Into the long night we go...
Into the long night we go...
Reflections in the eerie calm.
On Halloween Night, while trick-or-treating with my daughter and several other children and parents from her school, the upcoming U.S. presidential election hardly even crossed my mind. Sure, one of the porches our kids swarmed on was decorated with a miniature blow-up version of Donald Trump, a sign taped to it that read CONVICTED FELON. And, of course, we passed several deep-blue-colored lawn signs blaring allegiance to either Trump-Vance or Harris-Walz.
But oddly enough, despite the steady ratcheting-up of urgency in the air as the days tick down to what looks certain to be an inflection point in the history the country, I felt completely calm going door to door. Much to my surprise, I didn’t get the impression that the adults were clenching our way through a stilted attempt at celebration. Even while looking out for it, I just didn’t pick-up on any unease roiling beneath the surface.
At one point, when our party stopped in front of a house with a Trump-Vance sign out front, a small dog in a tutu ran out the front door to greet us, happily wagging its butt as the kids burst into giggles.
“This is one of the things I really like about the USA,” a French mom in our group told me as we strolled past the glow of lights and bonfires on people’s front lawns. “You do a lot of holidays here, and it seems like you’re always celebrating.” I completely agree. We are very good at celebrating. In spite of it all — the unrelenting consumerism, the overkill, the disposable plastic cheapness of our celebrations — there’s an undeniable romance and gusto for life that runs through our collective bloodstream.
That said, traveling through the same neighborhood on any other night of the year would come with a heightened apprehension that I can’t deny. Like so many of the suburban lanes that lie past the limits of the city I live in, the lack of streetlights means that pitch darkness envelopes the streetscape come nightfall. Even more than the absence of light, however, the silence and stillness pervade with such heaviness you nearly have to cut through them.
It’s at moments like these when I feel most keenly aware that something is very wrong with us. With a pang of sorrow, I’m reminded that people aren’t meant to live huddled in their homes, no matter how comfortable they are, cut-off from one another as they get slowly devoured by their own solitude. How can we live like this? I think to myself? Even in the most picturesque neighborhoods, the sense of isolation feels crushing.
There was a time when it was customary throughout the U.S.A. for people to see one another on the sidewalks, to visit at each other’s homes, and for children to play together, for hours at a time, without “playdates” having to be arranged in advance. Those days, alas, are long gone. And we’re in trouble if we don’t find a way to bring them back, to restore some measure of spontaneous day-to-day interaction with our neighbors.
As I write this, it’s just a few hours before the end of daylight savings time. Tonight, the clocks go back one hour. And, ever since George W. Bush bumped the clock change about a month later in the wake of 9/11, the shift in the onset of night hits a lot harder and more abruptly than it once did. Nevertheless, I welcome the long nights at this time of year with an embrace. There’s an expansiveness to the long nights that, for me, feels just as rich and… in its own way, brilliant as the endless daylight of summer.
As my astrologer acquaintance in the clip above notes so astutely, the poet Wendell Berry observed that the dark reveals a wealth of information that we can only see if we don’t try to force light on it:
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.— To Know The Dark (Wendell Berry)
There’s an irresistible symbolism in Election Day following on the one-two-punch of Halloween and a new moon. Ghosts, monsters, shadows, bloodshed, and our haunted memories of death… looking into the obsidian truth of who we are under a moon whose light can’t be seen but only felt…
Talking to a friend today with a background in covering politics, we ran through all the potential scenarios that could yield civic unrest after Tuesday’s election. We both agreed that the worst-case nightmare would be for groups of states to refuse to certify electoral votes, and for domestic terrorism to ensue at state capitols.
“For some reason,” I told him, “I don’t get the feeling that things will boil over.” After speaking with him, I’m not so sure. My friend, mind you, tends to be much more pragmatic and rational in his outlook than I am, which is to say he isn’t prone to fits of worry-ridden hyperbole. With sober clarity, he broke down why the conditions are primed for turbulence: “There’s too much dry tinder there for this election to go smoothly. And the rhetoric is too heightened.”
Miraculously, life in the U.S. more or less settled after the widespread unrest of 2020. This, I argued to my friend, is hardly a guarantee, but it is at least an example of the fact that things don’t have to come unglued. In any case, my inner calm continues to prevail. Given what’s at stake, the bubble of calm feels eerie. And I can’t tell if my read is accurate or way off-base.
I must admit that I’ve never truly seen the worst in people. But I do feel like I’ve seen the best. However things play out over the coming days, weeks, months, and years, we’ll likely see the best of people eventually. And that’s got to count for something, no?
<3 SRK