In Darkness and Quiet.

I need to put in a good word here for...darkness.

For clouds.

For overcast, even for fog and rain sometimes.

And for early dusk. Long, lovely nights. And deep, unbroken quiet.

Shortly, we'll be heading into the springing-forward madness of clock adjustment that is Daylight Saving Time, something that I probably liked as a kid...but which I no longer like as an adult.

There are many reasons for this, the biggest one being that--of course--there's no reason for it anymore.

No. Really.

My understanding was that originally, it was meant to "extend daylight" for farmers. So they had extra hours of sunshine in the fields when they were working sunup to sundown, and thus could get extra tasks done at what would normally have been a darker time of day.

But frankly, I don't even know if that's actually true.

Before we lived in the Promised Land of the Eastern Time Zone, my son went to school in it--at Michigan. And he used to tell us, come springtime, how late into the evening it was "still light out." Like, 10 PM.

I have to admit, I thought he might have been exaggerating a tiny bit.

Until I saw it for myself.

If you live in the Eastern Time Zone in the springtime, when DST happens...

...suddenly, you're going to bed in full daylight.

No,  I don't mean "light" like "Land of the Midnight Sun" Alaska "perpetual dusk."

I mean the sun is still above the horizon when you're heading to bed.

This makes precious little to no sense for schoolkids, if they're young enough that they need a decently early bedtime to get enough sleep for school the next day. But it's equally nonsensical for those of us who weren't in school, but who got up frightfully early to go to work in the morning.

If you're getting up at 5:30 or 6 AM, you need to have a reasonable bedtime. Like, 9:30 or 10:00. 

But at 9:30, it's barely sunset yet.

And if you've had a rough day and you're thinking of turning in early?

Better hope you have room-darkening shades.

Fourth of July fireworks displays, in the Eastern time zone, don't take place in full darkness, like they can pretty much anywhere else; full darkness doesn't hit until 10:30 PM, when most shows elsewhere are finishing. So all your "dusk" fireworks shows happen when the sky really isn't dark enough yet to show them off. And that's only one of the aspects of this silly time-adjustment thing that I find irritating.

What I have to wonder, even more so as I get older, is what the obsession is with sunlight.

And why so many people seem to hinge their mental health on it.

It's said that when Chopin was a boy, he would play piano in the dark; he would deliberately blow out the candles, and then sit down to play. Which may be why his music is some of the most evocative, touching, and soul-stirring stuff you can experience. (Play it in the dark sometime. I dare you. And have the tissues handy.)

In today's culture, those of us who prefer clouds, who enjoy "softer" light and earlier evenings, are looked at askance. Sometimes people out-and-out ask what's "wrong" with us.

But maybe the problem isn't in our preference for darkness.

Maybe it's in the obsession with bright light, long days, and never-ending activity that stretching the sunlight beyond bedtime seems to encourage in so many people...

...the same people who complain about "how tough it is to disconnect" or how "overwhelmed" they feel by "everything happening everywhere all at once."

I would submit that those of us who aren't afraid of a few shadows could--no pun intended--"enlighten" those people a bit about the need for greater balance. Daylight...and evening. Bright...and dark.

The question is, would our inquisitive audience be willing to "unhook" from sunshine, bright lights, and perpetual busyness long enough to appreciate what can happen on the other side.

That some truly deep thinking, some truly profound creativity, can happen in subdued illumination.

That some incredibly beautiful work can, in fact, be done...in darkness and quiet.

I love the long winter night. The stillness of a world not incessantly in full-tilt "carnival" mode.

I live for the day more people "come out of the closets" of enjoying those kinds of nights--and more subtly lighted days, too.

And of appreciating the largely unplumbed depths of times of silence and shadow.

Could you?

Janny

Excuse the Dust!

This blog is presently Undergoing Renovation.

No, I'm not changing the basic background or colors, despite some recommendations to do so. I like this background and these colors, and the work involved in shifting to an entirely new set of themes would be massive. And I'm just lazy enough not to want to undertake massive work for something that's only one tool in my writer's kit.

BUT...

I do want this to be readable and sensible and easy on the eye in other ways.

Which is why the type size has increased over the last year or so.

The problem is...I have years of entries in this blog that were done "the old way."

And in the process of changing computers, operating systems, et al, some of the formatting in those old posts has gone completely skawapity. 

Which means I still have semi-massive work to do, going into those old posts and revamping them so the formats and type face work again. 

I encourage (okay, beg) those of you who've just discovered this blog to feel free to plumb its historic entries...but just be aware those might look really strange for a while.

I'm fixing them. Batch by batch.

In the meantime, dust cloths and feather dusters are at the door.

Feel free to avail yourselves of them...or of a magnifying glass, if need be.

It'll all be better...soon. I promise.

Thanks!

Janny

"Et Tu, Brute?"

The last thing you expect to encounter, in an armload of novels from the library, is an assault of hypocrisy. Unless, of course, you're deliberately courting such things by reading certain nonfiction. 😏

But this is a different kind of hypocrisy.

It has to do with women, and the perception of "oppression" or "abuse" or "harassment," or...

...whatever victimization the feminists want to latch onto this week.

Because, as so often is the case, this "victimization" is one in which women are fully cooperative.

Hook. Line. Sinker. And Lingerie.

No, I'm not talking about the Victoria's Secret catalogue. I'd imagine those ladies get paid a handsome amount of money to get pictures taken in underwear, and if asked directly, they might well claim it's their way of "owning" their femininity and a stroke on the side of "body image pride."

But you can't go anywhere, have a conversation online or off it, nowadays without having to hear a litany of incessant whining about how it's "unsafe" for women to so much as take a walk anymore by themselves in public, in broad daylight. That men will ogle them, follow them, try to see where they're heading, or accost them, in subtle or not-so-subtle ways...and that it's barbaric. When I was a girl, we were told to "ignore" the construction workers and other guys who would whistle and/or feel free to make comments about our physical appearances as we walked by. We were told that's just the way "some men" were, and that it was a shame, but if we didn't reward the behavior, it'd stop.

The fact that apparently it hasn't stopped, after all this time, is appalling. I'll grant you that.

But let's also talk frankly about the other side of the coin, shall we?

Yes, there is another side. And yes, I'm sure you can see it coming. And I'm sure you're braced already to lambaste me from here to heaven and back for daring to even suggest that we women sometimes are our own worst enemies when it comes to men respecting us...or even us respecting each other.

I'm not going to go into the argument that women should remember to put clothes on before they go out in public...and some don't. That's a dead horse that no one will tolerate beating anymore, at least not without screeching your ears raw in protest. 

What is bothering me today is how much of what's in print--in novels clearly designed for a female audience--betrays that we really don't respect ourselves much, either.  

Again, I'm not talking nonfiction.

I'm talking novels.

And not erotica, either.

I ran into an instance this past weekend that about curdled my coffee.

I started a book that was supposed to be a cute rom-com. By an author from whom, if the gushing blurbs can be believed, the rom-coms are always cute, always funny, and always a bright spot in one's reading life.

Only by the time I was in chapter five, I couldn't go any further.

Why?

A conversation between our heroine and a guy who the reader knows is going to be the hero. Meeting unbeknownst as to whom each other is, as two strangers at a bar. Flirting.

Nothing wrong with that...except in the form the flirting takes literally seconds into their exchange.

When the heroine says something along the lines of that it's okay because it's "just flirting," and "no one's going to see each other's undies," and then she expresses relief at that because she doesn't know if she wore "cute" ones or not. But it's when she follows it up with a line about "guys probably don't care about that" that things go south. (Pun intended.)

When our "hero" comes out with, "How do you know I'm wearing any?"

And the next line is our heroine feeling a "hot flash."

And I sat for a moment, mouth open, unable to believe what I'd just read.

Ladies. With all due respect?

If some strange guy at a bar comes out with a line about whether he's wearing underwear or not?

How is that attractive?

How is that even okay?

Some strange guy at a bar starts talking underwear, that's not flirting.

That's perv territory.

That's me picking up my drink and heading to the farthest corner of the bar that I can get away from him.

It's not cute.

It's not sexy.

It's creepy.

It's everything we claim we don't want men to be.

Everything we'll crucify them, in the court of public opinion, for.

Yet there it is, in black and white, supposedly put in for...what?

Laughs?

Titillation?

Hints of horizontal mambo to come?

And how do we not see how completely hypocritical such things are to put in women's fiction?

Let me say it again: this isn't content in some girlie magazine that a guy's going to use for fantasy purposes.

This is supposedly flirting language. By a woman who initiates it. In a book aimed at women.

A book not even being sold as "hot" or "spicy."

So...if we think this is cute, and sexy, and flirtatious...

...why isn't it okay for men in real life to behave the same way?

I'm not saying it is.

But neither is it okay for us to put such things on the pages of our books, giggle about them...

...and then vilify men when they think things like that are okay to say to us in real life.

They're not.

But they're not okay for us to say to ourselves, or each other, either. 

Not even in "fiction."

Not even in "fun."

All the "me-too" crusading in the world won't instruct anyone to treat us as anything but objects if we write books in which we treat ourselves as such. Or men as such.

Let's stop being hypocrites on the page--and in what we show the world of ourselves.

Because objectification ain't gonna stop...

...until we do. 

Thoughts?