Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Night Lights

My very first night a Umass was spent peering out of the cell-like window of my dorm room in Central and scanning my eyes across the brick and cement buildings until my eyes rested upon a light show of bright neon pinks, lime greens, deep, blood reds, and soothing ocean blues. The dorm room faced the Studio Arts Building and looking out at the bright multi-colored lights that occupied the main atrium became part of my nightly ritual. When the sun set my window became a portal through which I could leave the harsh, white, flourecent light of the dorm hallways, the smell of disinfectant that leaked from the bathrooms next door, the cold, industrial cement of the walls and witness a synthetic version of the Northern Lights. I took comfort in the way the lights would dance around my room, slowly fading from one color to the next. Something about that cycle of changing color would make my muscles relax, my anxieties dissipate, and my eyelids would begin to grow pleasantly heavy. Umass has offered me a lot of things, but one of the first was a night light the size of a building.

1 comment:

  1. This and Christian's post have made me think about the lights in a way I haven't before. Nice.

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