Thursday, October 15, 2015

October 15, 2015 - The Secret Night


I was struck with the yin/yang of this photo, with the brilliant light off to the left and the deep darkness off to the right.  The sun was low in the sky, and not long after this photo it dipped below the horizon.  When I snapped the picture, I thought it wasn’t going to be any good because all I could see on the right side of the tiny viewing screen was complete blackness.  It was only after I got home that I realized what I had found.

The stealth of the night as it stalks the day.

Perhaps it was complete blackness, but there was just enough light in the background to illuminate what shouldn’t have been illuminated.  The presence of the night was palpable, and it was bearing down upon what was left of the day like a huge rogue wave.  When we’re at that “between time,” the twilight, we are at neither day nor night.  We are poised on a threshold and can go either way:  into the light or into the darkness.  The spinning of the Earth usually makes that decision for us, and off we go blindly to wherever we’re sent.

But isn’t it interesting to know there’s a lot out there that we simply don’t see because we’re so busy chasing the sun disc?  The creatures of the night were on their way to stake their claim of the darkness.  I imagine they did not appreciate my having photographed their territory.  By morning, however, they will have disappeared, gone off chasing the moon in another direction, blinded by the swiftly approaching sun disc and unable to see the world of light.  The land will have flattened out again, the imposing wave of blackness just trees in the distance, and the secret world of the night will have disappeared once again.