Darkness

I miss darkness. I do not mean the darkness present in a soul that leads an individual to engagements in deeds nefarious. Nor do I refer to the dark night of the soul that denotes a hopelessness and profound sadness. And I do not mean the darkness that exists under the bed where monsters reside and from there threaten. Nor is this darkness a means of a frightened escape from the business and relations that are part of living in the well-lit outside. This darkness is not Prospero’s acceptance of Caliban: “This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine.” In Prospero’s abjuration of magic, he acknowledges the presence of the destructive within him. No, this darkness that I miss is not depression because save for episodes when I spend too much time reading the news or experiencing the troubled characters of loved ones, I am for the most part content, reside in some degree of peace, and remain active and sometimes even productive within the dark. And this darkness of which I speak does not shatter my quiet as does the darkness Dylan speaks of in “One Too Many Mornings.” This darkness is not the night suffered by Elie Wiesel in the camps. No, I miss the darkness of night when the world about me closes down, when the doors are shut and even locked. In this dark night curtains and shades are pulled shut and the noises of the street are silenced. This darkness makes the space for solitude I appreciate. 

            It is ironic for me that in our culture we value light over the dark: Dylan Thomas implores his dying father to “rage, rage against the dying of the light.” It is claimed that the light is where life happens and activity takes place. Daylight Saving Time increases the times of light of the day, and so there is more time to be about and doing busy. But for me there is a comfort and warmth in the solitude of darkness, and I look forward to wrapping myself in it as I would pull about me a welcome blanket. This darkness I enjoy is black and enveloping; I can stand and feel the ground but not see it; can hear the trees but not see them. Darkness excludes the messiness of the world, of the yellowed snow, the pot-holed streets, the noise of traffic and commerce. But not, of course, of memory. Standing outside the sky never ended and expanding universe sparkled.

            City lights disappear darkness and fade the moon and stars. In the absence of periodic blackouts, New York City where I lived for years doesn’t know darkness. It was and is, indeed, a city that never sleeps. And where I now live there are streetlamps that click on as the sun goes down; car headlights that speed along the streets; and store fronts that make the darkness invisible. Across the way from my present domicile, the front door entrance lights of neighbors remain on through neglect and the darkness of the night is banished. 

            I lived in a rural environment for almost three decades. The house sat atop a small rise and away from County Road D that ran below it. From the house traffic on the road could be heard and not seen. I could know the morning arrived at 5:30 am by the sound of an unseen car on the road. But when the dark arrived the noise was silenced and there was absolute silence. Even the airplanes overhead flew where they could not be heard. When first we moved into the home, there was only a single house in the vicinity accessed through a dark copse of woods. Buthe lights of that neighboring house could not be seen and the dark was undisturbed. When night would arrive we would settle in; even though we were together we were quiet and at peace . . . and if we looked out of the windows to our back yard there was nothing to see—except in the time of the full moon. The fields of corn across the way were lost in the dark.

            I know that the lights in our home were lit and in the dark that night made reading and study became possible, and I know that I am probably romanticizing the dark. Or maybe I just resent not the light but its ever presence. Sometimes I just want to see the stars.