The Light Bringer (original) (raw)
footpad 😴sleepy
March 28 2008, 01:33
One of my most visceral pet hates: lights that work on a motion detector.
I grew up in the country. Nowadays there are a lot of sodium streetlights in the sprawling town some miles away, but when I was a child it was dark at night. Under the broad-leafed trees that roofed the paths and lanes nearby, it was darker still. Walking home at night, the last few hundred yards of dirt road would be absolutely dark—a stifling, Stygian, panther blackness. I used to enjoy wandering in the dark, finding my way by touch and instinct and the feel of the track under my feet.
I love darkness. Night is the womb of becoming: it lulls, invigorates, refreshes, renews. I love its soft enfolding, its gentleness and its restfulness. I love feeling my other senses unfold as darkness curtails my vision. I love its discretion. While the world sleeps, I like to pass silently by—awake, unnoticed and unknown.
Which is why I so passionately hate those damn' motion-sensing lights that people mount on their houses, which ignite without warning, stabbing shards of light into the soft heart of my precious darkness. They destroy the integrity of the night and shatter its exquisite peace.
Still, they're not as bad as when people move to the middle of a gorgeous piece of open, dark countryside, then burn a 200-watt lamp outside their door all night every night. If they're so afraid of the dark, why don't they stay under the city streetlights where they belong?