Missing Absence

Each and every time I make it past the city's paved borders and into fields, forests and mountains, I'm shocked to discover that I've forgotten what silence is; what darkness is; in many ways, what absence is. The same flood of pleasant and empty memories; the same simultaneous familiarity, novelty; the same acceptance that the knowledge will not last, all befall me.

I do not experience silence here, never darkness. Even at my most sedate, sleeping soundly through the night, I am bombarded with far-less-than-ambient sound; my loft is bright enough to easily expose photographs (sans tripod). Creeping in through poorly veiled windows and from pin-prick LEDs, light and the information it often conveys breach what should be as black and silent as space. Sodium-vapor street lamps, a red digital alarm clock, snoring white Apple LEDs, headlights panning across our panes, 6 faint green OLEDs on 6 black boxes, the occasional blink from the smoke detector, the occasional blink from the carbon monoxide detector, and the constant orange sky on any day not crushed under a high pressure system; all conspire to extend my hours of stimulation into a space once reserved for reflection and rest.

With life this full, saturated by employment and pleasure (both now augmented by always-on media appliances), I'm comforted to know that many like myself are beginning to ask: Why? What are the consequences of such toil? What does it mean that I find the silence of the rural landscape disconcerting, that I wake up in the night to check email, feeds and Bit Torrent? How much emptiness, absence is necessary for peace, introspection and innovation? How has our abandonment of the 12 -hour day for the 24 advanced us? Has it? Will we fall prey to the voracity of our collective appetite? Have we?

Thoughts:

The Beneficial Powers of Darkness by Hugh Wilson via Circadiana
Quitting the Paint Factory by Mark Slouka via Heather