June 2010

Obscurity: The state of not being known about; uncertainty; not important or well known; of not being easily understood, hard to make out.

"Obscurity" comes from the Latin "obscurus" meaning "dark." 

Darkness.  If you look for words for "darkness" across Europe you will find "oscuridad" in Spanish and "obscurite´" in French.  German comes closer to our word "darkness" in "dunkelheit."

Darkness.  As we move closer to the longest day and evenings stretch out towards 10pm we are on the other side of the year from the winter solstice, about which John Donne wrote: "It is the year's midnight, and it is the day's."

Darkness.  I remember walking along a factory corridor when the lights went out.  There were no windows - just complete darkness.  I have never been more scared.  Maybe this was because I have lived most of my life in cities where there is not much real darkness, always that orange glow of the street-lights.  There was a street-light attached to the wall outside my bedroom window in the house where I grew up.  Almost enough to read by.

Darkness.  On a night walk you hear everything.

Darkness.  The power cuts of the 70s: old white candles brought out from under the sink.  No TV, and all of us round the table looking at each other in the little light. 

And John Milton's great oxymoron from the poem Paradise Lost: "darkness visible."   Can darkness be visible?  Of course it can.