

Let there be light!

For a while I used to annoy my mom, whenever she asked me to turn on the light by saying “Fiat Lux” while doing it. Anyway..

Other than my twerpy teen self, moving right along,

Yesterday I indulged in an annual fun trip and Dan and I went to the botanic gardens to see blossoms of light, their winter illumination show.

First, I must now be full blown introvert. Well, I think I always was, because first week of school used to exhaust me so much I slept all the time I wasn’t in school, but I was more used to enduring human contact than now that I’m a bummish writer who spends most of her time in her office with imaginary friends.

I found I enjoyed the light show much less this year when it was warm and really busy than last year, when it was bitter cold, and the gardens were — therefore — almost empty.

But all the same, it’s a beautiful experience, all that light, in the darkness of mid-winter, and it is in many ways amazing.

Amazing?

Well, when i was a kid, if you could have transported 10 year old Sarah there, she’d never have wanted to leave. You might have to knock her out to drag her away.

I remember being starved for light.

Sure, we had electricity, but it mostly amounted to either a light in the middle of the ceiling, lost in a vast realm of shadows, or little side lamps that put out as much light as a night light.

I remember walking through the dark to my grandmother’s house, and CRAVING light.

I remember dad taking me to the lighting of the lights in downtown Porto and thinking it was magical (and by our standards it wasn’t lit up at all.)

Light.

You usually can see the Hoyt house from space.

I have a tendency to turn on every light, and not want to turn them off.

At this season, I could just drive around the most gaudy neighborhoods and revel. Too much is not enough. Give me light.

In the whole extent of mankind, we are so incredibly fortunate to live now, when we have the technology and the the wealth to turn night into day, to fill the darkness with dazzling light.

Yes, I do understand “light pollution” can keep you from seeing the stars, though calling it pollution is silly. It’s not like it sticks around when the source is turned off.

But if you really crave seeing the stars either move out in the middle of nowhere, or drive there now and then. Don’t try to make everyone keep in the dark for your benefit.

As for “earth hour” when you turn off every light, don’t talk to me about that abomination. These people’s ancestors’ who huddled in the dark waiting for day break would slap the ignorant idiots for heresy.

Light IS civilization. Arguably we became modern humans once we controlled fire, once we came near the fire. Even our domestication of animals like the cat, can be described as “they came close to the human fire.”

Those people who hate light, hate civilization. And where they get to rule, you get the dark poverty of North Korea.

While I live, I’ll strive to live in the light, to make light (real and metaphorical) and to carry light with me.

For each of us, and for our species as a whole, it will be dark enough in the grave.

While we live, let’s live in light.

Fiat Lux.