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Category: light

Long-Day Season

Long-Day Season

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The headline caught my eye just in time to save the page of newsprint from becoming part of the fire-starting equipment last week at the late.  “Darkness creeping in as long-day season ends,” it said. 

Apparently Saturday, August 6 was the last day we’ll have 14 hours of sunlight until May 2023. It was the end of what the article called the “brightness quarter,” the 90 or so days of “solar beneficence and dazzle” we receive every May, June and July. 

It’s also the end of long twilights and drawn-out dawns, of slower living made possible by humid air and looser schedules. You might even say it’s the end of that feeling of limitlessness and possibility that summer brings. 

But that would be a gloomy thing to write on a spectacular late-summer morning, not in keeping with the bountiful daylight we still enjoy. 

Sunrise, Sunset

Sunrise, Sunset

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Time for another virtual vacation, this one to the banks of the Mekong River in Kampong Cham, Cambodia.

River of commerce and transportation, of fertility and growth. 

For me, though, it was a river of light — of sunrise and moon glow. 

The Prism

The Prism

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The prism is back, rescued from a dusty retreat on top of my dressing table, where it sat cupped and safe in an ornate candlestick since I moved it home at the start of the pandemic. 

That’s no place for a prism to be, I told myself, so I brought it into this room I’m making my own and hung it from the shade roller so it dances in the window. 

I’d almost forgotten about it when I walked into the room this morning, tea mug in hand. But there they were again, those welcome rainbows brightening my wall. 

The Lights

The Lights

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Of all the rituals and practices of the season — the gifts, the tree, the wreath — one means more to me every year. It’s the lights. 

It’s the candles in the windows, the spotlights on the door. It’s the stars on high and the luminaries down below. It’s the icicles hanging from eaves and tree limbs wound with blues, reds and greens. 

It’s these candles in the dark, because that’s what all of them are: our puny fists raised together against the dying of the light. 

Three Layers

Three Layers

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Three layers on today, plus wool socks and, at least for the moment, a hoodie over my head. It’s been months since I put on this many sweaters. Must be November!

Life without seasons holds no appeal, would be flat and boring. But as daylight shrinks and cold winds blow, I feel a shiver that comes not just from the cold upstairs room where I write these days. It comes, too, from the knowledge of what awaits us.

The leaves that glitter golden now will soon fall, turn brown, need raking. The winds will shudder in from the west, bowing the bamboo and penetrating even the hardy siding.

Even though I try to live in the moment, to take each challenge as it comes, it’s hard not to anticipate this perpetual, seasonal one, the dying of the light.

Steady and Clear

Steady and Clear

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When I woke at 5:40, morning had begun. It was seeping in around the window shades and filling the room not with light but with something that wasn’t darkness, either.  A vague shift of shadow, a sharper awareness of shapes.

I lay there a while, thinking it was still dark enough to sleep and that would also be a good way to start a Tuesday, also, perhaps better than jumping out of bed. But the morning won out. There was an insistence to it: Come on, get up. What are you waiting for?

Once downstairs, the morning fulfilled its promise, putting out a steady clear light from the east, which I stationed myself to watch by sitting in the big blue chair. It’s been a light fest ever since, a treat we can continue to enjoy as days lengthen and expand. 

A long winter, an even longer year. The light is welcome. 

Light-Seeking

Light-Seeking

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I feel like a winter plant, straining to soak up all the rays I can. I find the sunniest corner of the house, an upstairs bedroom perfectly positioned for the low winter star, and sit right where the rays hit the wall, propping myself up with pillows.

And speaking of plants, I’ve brought two of them up to this second-floor room. Like me they are leaning outward, just shy of contorting themselves, to soak up as much of the good stuff as possible. 

At nighttime, this room is illuminated, too. Turns out, the most brightly decorated cluster of houses in the neighborhood is best seen from this vantage point.  

To be here in the daytime is to be warmed; to be here after dark is to be comforted. 

Lit From Within

Lit From Within

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Walking after dark, which I’m increasingly more likely to do these days, gives me the chance to observe neighborhood houses lit from within. 

I see the glow of bedroom lamps behind drawn shades, the flicker of television screens in living rooms, the laser-like beam above a desk in front of a window. 

While some families draw every blind, others leave windows open for all to see — the fishbowl approach to living. I try to give everyone their privacy, but I can’t help but notice the lights … and the lives lived within them.

(The turkey teapot is out-of-season, but it’s the best lamplight picture I can find right now.)

Light Show

Light Show

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There is sunlight this morning! It matters more these days, the weather I wake up with. It will be with me all day, as opposed to office days, when I enter a box of glass and steel and often don’t leave it for nine hours.

But today the light pours into my house, and I know that in the morning it will come from the front of the house and in the afternoon from the rear. And as I sit here in the living room (one of my working spaces, being an office nomad of sorts these days) I can see both the front and back of the house in my peripheral vision.

It’s as if I can see the morning and the afternoon rolled up into one. A preview of the light show that is mine every sunny day, as long as I pay attention to it.

Late Light

Late Light

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After a late light evening, a late dark morning. The drive I normally do in full daylight I did today in the gloaming, with the glow of an almost-full moon to guide me.

It’s no matter. I’ve experienced this enough by now to expect the shift and roll with it. The missing hour of sleep is another issue. In my experience once you lose it you seldom get it back. The long catch-up snoozes do little to erase the deficit.

Nevertheless, I look forward to acclimating soon. I want to be awake and alert to enjoy the endless afternoons, the dusks that go on forever, the sense of possibility that late light can bring.