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Saturday, November 2, 2024

On Light Pollution

 "And bending down besides the glowing bars

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face 'neath a cloud of stars" 

- Yeats 


When the first electronic lights were created, when people first began to build our molten cities of steel and glass and concrete, stripping our mountains bare of stone and our mother of bones... 

    When it was decided that the blood of electricity had to course through the veins of every dwelling, when the high-rises were built, that is when our species began to forget about God. A city sky-line is dark, with only the brightest and luckiest of stars being able to shine through, while every other star and story is kicked to the curb for the crime of daring. 

    I reject the phrase, "black as night!" 

    Cellphones and cameras never do it justice. How could they? How could you photograph creation, how could you compress light-years into pixels.  

    People were always meant to be in awe when we look up. The night sky was meant to terrify, to inspire, to fill us with a sense of giddy joy and wonder every time we stood in a clearing on a cloudless night and connected our eyes to the cosmos. For thousands of years, our proof of divinity, of beauty, was unavoidable from sundown to sunrise. Light pollution murdered our connection to creation, stabbed it in the back. 

    



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