Descent into the Dark

No, not the blackout, although I’ll mention that too. This should have been posted a few weeks ago, on November 5^th, but one thing and another (the other one being the blackout) delayed it.

“Descent into the Dark Day” is the Monday after standard time resumes; the day that those who work a 9 to 5 schedule come out of work and find daylight almost gone. I’m not going into the arguments for and against saving daylight;  just remarking on the feeling of the darkness coming upon us sooner than we’re used to, and the hint of winter coming upon us sooner than we’d like.

A while ago, I quoted Archibald MacLeish’s “You, Andrew Marvell”, and since I like it so much I’ll quote it again:

To feel how swift how secretly

            “To feel how swift how secretly

            The shadow of the night comes on...”

The clock goes back on Saturday night/Sunday morning; and on Sunday I did notice every time I came out of my sage’s Study, through the Great Hall and into the Orangery, to look out over the Middle Yard, that the light looked different for the time of day.  But it’s on Monday, as every year, that it’s most striking.  The shadow of the night has gained a whole hour.  The cold is coming.  And even though decorations seem to appear earlier each year (not to my taste: see “Bringing in the Tree”), the lights of the holidays and the warmth of celebration seem far in the future.

Let no one think that sages are afraid of the dark.  But there’s always a sense of uneasiness about darkness where we’re used to seeing light. The dark school building, with the one red light on an upper floor seeming to make the darkness greater; the empty parking structure with a handful of dim bulbs. The building glimpsed from a moving car, somewhere between South Orange and Woodlawn.  It used to have candles on tables by the windows when I first saw it, years ago. A restaurant or bar?  But now the windows are dark.  Whatever conversation or conviviality used to be behind those windows is gone now.

And this November in particular, with most of Woodlawn in the dark, the early dusk is striking. Standing in the dark Orangery, across the darkness, with headlights and flashlights here and there, towards the distant lights of Norwood and Wakefield.  Walking the streets, which seem to be emptier of people and cars each night. 

            “And evening vanish and no more

            The low pale light across that land.”

 

 

 

 

 

(I had originally also mentioned that as we moved from October to November, we went from apple to pumpkin pie; but now we've moved on to mince, so I cut the pie section entirely)

 

 

 

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