We are Ibsen's Ghosts. Pitifully afraid of light.

GHOSTS.  Henrik Ibsen wrote in Act 2: "I almost think we're all of us Ghosts. ... It's not only what we have invited from our father and mother that walks in us. It's all sorts of dead ideas, and lifeless old beliefs, and so forth. They have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same, and we can't get rid of them. Whenever I take up a newspaper, I seem to see Ghosts gliding between the lines. There must be Ghosts all the country over, as thick as the sand of the sea. And then we are, one and all, so pitifully afraid of the light."

Night light, pollution of the night sky

I remember looking up and seeing Sputnik. In 1957, I was in Tumichucua, and there were no lights, no adjacent sky glow or light pollution. One night we set up a camp-lamp (with kerozene under pressure fueling a glowing silk mantle that quite rapidly tore) behind a white sheet of tucuyo to catch insects. Bugs would come to the light, get disoriented and slide down the tucuyo into the catch basin or our nets.

It occurs to me that bugs must do the same to every "night light" in the world -- circle, get disoriented, and then weaken and die. Every city, every street light, must decimate the insect population.

I have hunted birds by shining a bright flash light at them. They wake up and stare and the light, unable to move, fixated by the light. I have heard that birds migrate at night. I wonder if the illuminations pointed into the sky from the increasingly urban planet disturb their migrations.

Full sunlight on a clear day has an intensity of about 10,000 foot-candles. City streets at night are typically lit to about 1.5 foot-candles, or 750 times brighter than moonlight. Everything that sees at night, or is hatched or flying by, must be disturbed by the UN-dark, the light pollution of our night.

As the sun sets, I still look for a place to lay my head and sleep. None of the things done at night, the melatonin-challenged activities, make much sense if we are not engaged in actual war or bank robbery. And even then.

My wife loves cats and jellyfish and light.

My wife loves cats and jellyfish and light. July 31, 2007

We live with three laughing cats. Well, smiling cats, not quite laughing. I have not actually heard them chuckle, but it's as close as cat-belly gets. They smile because of Rebecca's jokes and attention to comforting details. Each cat wears two whiskered jewels above their smiling jaws. These jewels are the pigmented choroid coat of their eyes, the iridescent tapetum which gathers the palest scatters of light and communicates its shapes to the relatively enormous medula oblongata of felinity. Of course, with all these collected flickers of light, the cats cannot discern the details next to them. They need to be touched, and to hear the soft mouse-munch bird-flutter kitty-food noises which are of interest to cats. And they need to hear Rebecca's voice in order to make sense of this habitat: The way she loves them and the light.

We visited an aquarium by the sea. Rebecca stood in amazement as she beheld behind glass an armada of jellyfish gently pulsing. Their many eyes were hung on streamers, all keenly observing the details of the dangle, while at the same time gathering the scatters of light under swimming waves. Here were creatures with really no brain at all, but with perfect eyes, and some part of their tented tendrils, the persistent grace part, the hydrozoan direction toward light indifferent to fate and the tides, that part, shared an understanding with Rebecca even without her touch. There was the annointing love of the luminous to which they gently aspire.

My life is shared with Rebecca. With her, even though I am without perfect eyes, and without much light, I am able to make sense of this habitat, and as close as my belly gets, I laugh at fate, and even tides. Even...tides.