Light and dark -
In "This Cold Heaven, Seven Seasons in Greenland," Gretel Elhrich
writes on February 2nd as the sun is beginning to return to the
darkness of Greenland.
"The sun is an eye. Its coming means that the
boulder rolls away from the front of the cave and we are set free. Yet
I am still night-foundered, blind so much of the time.
Later. I'm done with daylight. It reeks
of carbonized toast crumbs left behind after breakfast, of the kind of
bright decor that hides a congenital blindness to what is real.
Today in my house, with no lights, no water, only a view of the
darkness outside from the darkness within, from the unlighted room of
the mind and the unheated room of the heart, I know that what is real
only comes together in darkness, under the proscenium of night's gaunt
hood.
It also occurs to me that the real and the imagined
have long since fused here. Truths are relative to the
imagination that invents them. It's not the content of experience that
we end up with, but the structure of how we know something.
In the next few days there is more daylight, three
or four hours at least. Not bright, but enough to read by -
that has become my measuring stick. Tomorrow the sun will peep
over the ridge, then disappear. Now I don't want it to
come. I've grown accustomed to the privacy and waywardness
of night. In daylight all recognitions turn out to be
misconceptions. During one of my naps I dream that I can hear the
sun beating behind the rocky peninsula like an expectant heart."
I consider this. I am grateful for this day of darkness. I
stretched it on my own loom today, and reveled in it, and tomorrow I
will revel in the return of the light.
writes on February 2nd as the sun is beginning to return to the
darkness of Greenland.
"The sun is an eye. Its coming means that the
boulder rolls away from the front of the cave and we are set free. Yet
I am still night-foundered, blind so much of the time.
Later. I'm done with daylight. It reeks
of carbonized toast crumbs left behind after breakfast, of the kind of
bright decor that hides a congenital blindness to what is real.
Today in my house, with no lights, no water, only a view of the
darkness outside from the darkness within, from the unlighted room of
the mind and the unheated room of the heart, I know that what is real
only comes together in darkness, under the proscenium of night's gaunt
hood.
It also occurs to me that the real and the imagined
have long since fused here. Truths are relative to the
imagination that invents them. It's not the content of experience that
we end up with, but the structure of how we know something.
In the next few days there is more daylight, three
or four hours at least. Not bright, but enough to read by -
that has become my measuring stick. Tomorrow the sun will peep
over the ridge, then disappear. Now I don't want it to
come. I've grown accustomed to the privacy and waywardness
of night. In daylight all recognitions turn out to be
misconceptions. During one of my naps I dream that I can hear the
sun beating behind the rocky peninsula like an expectant heart."
I consider this. I am grateful for this day of darkness. I
stretched it on my own loom today, and reveled in it, and tomorrow I
will revel in the return of the light.