The Lights in the Deep Dark
The Lights in the Deep Dark Night Lights and the Peripheral Sentinel What do you see when driving at night? Travel Sketches by metamodernist artist JJFBbennett The night swallows the road long before the mind settles into the rhythm of the drive. Out here, where the bitumen cuts a narrow ribbon through the vast dark of the Australian bush , the headlamps carve out only the immediate seconds ahead—a tunnel of white glare against an ocean of shadow. Yet, vision at night is never truly confined to what sits directly in the beams. In the peripheral sweep, just beyond the hard edge of the headlights where the eucalyptus canopy dissolves into the black sky, the landscape breathes with another kind of presence. Reflected softly on the wet glass of the side window, the world folds inward and outward at once. The rain-streaked pane catches the amber glow of the dashboard and smears it against the deep gloom outside, blurring the boundary between the cabin and the scrub. And there, riding ...
