In The Yale Review, Lydia Davis writes about seeing the dark: Absolute, unbroken darkness feels like one massive, enveloping substance, though it is not a substance and is not palpable. It feels close to the face, right up against the face. We need some light—even the faintest light will do—to create a perception of dimensional space. When there is no light at all, I have no depth perception, and so the darkness seems to press up against me. When I look into the near-complete darkness in my darkened bedroom at night, I sometimes see stipples, or pixels, evenly spread through the space, overlaying the dim shapes of furniture and walls, and I think perhaps they are coming from my eyes themselves.
Your first paragraph - my experience at night at Fort Davis, a city with very low light pollution due to the presence there of the McDonald observatory. It is a spiritual experience in the modern context where most of us see lights everywhere, even at night.
Tempting,maybe, because it introduces sympathy, a meeting of like for like, as opposed to an isolated 'İ' (eye) that looks out on an alien, soulless world ?
You’re a master of this format. Intimidatingly so! Loving them, truly. This one got me thinking about a short story I wrote many moons ago, but never quite finished to my satisfaction. It describes a homeless man on the other side of his reason, who, in his despair, throws himself off Waterloo Bridge into a freezing Thames. The story describes the man’s experience of drowning in dark water with zero visibility. Without light and no perception of external reference points, his mind turns inwards, where it encounters a torrent of fragmented memories, clues as to the life the man had lived, which are projected into the darkness of the water, as if existing independently of his mind and belonging to the world he is about to leave behind for Hades. Perhaps I’ll give the story another look. Or not. Any how, cheers!
Your first paragraph - my experience at night at Fort Davis, a city with very low light pollution due to the presence there of the McDonald observatory. It is a spiritual experience in the modern context where most of us see lights everywhere, even at night.
Tempting,maybe, because it introduces sympathy, a meeting of like for like, as opposed to an isolated 'İ' (eye) that looks out on an alien, soulless world ?
You’re a master of this format. Intimidatingly so! Loving them, truly. This one got me thinking about a short story I wrote many moons ago, but never quite finished to my satisfaction. It describes a homeless man on the other side of his reason, who, in his despair, throws himself off Waterloo Bridge into a freezing Thames. The story describes the man’s experience of drowning in dark water with zero visibility. Without light and no perception of external reference points, his mind turns inwards, where it encounters a torrent of fragmented memories, clues as to the life the man had lived, which are projected into the darkness of the water, as if existing independently of his mind and belonging to the world he is about to leave behind for Hades. Perhaps I’ll give the story another look. Or not. Any how, cheers!
This made my day. Thank you! The story sounds powerful, but dark (pun intended).