The Bright Side

Most nights before I go to bed, I will open the front door and peer out. If there's a cloudless sky, and I can see stars, I'll go outside onto the balcony round the back of the house. Looking up, I'll observe the night sky for several minutes. Over the summer, on warm nights, I do this frequently. Once, I saw a meteor from the Perseid shower entering the earth's atmosphere; another time, I observed a satellite in orbit, moving from south to north. I have spotted and identified (using charts from Timeanddate.com) Saturn and Jupiter, Venus and Mars.

Yet try as I might, I have yet to see a black triangle, the size of three football fields, hovering silently 50ft above my head. I haven't witnessed multiple luminous orbs dancing in the sky or saucer-shaped craft performing manoeuvres that defy the laws of physics. And across in the forest next door, I have never seen any strange creatures with glowing red eyes moving stealthily through the undergrowth. 

These kinds of anomalous phenomena have evaded me somehow.

From time to time, I'll go for a walk in the dark - through the orchards and into the big forest at the top of the road. Entering the forest at night holds no terror for me. This is, however, something that evolution warns us against doing. Our imagination kicks in first. Nocturnal predators maybe on the prowl. But not today, not in my world. Living here, I know these forests, fields and orchards well. I see hares and deer, buzzards and pheasants, and once, I saw an elk. But there are no big cats, wolves or bears stalking these parts. Even humans are not to be seen round here at night - I've yet to run into one. Dogs I can hear barking in adjacent farms, but they are behind fences.

The night doesn't scare me - there are no demons lurking in the darkness. Just the same trees and bushes that are present there during the day - but with far fewer photons bouncing off them into my visual cortex. The familiar is not frightening. Familiar by day, familiar by night. And there's nothing that goes bump in the night, other than the refrigerator's pump toggling between on or off or the radiator casing expanding or contracting with a metallic 'rdank!'. 

I may never see a ghost, UFO, werewolf or hobgoblin; my own experiences of the anomalous reside exclusively in my subjective realm - dreams and anomalous qualia-memory flashbacks to another time and another place; both being products of consciousness. A consciousness, which - I hope - is increasingly open to the Cosmos, to spiritual inputs. 

We who seek God - or Purpose - or whatever we call this end-point of the unfolding of the Universe - all travel the journey in our own way. For some it is religious practice; for others - contact with the spirit world; others claim to have experienced contact with UFOs. (This isn't to say I don't believe in visitations from intelligent beings from other worlds - it's just that I've never witnessed one.)

I have always tended to look on the bright side of life, but not in a cynical way. Cynicism is corrosive. I am instinctively drawn to brightness; my favourite qualia experience is looking towards a hot sun in a cloudless sky, with a cool wind blowing in my face. 

I am not drawn to the dark side; yet night scares me not.

This time five years ago:
Waiting for the level-crossing barriers - Nowa Iwiczna and W-wa Dawidy

This time six years ago:
More Sandomierz photos

This time seven years ago:
All aboard the Gold Train rush

This time 11 years ago:
Dominicans at large, Służew 

This time 12 years ago: 
Late summer moods, Jeziorki 

This time 13 years ago: 
The next one hundred years 

This time 14 years ago: 
"What do we want? Early retirement!
When do we want it? NOW!" 

This time 15 years ago: 
Twilight of Warsaw's greenhouse economy