Darkness and Light

Great Hanukkah event yesterday (or should it be Chanuka?) Thanks to Omri, Adam, Yafit, Shawn, Maisy and the rest of the organizers. I urge everybody who read their poetry/prose to post it here for the benefit of those who could not attend (as for the donuts and cake - your loss!). Here is my contribution:

"When I was a child, I was afraid of the dark. I slept with a night-light on because I believed there was a monster under my bed and it would come out the moment the light went out.

Now, older and wiser, I know there is a monster under the bed. I know that the shambling in the midnight street is the beginning of a zombie invasion. I know that the tapping on the window is a vampire trying to get in, and a moaning in the bathroom is not a faulty pipe but the ghost of a previous owner. And this is why I sleep soundly in the dark and no longer require even the dubious light of the Hanukkah candles.

We need our monsters. Perpetual light is boring and insipid, while the night is filled with magic and wonder. This is why descriptions of Paradise are so much less interesting than visions of hell, while literary utopias require a hefty dose of the apocalypse to make them even marginally attractive. The human imagination, confronted with mysteries of nature and with its own inevitable extinction, bravely challenges darkness by giving it a face. Monsters are our guides to where no man – oops, no human – has ever gone before. Monsters are our friends because they reflect back to us our own power of creation. Monsters provide us with the enemy to fight and in doing so, reinforce our belief that fighting is possible and that we may win. Light only shows nothing; darkness hides many different things.

And so count me among the forces of darkness. And if you hear a child crying because the light has gone out, tell her: “Yes, there is a monster under the bed – and here is the magic sword with which you can cut off its head!”