[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> an inexplicable event

[Aldon Hynes <ahynes1@yahoo.com>]

You know, I read through this and had no idea what
Michael was talking about, so I got up really early
this morning hoping to have a similar experience, and
finally it dawned on me....

Aldon
--- Michael Benson <michael.benson@pristop.si> wrote:
> The other night, quite late, something happened that
> was so strange, and
> even amazing, that I thought I'd have to write about
> it at some point. I
> know that to many, the scene I'm about to describe
> will seem improbable,
> even fantastic. Others will suspend disbelief. Still
> others -- I'm hoping,
> maybe just to be sure of my own sanity -- may have
> experienced something
> similar. All I can say is that every word that
> follows is true, to the best
> of my ability.  
>  
> It must have been at around 4:30 or 5 AM that I
> began to notice a slight
> glow appearing towards the east. At first it was
> almost imperceptible, but
> later it had a pale bluish tinge to it, and then it
> began to turn purple,
> and it kept on getting brighter. There was something
> -- it's hard to
> describe -- _inexorable_ about it. It just kept on
> growing, with a kind of
> inexorable expanding incremental power, and as it
> grew more luminous, it
> simultaneously felt like it was getting nearer, but
> also inexplicably
> remained at a great distance. And meanwhile I began
> to notice that things I
> couldn't see previously (for example, the dark shape
> of two trees,
> previously submerged in the murk of the courtyard,
> and later even the
> distinct reflective glint of a large coin that
> someone had dropped, and
> which no doubt rolled off to its current position at
> the edge of the curb)
> were gradually beginning to define themselves in
> more detail. And as all
> this was happening I noticed something else: that
> various creatures were
> starting, at first almost imperceptibly, to stir, to
> make little sounds,
> strange peeps and quizzical query-like calls, the
> latter mostly, so it
> seemed, made by birds... And as the light continued
> to grow to the east,
> accompanied by bird-song and a kind of quiet animal
> murmur, the blue which
> had originally only been on the eastern horizon
> expanded all the way west
> and commenced to grow more and more bright and
> vivid. This continued to the
> point where the stars, which had been clearly
> delineated against the black
> of the sky for many uninterrupted hours, were now
> hanging in a pure bright
> blue color. And then -- a truly mind-blowing
> development -- the stars began
> to _go out._ I saw this with my own eyes, or rather,
> I lost sight of them
> with my own eyes: one by one, the stars disappeared,
> until finally even the
> brightest became harder and harder to see and then
> winked out, overcome by
> the rising tide of intense, luminous blue. And as
> all this was happening,
> the eastern horizon now started turning all kinds of
> colors, including
> orange, yellow, and even purple. Meanwhile the whole
> 180 degree view from my
> balcony (because I was watching all this from my
> apartment balcony) became
> more and more clear and vivid, to the point where I
> could count trees on the
> distant northern horizon, see details of brick-work
> on nearby buildings,
> notice that coin I mentioned earlier, and even spot
> the faint floating
> specks of high-flying birds, which (I assume, though
> it's only a theory)
> probably woke up and decided to fly _specifically
> because of_ the unusual
> and amazing light in the sky. 
>  
> And then (here words almost can't do the job) the
> most incredible thing
> happened. All the way on the eastern horizon,
> exactly where the purple, then
> orange, then yellow glow previously had been, a
> sharp, clearly defined
> bright orange spot of light appeared, as though a
> signal fire had been lit
> on the horizon. It was intensely vivid, punching
> through the texture of the
> scene. And apart from its position in space, this
> was also a clearly defined
> temporal moment: you could set your watch by it. One
> second it wasn't there,
> the next it was. (In fact later I realised that it
> had the effect of being
> exactly at the center, chronologically speaking, of
> the whole experience,
> which only lasted about two hours or so.) This spot
> of light rapidly grew,
> with some of the same kind of inexorability as I
> mentioned earlier, only
> this was far more intense, and seemed to go much
> faster, until finally it
> was so bright that it was hard to look at. And as
> all this was happening, I
> realized that it couldn't be simply a fire -- or at
> least, not as I
> understand fire -- because in fact that intense
> light was part of what
> appeared to be a disc, or even (again, just a
> theory) a sphere, of intense
> yellow light. Plus even though it was rising, and
> rose, it didn't rise the
> way a flame does, with rapid darting movements. No,
> this was far more
> majestic, magesterial, and gradual. And it's hard to
> exaggerate how bright
> that light was: suddenly I noticed that in the
> surrounding scene (buildings,
> trees, a silent slice of road, cars parked on
> gravel), _shadows_ had
> appeared -- places, in other words, not lit by the
> intense light on the
> horizon, but rather back-lit by the blue sky, so
> that you could still see
> details in those shadows, even though what was lit
> directly by that light
> was far more visible, and glowed with a strange
> ethereal power. And as the
> circle of light grew, it rose up from the horizon,
> and as it rose from the
> horizon, it grew, and then finally I started to feel
> something on my face,
> which I identified in amazement as: _heat_.  This
> intense orange light was
> literally throwing _heat_ all the way from the
> horizon onto my face. And
> meanwhile the orange color turned gradually to
> yellow, and shortly
> thereafter I understood that it was probably not a
> good idea to stare at the
> light too directly, I could feel that it might even
> be dangerous to do that,
> that's how bright the light was. And then, finally,
> this dazzling sphere, or
> circle, of pure unadulterated light broke clear of
> the horizon and was free
> in the sky, that immense powerful yellow light was
> free-floating and finally
> perfectly circular, and I grew hot and so did my
> surroundings, and I
> realized all at once that it, and it alone, had been
> the cause of the entire
> series of interconnected events that I've described.
> And it rose and kept on
> rising and in a blaze of blinding light and heat it
> lifted up into the pure
> blue otherwise utterly empty immaculate sky, and
> kept on rising.
> 
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