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The Lights in the Deep Dark

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The Lights in the Deep Dark 

What do you see when driving at night? Travel Sketches by metamodernist artist JJFBbennett

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 the ridge of the distant tree line where the earth meets the heavy storm clouds, a luminous, silhouetted figure stands suspended—a quiet, otherworldly sentinel watching the car pass.

It is a fleeting insight caught out of the corner of the eye: the sensation that the highway is not merely a path through the physical outback, but a threshold. In the stillness of the midnight drive, the familiar silhouettes of the bush become fleeting, silent watchers, reminding us of the ancient, unseen depths hidden just beneath the night's surface.








John Bennett - AKA JJFBbennett, is an independent artist. You can view and subscribe to my work via Blogger, YouTube, Flicker, Facebook, Instagram and Deviant Art. 


To support my art, feel free to 
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  • donate via JJFBbennett through PayPal  


Copyright

This artwork is protected by U.S. and International copyright laws. Distribution and/or modification of the artwork without the sponsor's written permission is prohibited.

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