January 16, 2022
A specific sort of disorientation spreads across seasons with less sun, the same way it might in summer months when daylight settles in and stays there. Sometimes, on days when I decide that seeing the sun is not on the agenda, I think about Alaska and its dark season. They call it Polar Night. Last year’s went on for sixty-six days. There is something utterly unbelievable about darkness that does not end when the night does. The thought of it lives in that unruly realm of the unusual, where earth reminds us how small we are, how structure is something we’ve made up. It shushes us calmly, pulling the darkness up to our necks like a blanket. I will have to see it for myself, I think, feel it maybe, for sixty-six days.
