Darkness 8

[Enrique Fats]

Humanvision is unable to distinguish colors in conditions of very low luminance because the hue-sensitive photoreceptor cells on the retina are inactive when light levels are insufficient, in the range of visual perception referred to as scotopic vision.

The perception of darkness differs from the mere absence of light that sometimes lead to afterimages. In perceiving, the eye is active, and the part of the retina that is unstimulated produces a complementary afterimage.[1]

In terms of physics, an object is said to be dark when it absorbs photons, causing it to appear dim compared to other objects. For example, matte black paint does not reflect much visible light and appears dark, whereas white paint reflects much light and appears bright.[2] For more information, see color. An object may appear dark, but it may be bright at a frequency that humans cannot perceive.

A dark area has limited light sources, making things hard to see. Exposure to alternating light and darkness (night and day) has caused several evolutionary adaptations to darkness. When a vertebrate, like a human, enters a dark area, its pupils dilate, allowing more light to enter the eye and improving night vision. Also, the light detecting cells in the human eye (rods and cones) will regenerate more unbleached rhodopsin when adapting to darkness.

The material known as Vantablack is one of the darkest substances known, absorbing up to 99.965% of visible light (at 663 nm if the light is perpendicular to the material), and was developed by Surrey NanoSystems in the United Kingdom.[4][5] The name is a compound of the acronym VANTA (vertically aligned nanotube arrays) and the color black.[6]

Artists use darkness to emphasize and contrast the presence of light. Darkness can be used as a counterpoint to areas of lightness to create leading lines and voids. Such shapes draw the eye around areas of the painting. Shadows add depth and perspective to a painting. See chiaroscuro for a discussion of the uses of such contrasts in visual media.

Color paints are mixed together to create darkness, because each color absorbs certain frequencies of light. Theoretically, mixing together the three primary colors, or the three secondary colors, will absorb all visible light and create black. In practice, it is difficult to prevent the mixture from taking on a brown tint.

As a poetic term in the Western world, darkness is used to connote the presence of shadows, evil, and foreboding,[8] or in modern parlance, to connote that a story is grim, heavy, and/or depressing.[9]

The first creation narrative in Judaism and Christianity begins with darkness, into which is introduced the creation of light, and the separation of this light from the darkness (as distinct from the creation of the Sun and Moon on the fourth day of creation). Thus, although both light and darkness are included in the comprehensive works of God, darkness was considered "the second to last plague" (Exodus 10:21), and the location of "weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matthew 8:12).

The use of darkness as a rhetorical device has a long-standing tradition. William Shakespeare, working in the 16th and 17th centuries, made a character called the "prince of darkness" (King Lear: III, iv) and gave darkness jaws with which to devour love. (A Midsummer Night's Dream: I, i)[10] Geoffrey Chaucer, a 14th-century Middle English writer of The Canterbury Tales, wrote that knights must cast away the "workes of darkness".[11] In Divine Comedy, Dante described hell as "solid darkness stain'd".[12]

North Korea is perhaps the darkest place in the world. The country lacks electricity; everything is gray and monotone, and the only light is given to the Great Leader, an authoritarian, godlike persona now worn for the third generation by thirty-three-year-old Kim Jong Un, who is considered the sun, though that sun exudes no warmth for its people. No other contemporary country is so entirely devoid of light.

I have always been afraid of the dark. I rarely dream, and I used to sleepwalk as a child to escape the pitch blackness of being asleep. Even now, I cannot turn the light off at night. This is a dreary habit since artificial light is so disruptive that I almost never sleep well. But my fear of the dark is overpowering; I would rather forsake good sleep if it means keeping the darkness at bay.

These questions always give me pause. Perhaps it is a natural human instinct to look for a neat, rational motive for any story that seems incredible. Readers often want to identify with their narrator and the reasons for her action, or perhaps they just want to be assured that the author of a story is not out of her mind. Some years ago, when I published my first novel, there were readers who seemed to take personal offense at the story being open-ended. A few even told me I should write a sequel to redo the ending with a proper conclusion.

Each time someone calls me fearless, I think of this blind spot, as I believe it helps explain my time in North Korea. I do not mean to suggest that I was naive to its dangers, but that each time I thought about being caught, I blocked the matching pangs of fear that came, attempted to usher them away from the front of my consciousness as well as I could.

In Pyongyang I was allowed to leave the campus only in a group with minders for a few hours on weekends, and my days were meticulously mapped out, so the only break I got was to jog in a circle around the tiny campus. I wore the mini USB sticks containing the notes for my book on a necklace as pendants, and I always feared that the strand might loosen and slip off me while I was not paying attention. In those passing moments, when the possibility of being discovered struck me as an impending, inevitable doom, my breath would catch, and as a kind of survival mechanism, I would shut my eyes and push away the thought.

It often seems to me that the desire to comprehend fear strikes at a mystery at the center of life. We breathe toward death; each moment alive is a clock tick toward not living any longer. There is no happy ending, and to help all this make sense to us, we repeat histories, fight needless wars, recite prayers, and fall in love, often more than once, with people who will break our hearts. Life is born from those blind spots, with each mishap, every accident.

Because I identify with fear, I turned out to be, as much as one can be, well suited to pursue North Korea and to bear each frightening day there as if I were a researcher at a laboratory working on a case. I did not count on caring so much for my students, but I did, and that consequence was afforded to me by my own blind spot. Each interaction surprised me, shocked me from unknowing to knowing, gave me names and faces toward a deeper understanding of the North Korean horror. The dark stopped being dark for one illuminating second at a time, and even if night returned each time to blacken the sky completely, the darkness that followed was never quite the same.

Sometimes I still fear that it will all come to haunt me one day, that someone sent by the Great Leader will find me while I am traveling somewhere far away from home, and that I will either be taken back to Pyongyang or be punished for writing about what they did not want revealed. But each time my mind goes there, I stop myself, and though it is not clear where my thoughts retract to, there is often a lull; for a brief moment I am numb, and fear cannot get to me.

In God's Holy Darkness, Sharei Green and Beckah Selnick deconstruct anti-Blackness in Christian theology by celebrating instances in the story of God's people when darkness, blackness, and night are beautiful, good, and holy. From the darkness at the beginning of creation to the blackness of the sky on the day when Christ's birth was announced to the shepherds, children learn that blackness is something to celebrate as an important element of the life of faith. Lush and vibrant illustrations by artist Nikki Faison underscore the mystery and beauty of these wondrous acts of God's holy darkness.

God's Holy Darkness is a Junior Library Guild Selection. Junior Library Guild is a curated subscription service for libraries featuring books recommended by expert librarians for building an excellent collection.

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Third, and most surprising, Joseph, along with the other disciples, had every reason to feel his hopes crucified, breathless as the body he carried. We have no cause to suspect he saw the resurrection coming. Like the eleven, huddled in that hopeless locked room, he surely expected the stone to stay unmoved.

We might wish to walk beneath skies always bright, our hands full of breathing hope, our faith nearly turned to sight. Those days do come and, oh, what a gift they are. Looking for the kingdom feels easy then. So does obeying the King.

So then, with Joseph, take courage. Keep praying, keep waiting, keep looking for the kingdom you cannot trace. Set your weary heart like a watchman on the walls, asking and aching for morning. Obey your Lord in the darkness, and dare to believe that he will bring the dawn.

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