Waking Up to Darkness
Last night I awoke to find that the power had gone out in the neighborhood. When I had gone downstairs and borrowed a flashlight, and lit candles near my bed, and when the fancies of terrorist attacks on our electrical grids had passed, I grew sleepy again. The rain had stopped—oh, probably hours ago; the streets outside were mostly dry, I had noted when I looked out my window. On the other side of a stand of trees and roofs, the hospital lights were the only ones shining that I could see; a solitary police car moved silently down our street below, swinging its bright lamp here and there, patrolling. I blew out the candles and went back to bed, and fell asleep in the unaccustomed darkness.
I sleep with a light on, all night. I have always slept with a light on, since I was a small child. I have been taught to be ashamed of it; even when nothing was said, I knew how to divine the pressed-lip impatience, the quick glance away, when I insist on not a night-light but a lamp, on, bright, and still, while I sleep. Less subtle were the exasperated complaints of my sister, with whom I shared a room, and who wanted to sleep when I wanted to read my way past my night-fears. Taught to be ashamed, I have compromised; I have settled for a night-light, or no light at all, when sleeping with others. I pretend to myself that I am comforted by the presence of friendly humanity. I put out of my mind the night I spent afraid of the blackness of my mother’s beautiful hair as she slept facing away from me. She had made her concession to my neediness; surely it was unworthy of me not to feel comforted—to see the darkness of her hair as the stage for some alien and skeletal malevolence that would surely make itself visible at any moment.
At night, whether there is light or darkness, there is always quiet. But the quality of that quiet changes when the light goes out. With the light on, the quiet is self-evident: it waits for nothing: the moments pass and they take nothing, they leave nothing behind. They are scarcely moments at all but a seamless, unmoved, whole; there is the lamp, and there is the room, and there is myself, falling asleep: world without end, amen.
With the light out, however, the quiet changes. It becomes a warped contiguity of waiting. Nothing happens, and then nothing happens, and then again, nothing happens; and I wish it would; and then I fear that I brought it on with wishing, whatever it is. Whatever unpleasant thing it is.
I would say it is worse to wake up in darkness than to go to sleep in it, except that after the first shock wears off, there is a certain matter-of-fact calm that flows in. Well, it’s dark. Now what do I do? When one wakes up in darkness, one skips over the small but monumental step of choosing to place one’s self in the formless hands of the grave.
I leave for work this morning, and I spy on my way out the door that the paper has come in already. It lies on the table in the dim dining room, and it is not at all difficult to make out the huge three-letter word that dominates the headline: WAR.
Well, it’s dark. Now what do I do?
I’m going out in broad daylight to stock up on candles.
Last night I awoke to find that the power had gone out in the neighborhood. When I had gone downstairs and borrowed a flashlight, and lit candles near my bed, and when the fancies of terrorist attacks on our electrical grids had passed, I grew sleepy again. The rain had stopped—oh, probably hours ago; the streets outside were mostly dry, I had noted when I looked out my window. On the other side of a stand of trees and roofs, the hospital lights were the only ones shining that I could see; a solitary police car moved silently down our street below, swinging its bright lamp here and there, patrolling. I blew out the candles and went back to bed, and fell asleep in the unaccustomed darkness.
I sleep with a light on, all night. I have always slept with a light on, since I was a small child. I have been taught to be ashamed of it; even when nothing was said, I knew how to divine the pressed-lip impatience, the quick glance away, when I insist on not a night-light but a lamp, on, bright, and still, while I sleep. Less subtle were the exasperated complaints of my sister, with whom I shared a room, and who wanted to sleep when I wanted to read my way past my night-fears. Taught to be ashamed, I have compromised; I have settled for a night-light, or no light at all, when sleeping with others. I pretend to myself that I am comforted by the presence of friendly humanity. I put out of my mind the night I spent afraid of the blackness of my mother’s beautiful hair as she slept facing away from me. She had made her concession to my neediness; surely it was unworthy of me not to feel comforted—to see the darkness of her hair as the stage for some alien and skeletal malevolence that would surely make itself visible at any moment.
At night, whether there is light or darkness, there is always quiet. But the quality of that quiet changes when the light goes out. With the light on, the quiet is self-evident: it waits for nothing: the moments pass and they take nothing, they leave nothing behind. They are scarcely moments at all but a seamless, unmoved, whole; there is the lamp, and there is the room, and there is myself, falling asleep: world without end, amen.
With the light out, however, the quiet changes. It becomes a warped contiguity of waiting. Nothing happens, and then nothing happens, and then again, nothing happens; and I wish it would; and then I fear that I brought it on with wishing, whatever it is. Whatever unpleasant thing it is.
I would say it is worse to wake up in darkness than to go to sleep in it, except that after the first shock wears off, there is a certain matter-of-fact calm that flows in. Well, it’s dark. Now what do I do? When one wakes up in darkness, one skips over the small but monumental step of choosing to place one’s self in the formless hands of the grave.
I leave for work this morning, and I spy on my way out the door that the paper has come in already. It lies on the table in the dim dining room, and it is not at all difficult to make out the huge three-letter word that dominates the headline: WAR.
Well, it’s dark. Now what do I do?
I’m going out in broad daylight to stock up on candles.
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