Light

There is a streetlight across the road from my apartment in Brooklyn. It had a beautifully gold-colored, energy-sucking bulb that bathed my living room in dramatic light at night. In warmer months, the light would filter though leaves of a tree whose upper branches peaked between the light and my living room windows. In winter, drama would unfold in the shadows of the bare branches moving in the cold wind.

Sometimes I’d switch off all the lights in the living room as it turned dark, walk out, and re-enter the room, imagining I was in a play. A play in which a family harbors a deep dark secret.  It would be the moment a prodigal son, back to see his ailing mother, unable to sleep, wanders into the kitchen and sees his father slumped over the kitchen table. Without looking up the old man would say, “does she know?”

I could see that happening in my living room. It was ready for my imagination every night.

But alas, progress and efficiency ended the dream. LED lights have moved in. I’m now forced to contemplate scenes of a Stasi interrogation.

On the other side of the apartment, sunlight filters through clouds, just after a short but heavy rainstorm. The clouds are fat and white, with a bit of gray in the middle. The air is bathed in a reddish hue as the sun begins it’s descent into the west. I feel the urge to do something dramatic to match the effect. Drinking a cup of herbal tea seems like an insult to the lighting engineer up in the heavens, but that is what I do.

My wife enjoys the drama light creates in our world, which is a relief, because I’m too invested in loving it for her not to like it. We watch sunlight together sometimes as it bounces from brownstone facade onto the whitewashed walls of neighboring buildings, until it spreads through the foliage in our backyard. The beautiful backyard of bricks and concrete, but lush green nevertheless from years of obsessive splurging on potted perennials.