Let There Be Darkness!

In gleaning words from old notebooks recently I came across an intriguing little tale I wrote at writers’ group way back in June 2017, using the prompt: In the sky there were no stars.

Seeing as the need for more generative darkness to counteract the distinct unenlightenment of our light-addicted culture has been an idea close to my heart for some time (see Endarkenment), I thought I would, after some extensive editing, share this story as one of possibility.

I preface it with this thought from a book I highly recommend:

Let there be darkness. 

The last truly revolutionary act left to human beings in the twenty-first century is to turn out the lights. Other acts are possible—acts we may call revolutionary—but they do not meet the criteria of the word as it must necessarily be interpreted today. Nothing short of turning out the lights will lead to an overturning of the endgame global system that now has us in its thrall. 

~ Clark Strand, Waking Up to the Dark: Ancient Wisdom for a Sleepless Age, 2015, pp. 50–51

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In The Sky There Are No Stars

In the sky there are no stars. Even the moon is dimmed to invisibility by the ubiquitous light which forces its way up and down and sideways into every alleyway, every crevice, every potential shadow. 

My grandmother told me about the stars. She said they were like tiny pinpricks of light shining through a dark blanket, but I struggled to imagine them, for I knew only light and could not picture dark. 

Darkness is banished. Darkness almost never was. Everything is white, bright, glaring. Even at night, light intrudes, piercing through the window, so that we are never free of it. When we sleep it passes through our eyelids and enters our dreams. We have no peace.

I say we, but wonder sometimes if others think as I do, or if it is only me. 

Everyone is told, from the moment we begin to understand words, that it is the light that sustains us, that all that matters is its radiance. We are told to shun shadows, and never—but never!—to leave the safe confines of the constantly floodlit city, barricaded by a high white wall. We are told that on the other side there is nothing, and with light blinding our eyes we cannot see beyond at all. 

Though how is it possible that the world ends on the other side of a wall? And has anyone seen past it?

Such thoughts are dangerous, and I’ve been clipped round the ears more than once for staring into space, for imagining, for daring to contradict what I have been taught. Why should I even think of what is beyond the light? And why should such a word as escape come to mind? What do I need to escape from? Don’t we have all we need here in the City of Light?

It’s hard to explain these blasphemous thoughts. I want to call them dark, but since I don’t know what dark is, I can’t be sure of that word’s accuracy. Still, they remain in my mind, unknown ideas, impossible speculations, and I can’t shift them. 

I decided I had to try to find the darkness, for I believe what my grandmother told me about the stars: that they are still there, always there, behind the light.

Though in an eternally lit place where eyes can always see, it is not so easy to keep secrets, to do things undetected, but I made what preparations I could. I clothed myself in white, camouflaged myself with the only world I knew. I crept soundlessly and unseen to the foot of the wall, and began to climb the rough whitewashed stones. Perhaps they never expected anyone to try it, perhaps it had always been this easy. I pulled myself to the top, and over, and jumped down to the strange, unlighted earth on the other side. 

Now I was finally beyond all sight, free to discover the dark, to find and uncover the shrouded stars.

An illustration by Will Lytle, from Waking Up to The Dark