The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light

[alice wellintown]

And, of course P has been interested in Light. In his last great work
P takes us down into the darkness of the mines, there, where light and
heat, energy, the explosive tools, of the miners, and extraction of
wealth from the darkness, work that will power Tesla and Edison, as
electricity Lights the world, the electric charge, the corner stone of
modern Physics, an abstraction, invisible lightness is set against the
day, against the old stone of Physics, the Atom, Matter. And again, we
see how huge the influence of Adams is on P, from the V. days to the
AGTD days. The Rays Invisible are made manifest, the darkness in the
heart of man, the Conradian Darkness is shifted from Heart to Brain,
to the Freudian Unconscious, an illuminated with Rational Psychology.
Even the Invisible Man, the Negro Problem might be brought, if not
into, at least under the Light. In and Under this new Light, Man
measured what he could not see, what was deep and hidden, under, in
the substrative layers of Earth, of Mind. In the Mines he might light
up the metals, the energies, potential made kinetic, and he could
touch these and make them spin, but now an invisivble light, of Man,
of Nature, the mystics aura meets the new Alchemists, the Curies
isolation of Radium...and so the Cult of Kepler is reborn. And the
light scrubs clean the dark and dank masses, the urban filth, the body
must need sun light. So, as Blake's boys and girls who sweep, out into
the light and joy of the sun to rid the body of the urban pestilance
that Pasteur exposed. Mines and factories and slums, tenements are
against Life, and so, for the first time, perhaps, the Machine became
an ally of Life. In the Light of this knowledge the crimes of the
mines, of the factories, child labor, still we see children in mines
in Africa, the slums, these were exposed with the camera, the light,
that Holgrave used magically in The House of the Seven Gables to make
Photographs, the Sun, made these dark and filthy places, a crime
against humanity.


On 9/7/13, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> Uncle Reeem-US, he be tellin us all the time bout some nose grinding down
> on Maggie's old man's farm, and he be talkin bout the cockroach peoples
> peoples peoples, that Jimmy talk about, but me I'm juss wishin I wuz still
> an Invisible Man, all my light bulbs burning on the juice Ize jacked from
> Metropolitan, but most of all, I wish the Po Jamma People would get some
> sleep.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Revolt_of_the_Cockroach_People
>
> http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UMolw4fw54U&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DUMolw4fw54U
>
>
> On Saturday, September 7, 2013, Kai Frederik Lorentzen wrote:
>
>>
>> It's  the close linkage of parasites and human activity - that
>> alliteration of "cockroaches" and "crime" - which sounds like zero
>> tolerance rhetorics to me.
>>
>> On 07.09.2013 00:42, malignd at aol.com wrote:
>>
>>> How do you get that from his saying crime occurs more often at night?
>>>
>>>     I mean, are
>>>     you really in agreement with zero tolerance urban policy kicking out
>>>     junkies, sex workers and the homeless?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>
>>> To: David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>; P-list List <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>>> Cc: Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>; Jill Adams <grladams at teleport.com>
>>> Sent: Fri, Sep 6, 2013 6:55 am
>>> Subject: Re: The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age
>>> of Artificial Light
>>>
>>>
>>>   > Crime and cockroaches like dark in the City. <
>>>
>>> At least you didn't write "criminals and cockroaches" ... I mean, are
>>> you really in agreement with zero tolerance urban policy kicking out
>>> junkies, sex workers and the homeless?
>>>
>>> No offense intended.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 06.09.2013 04:10, David Morris wrote:
>>> > Oops  "Send"
>>> >
>>> > Lights in the City are required for survival.  Crime and cockroaches
>>> > like dark in the City.
>>> >
>>> > On Thursday, September 5, 2013, David Morris wrote:
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >     On Thursday, September 5, 2013, Joseph Tracy wrote:
>>> >
>>> >         I live in Vermont about 500 yards from the nearest steetlamp
>>> >         and maybe twice that from the highway that passes through
>>> >         town.  Having lived in many rural places I treasure the
>>> >         unimpeded starlight and the blackness of an overcast evening.
>>> >         The only noise is the small volume of traffic on our road and
>>> >         the creek across the street.   A few of us have helped prevent
>>> >         more lights from going up in town and argued to reduce what we
>>> >         have or get lamps that are efficient and direct the light
>>> >         down.  When one flies the sheer volume of energy being used on
>>> >         excessive light is disturbing even though the patterns are
>>> >         visually entrancing.
>>> >
>>>
>>>
>>
>