The Lights We Attend to at Night

I am always grateful at this time of year for the return of standard time and the end of daylight saving time. At first, of course, it is my present need as a parent for the sun to assist my children in getting out of their beds for school. By late October, their time to wake is in darkness again, and they complain to me that “it’s still nighttime.”

But, maybe even more, I like the earlier return of darkness in the late afternoon and evening. I like walking the dog in the evening and observing my neighborhood at this time of year. Our homes are handsomest under the veil of winter darkness. Each window, glowing from the inside with warm lights peeking out, is suggestive of an entire life or the lives of an entire family. I love the homes that have taken a little extra care to gently light their walkways, guiding the family members homeward.

There is something hushed and humane about human settlements in this condition — of whatever type. The romance I feel in that light shining out onto a snow-covered suburban street is the same I detect driving past the apartment buildings of Inwood on the West Side Highway. In an even more expansive form, it can be seen from airplanes approaching a city at night, or in the space photography where whole nations and their metropolises glow into the night sky.

As we pass November 11 — Veterans Day here and Remembrance Day for my relatives — I look at those lighted windows and think of how they became a symbol of the gentleness of civilization itself, which goes into abeyance in an age of total war, of blitzes in London or firebombings in Dresden. “The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”

As winter grows darker, what remains of Christendom in these neighborhoods put battery-driven candles in their window frames — knowingly or unknowingly symbolizing the prayers of their households. They put twinkling lights along their doorframes and outline the architectural features of their houses. And, yeah, sometimes they put out gloriously gaudy reindeer and vulgar, inflated Santas. And that is fitting too, because without the adornment of laughter the whole scene would risk slipping into the maudlin. We don’t actually want to live in a Thomas Kinkade painting — where winter scenes lose the freshness and bitterness of cold or the slightly menacing shadows of winter tree limbs. At least I don’t.

And that’s when I contemplate the other light, the cool light of the iPhone or the MacBook. There, too, through social media, I can glimpse the whole of humanity through light. And I hate it. Instead of the gentle candle, whose flame symbolizes a heart lit by grace, I see your dumb tweet and think: “Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.” And then I disgrace myself with a dumb tweet in response.

The cool blue light of the iPhone obscures the whole great mystery of humanity thriving in its natural settlements under the dark sky. In the built world of suburban homes and even apartment buildings, we are still fully human and connected with the Euclidian forms and humane proportions that still predominate in residential architecture. In the iPhone, we are communicated to each other through JavaScript operating in the textureless, clean designs of Swift programming language. Whereas the penmanship of our old letters might have added to our thoughts the suggestion of excitement, drunkenness, or tiredness, we now try to express our most intimate thoughts, profoundest ideas, or best jokes. They are rendered to the world through tens of thousands of lines of code that express the user-interface designer’s vision and look like this:

This designer is usually a communist who spends his spare time looking at black-and-white photos of brutalist buildings. But he is hardly motivated by revolution anymore. He is formed by the demands of his bosses and the share price of making human interaction addicting rather than consoling. He stimulates your fight-or-flight instincts recklessly.

Social media, therefore, is the exact opposite experience of living in and moving through a human settlement, defined by warm light in the evening. It’s more like a survivable pinch of a phosphorus bomb over Dresden — the bright blinding flash of UIColor.white — setting you and your neighbors on fire for each other’s engagement. The iPhone illuminates your face harshly, from below the chin, the way lightning flashes upon villains to make them look sinister.

I return from my walk with the dog in the winter somehow soothed and rejuvenated. I have to learn to put down my phone, which leaves me enraged. Attending to that light too often reaches into my heart. Case.void: return UIColor.black