This is the
second installment of my little “Changing Perspectives” series. If you read the first post, you know that I
talked a little bit about common connotations of the words “black” and “white”,
and how those connotations might be harmful.
The topic for this post, “Night and Day” (mainly focusing on
the “Night” part), certainly sounds very similar, but, while I think its
starting place has parallels with the previous post, it ends up moving off in
quite a different direction…
Now it is the time of
night
That the graves, all
gaping wide,
Every one lets forth
its sprite,
In the church-way
paths to glide
- Robin Goodfellow (aka Puck)
A
Midsummer Night’s Dream, by William Shakespeare
I counsel you by way of caution to forbear
from crossing the moor in those dark hours when the powers of evil are exalted.
- Sir Hugo Baskerville, in a
letter to his sons
from The
Hound of the Baskervilles, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
I had an
interesting relationship with the night when I was a little kid. I remember trying, however I could, to figure
out ways of pushing back the inevitable end of each day known as “bedtime”. To this day, I continue to stay awake deep
into the night (and the early hours of the morning). But, I remember a few instances during my
early years when I was seriously afraid of the dark, afraid of being alone in
my bedroom, afraid to close my eyes.
This usually occurred after watching a particularly scary movie (for
example, when I was very young, I’m pretty sure I thought Ghostbusters II was really
creepy – only years later did I realize that it’s supposed to be funny, when I
started actually listening to the dialog and not focusing all my attention on
that creepy picture of a very angry-looking medieval guy). Anyway, during those times, I remember buying
into the whole idea that night was the realm of scary things, of demons,
goblins, ghosts, and gremlins, and that the morning sun would send all of these
evil beasts running for cover and wash away our fears.
Why does the
night get this less-than-savory reputation?
Why are the powers of evil supposedly exalted during these dark hours? My guess is that it has something to do with
our difficulty seeing at night. Without
that huge light bulb shining above in the sky, our vision becomes pretty
limited. Even on clear nights, with a
full moon, we lose quite a bit of the depth of that particular sense. The myriad colors of our waking world fade
into varying shades of gray, and objects that would be simple to identify
during daylight can appear distorted, and potentially ominous. Perhaps the night brings to light a subtle
fear of the unknown. “I’m not completely
sure what that tall, dark object is over there, and I have to say that I’m a
little afraid of it. Perhaps it’s just a
tree, swaying in the breeze, or perhaps it’s something a bit more sinister…” We’re not sure what’s out there, what’s
coming, what’s up ahead, and that uncertainty can be a little frightening.
And yet, for
the most part, I experience the night as something beautifully different than
the day, as something that feels almost magical. Indeed, literature does not only highlight
the seemingly evil aspects of the evening.
Some works are much more balanced in their portrayal of the magic that
takes place in the darkness. Take those
poetic lines from A Midsummer Night’s
Dream, which began this post. The
lines that immediately follow put different magical creatures on display, ones
who are a bit more benevolent (although, if you know the play, they also enjoy jokes
at others’ expense from time to time…)
And we fairies, that do
run
By the triple Hecate’s
team
From the presence of
the sun,
Following darkness
like a dream,
Now are frolic; not a
mouse
Shall disturb this
hallow’d house
When I say
that night is almost magical, it’s important to know that I’m not referring to
the nightlife one might experience in a big city. I’m talking about night out in the country,
when the world goes to sleep, when I feel the cool, refreshing evening breeze blowing
across my face and through the leaves on nearby trees, when I hear the ensemble
of insects and other night-time creatures serenading the darkness, when I smell
the grass beneath my feet, the grass that, perhaps, seems a bit more welcoming
at this hour, when the sun is gone and the warmth of another life is close at
hand. (Admittedly, it’s probably much
easier to enjoy the night and feel its beauty when one lives in a place where
every night throughout the year is basically a midsummer night.) It’s true that our sense of sight is hindered
during these hours, but our other senses can become heightened as we accept
that fact. The past few nights, I have
sat on the floor in silence, with my eyes closed, and have marveled at the
music all around me, music that often goes unnoticed when other thoughts, and
other sights, are flying through my mind.
But our
sight is not completely gone. Perhaps the
most beautiful part of the night, for me, is the starry sky above. I also like looking at the moon, but
sometimes I prefer the nights when the moon does not make an appearance, when
the only lights in the sky are those distant suns, burning billions of miles
away. Some nights in Kalisizo,
especially when the power is off, I can look up in the sky and see, in between
the bright stars that I recognize, faint ones that I never even knew
existed. This little experience reminds
me that, beyond these visible lights, there are millions more out there
somewhere in the vast expanse. Stars
lead us to remember the grandeur of the universe, and they help us to recognize
that this place we occupy is only an incredibly small corner of an infinitely
larger existence. Stars might even
suggest to us our own seeming insignificance in this great cosmic reality, and
yet, they might also help us to realize our potential to be more than what we
are.
When I stand outside and lift my
eyes to the sky, I feel, and I would guess that many of us feel, drawn to the
stars. For some of us, that draw might
be related to scientific exploration and discovery, and, for some of us, it
might be related to philosophical contemplation. In any case, I think it always connects to an
innate desire to know more about ourselves, to learn more about our place in
the universe, and perhaps it even relates to an existential connection with the
stars themselves. In other words, by
knowing more about those stars and what they are, we might be able to learn
something about ourselves.
Several
people have made the point that we are more closely related to stars than we
might at first think. If we look at the
sun, and then look at a person, it’s pretty easy to tell that they are very
different things, right? Well, if we
look at it from a different perspective, we find that we can actually trace our
origins back to the stars. (Don’t worry,
I’m not about to go off into one of those theories about aliens coming to Earth
and “planting” us here.) Here’s a short
excerpt from a book called The Last Hours
of Ancient Sunlight, by Thom Hartmann:
“This is where all the matter
of our world (except hydrogen) came from: it was created in the heart of a
star. Not only that, the star had to die
for those elements to reach us.”
The
point Hartmann makes is that, early on in the life of the universe, we
basically had a lot of subatomic particles, which eventually combined into
hydrogen atoms. Those atoms of hydrogen
came together, as a result of gravity, to form clouds that eventually collapsed
into stars, which are fueled by nuclear fusion.
Nuclear fusion reactions are ones in which smaller atoms (hydrogen) fuse
together to create larger atoms (helium).
This type of reaction gives off a ton of energy, which is why the sun is
so hot and can supply the earth with so much radiant energy. Anyway, as stars age, larger and larger atoms
are formed (carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, calcium, iron, etc…), and, when a star
finally dies, those various elements shoot out to find a new home. In other words, the building blocks of all
life on this planet were born in some distant star, long ago and far away.
So, in the
middle of the night, we look up to those stars, and we feel a connection. We feel that there is more to us, and more to
the universe around us, than we can see with our eyes, and we search for that
thing which we feel but cannot yet pinpoint.
We are stardust, we are golden,
And we’ve got to get
ourselves back to the garden
Joni
Mitchell, “Woodstock”
I’m planning to go a little deeper into this whole idea of our connection to the stars in my next post. Tune in next time…
P.S. – In fairness
to other viewpoints on the concept of us as stardust, I will say that, in an
episode of The West Wing, a NASA scientist is explaining the origin of the
elements that make us up and comments, “I guess Joni Mitchell was right. We are stardust,” to which Josh Lyman
replies, “Or, put another way, nuclear waste.”
