We are not
bathed in a glow coming from
everywhere at once; we are held instead in small
puddles. We can clearly see that
here light ends and there darkness begins. And in that there is
beauty. in that there is
control.
for janey