The Light in the Landscape
The light of the moon
The light of the moon is a quiet reflection, large, even, and mild. The light of the moon comes from far away. The makes it quiet. I imagine the shadows that things cast on the earth in the light of the moon imperceptibly seeking separation. Though I can’t tell with my bare eyes. I’m too small or close to make out the cosmic angle between the source of light and the things it illuminates on earth.
When I start studying light and shadow , the light and shadow of the moon, the light and shadow of the sun , the light and the shadow produced by the lamp in my living room, I acquire a sense of scale and dimension. I have always wanted to write a book about light. I can think of nothing that reminds me more of eternity , says Andrzej Stasiuk in his book The World behind Dukla. Events or objects stop or disappear or collapse under their own weight and when I look at them and describe them, he say, it is only because they refract light, because they shape it and give it a form that we are capable of understanding.
The light that meets the earth from afar
I want to think about the artificial light in my buildings, in our cities and in our landscape, and I catch myself forever returning, like a lover , to the object of my admiration: the light that meets the earth from afar, the untold number of bodies, structures, materials, liquids, surfaces, colors, and shapes the radiate in the light. The light that comes from outside the earth makes the air visible , I can see it. In the Upper Engadine in autumn , for example , where the skies are already southern but the air is fresh.
Seen from a great height
Seen from a great height, the artificial light with which people illuminate the night have a soothing effect. We illuminate our buildings and streets, we illuminate our planet, ward off little pieces of darkness and create islands of light on which we can see ourselves and the things that we have accumulated around us.
Sensing, smelling, touching, tasting, dreaming in the dark-that’s just not enough . We want to see. But how much light do people need in order to live? And how much darkness?
Is there a spiritual condition or a life condition so sensitive that tiny amounts of light would be enough to ensure a good life? Or, to go even further: Are there some things we can experience only in dark, shaded places, in the darkness of night?
Two hunters from Sun Bernardino , who spent a few days and nights in an uncivilized mountain valley, describe coming home at night and looking down on their illuminated village-the tunnel entrance, the gas station , the cars- and how the familiar village suddenly seemed polluted.
Tanizaki Jun’ichiro, the author of In of Praise of Shadow, once decided to watch the full moon at the Lshiyama Temple, but changed of the Moonlight Sonata for the entertainment of the visitors and install artificial light to illuminate the site.
The light of the sun
Myriad small dots of light: the stars in the sky, fireflies in the woods, the artificial light of nightscapes on earth. Small objects of light that radiate or reflect. The glass beads in a chandelier, for example. The light of the sun, the day, that reaches the surface of the earth from outer space, is big and strong and directed. It is one light.
Darkness lives in the earth
Recently, on mountain hike, A. observed that the colors of the Alpine flowers along the path are still aglow for a little bit after twilight has fallen, as if the flowers had stored the light and now how to release it, she tells me.
Darkness lives in the earth. It rises up out of it and returns to it like a strong breath, I read in Andrzej S tasiuk’s Dukla.
The older I get, the more intense is my interest in the various ways and forms in which light appears in nature. I am amazed, I learn from that, and I am aware that it is the light of the sun that
Illuminates the buildings I envision. I hold spaces, materials, textures, colors, surfaces and shapes up to the light of the sun; I capture this light, reflect it, filter it, screen it off; I thin it out to create a luster in the right spot. Light as an agent, I’m familiar with it. But when I really start thinking about it, I understand hardly anything.
The Light in the Landscape
The Light in the Landscape . Friederike Mayrocker uses this image to title a text that seens extremely autobiographical to me. Its many shades and shadows keep breaking out and into light as she piles up the material of her words layer, describing and creating inner and outer landscapes.
Personal landscapes . Images and landscapes of longing, mourning, tranquility, joy, loneliness, sanctuary, ugliness, the pretension of pride, seduction . In my memory they all have a light of their own.
Is it even possible to imagine things without light?
Tanizaki Jun’ichiro praises shadow. In the dark depths of the traditional Japanese home, where shadows crouch in all the corners, the gold of a lacquer painting gleams, and gentle light is diffused through translucent paper stretched over the delicate wooden frame of a sliding door so that one can hardly distinguish the source of the daylight that captures and reflects the objects so beautifully in the half light. Jun’ ichiro praises shadows. And shadows praise light.