| THE LIGHT COLLECTOR | |
|
Jean Sprackland | |
|
He knows broad daylight inside out, can't get excited any more by the tawdry brilliance of it, flattening everything, dumbing it down. From an open window on the seventh floor he watches the street scudding below, and thinks I must make something of my life, as if it were a bag of rags for recycling. into the caramel light of late summer evening smattering wet roofs and TV aerials: too rich, too obvious. At night he daydreams tricks so bright he feels they lend him context. He knows he has a steady way with starlight, can pick it up like sand on a fingertip. He goes out under the moon, in the fabulous air tasting of electricity. He lingers by houses with drawn curtains, presses himself thin as a shadow and watches light bleeding from the open doorway of a pub. But it leaves him hungry. What he seeks for his own broken purpose is smaller more secretive sources: the bits you find in the sweepings of a long day alone. The cryptic blue cast by a computer. The smash-and-grab of camera flash. The blade of light under the door with voices glinting behind it. He wants to stop all the draughts in this place with light, he wants it to shed meaning. In the dark kitchen he opens the fridge and the light is so sweet and precise it leaves him aching. | |