NIGHT
Once upon a time, night was night. The day’s work gave way to twilight and nightfall, and activity retreated before drowsiness and sleep. Light of any kind was hard to come by, except in the sepia tones of wax or whale oil, or the spent energy of a dying cooking fire.
That has not been the case in America for a century. Like all the technologies of the Industrial Revolution, electric light has blurred the old distinctions. Brilliantly lit by stands of flood lamps, road crews work as if in the middle of the day. Light pours down on the city from the first moments of dusk, raking our experience with harsh, searching intrusiveness. Sometimes it feels less like light than the bony fingers of state surveillance, enforced by cameras hidden from sight.
This is not the light of torch-lit festivals or fireworks in a summer sky. Very occasionally, you will see a quieter light in the vernacular display of the December holidays. That, or a block party strung with light bulbs. But much more often, it’s the full blast of sodium. This is the light of parking lots, charged particles of vapor, designed to ward off damage or intrusion. It demarcates what would otherwise be knitted together by darkness. It erases shadow, obliterates nuance, and replaces it with hard-edged, painful clarity.
