This past Sunday, I changed the time of my piano class, because my mother wanted me to come with her to attend a seminar being held locally. The seminar was about getting into one of those great Ivy League colleges, which is what most of the seminars I have heard of seem to be about. I was not impressed by similar seminars I had attended in the past (though my experience in this is certainly not vast; I have only been to a few “How to get into college!” seminars) and so I was very reluctant to go…I thought it would be a hassle to have to change the time of my piano lesson. I don’t like to have my piano class later in the day because I think that my teacher in general feels more benevolent in the morning. (But my dad argued that she should be talkative in the evening because she would get lonely in the nighttime. Hmm, personally, I think by the end of the day she would be tired of teaching and would not be in the mood for side conversation.)
The lesson was changed to the evening, 7:45 pm. At the end of the class, I exited my teacher’s apartment and noticed that there were some bugs trying to get close to the light next to her door. It seems that insects, particularly moths, are always eager to get as close as possible to any light source, even if they end up burning up in the process.
I feel that everyone is, in the end, attracted to light. Some of us may be nocturnal, but that dose not mean that we live without light, for even at nighttime, there is a little light, whether it be from the moon and stars or from something we have created here on this Earth. And as damaging as the light may be, particularly the sunlight, which can destroy our eyes and skin, we still need it. It’s kind of a strange relationship.
I remember during my Yosemite trip in March that the nighttime had frightened me. The flashlights of the students kept blinding me and sometimes it was quite difficult to identify figures in the dark. I felt keenly aware of the dangers of tumbling into a ditch or tripping on a tree branch and spraining my ankle, for in the daylight it was quite easy to see this things, but in the darkness everything had an ominous aura to it that had not been present during the daylight hours. One time I woke up during the night because I drank too much water earlier and unfortunately needed to use the bathroom, and looking outside, I saw that there was not a soul to be seen, the lights appearing rather eerie as they shined upon the ground. It was peaceful, but in a way it was also scary, reminding me of a ghost town.
I wonder what it would be like to be nocturnal. Those beings who are surrounded by so much darkness see a very different world. Our world of daylight is bright, filled with color and vibrancy, in some ways comforting and in other ways overwhelming. But without the sun lighting your surroundings, colors fade, and your world seems to be in greyscale. You notice shapes and movement more than you do the fine details. It is harder to rely on your eyes when their capabilities seem to have been simplified. Every sound seems that much louder to your ears, even if you are not listening intently on purpose. You feel your way around to try and diminish the dangers.
Being unable to see the great spectrum of colors seen in light, I wonder if perhaps it is a harsh existence. Color makes things alive, beautiful…And you develop your preferences for colors, perhaps preferring the bold, passionate red, or the more soothing blues and greens, or perhaps you like the neon versions of colors. Or perhaps you like black, that one color said to complement every other. At the same time, without the light and color, you focus on other things, what you hear and touch and feel within yourself. With all these visual distractions during the daytime, I wonder if perhaps it is us being of the daytime that are missing out.
Kagaribito / カガリビト 