DIM SOME

I, Sore

It’s lighter than you think

My apartment building is across the street from a 25-story college dorm. I see how they live.

Once, I saw Raymond Burr cutting up his wife with a machete and stuffing her bloody remains into a trunk, but that may be because I was watching “Rear Window” and my TV faces the same direction as the dorm.

True story.

Still, just feet away, I’ve seen dozens of college students caught in a slow-moving crime while I watched helpless through a powerful telephoto lens.

No, they weren’t taking drugs or drinking alcohol or engaging in ill-advised sexual escapades. I’d be worried if the future leaders of America weren’t doing at least one of those things, just for research.

What scares me is this. Young people, with their whole lives ahead of them, are spending their precious college years living under a single overhead light fixture as their primary source of illumination.

I’m talking to you personally now, single overhead light apologist, why would you do this to yourself? Why would you make a generic plastic Bundt cake of glaring white light your refulgence of choice? Why? I am prepared to shake you by the shoulders and slap you once, mostly for effect.

Don’t you see? The Eye of Sauron wants the Ring. It wants your agency, your creativity, your fealty. It wants to accustom you to sterile institutions and mass eating venues with plastic forks. It wants you to get used to a lifetime of baseline functionality, of lowered expectations, of things being “fine.” It wants you to look crappy in every photograph.

You remember those scenes in “Lawrence of Arabia” where Peter O’Toole is dragging his dehydrated ass through the Sinai, blinking up at the desert sun as it burns holes in his baby blue retinas? That was filmed in your room.

True story.

You know who’s happy under a single harsh light? Plants.

Meanwhile, your neighbors are romping through the meadows of sexy lighting options. Strings of red chili pepper party lights. Oozing lava lamps. Dim torchiere floor lamps glowing romantically in the corner. At least two pink neon flamingos. Disco balls spraying shards of diamond light to every corner.

But in your room? East German prison, 1966. One steel chair. A faucet drips on a cold stone floor. You squint under a single interrogation lamp. Just tell us the location of the microfilm, Herr Jones. Take all the time you need.

The light will break you. You will rat out your friends, you will rat out your family, you will rat out your own eternal soul because that relentless, ugly, 150-watt son of a bitch will microwave your brain until your life is reduced to just two choices, It or Darkness.

****

I found a legit article, not some goofy-ass Medium thing, called “5 Ways Dorm Room Lighting Can Harm You, or Your Child.” So, overhead lighting is harmless, huh?

*They can cause migraines and headaches. Do you think some of those headaches might be caused by thinking, why won’t any of my classmates hang out in my blinding, migraine-inducing nerd grotto?

*They will keep you awake. No dimmer switch means you don’t know day from night and your circadian rhythms go all to hell. It’s four a.m., you’re wide awake and fire ants are chewing on your pineal gland.

*They make too much noise. The damn things hum. Would you let a human being stay in your room and hum all night? OK, maybe Adele. Fair point.

*They cause eye strain. No problem. After you’ve bollixed both your eyes, you can just get new ones from a box in the supply room.

*They can contribute to depression, anxiety, and seasonal affective disorder. If I see you cutting up your wife with a machete and stuffing her bloody remains into a trunk, I’ll know just what to tell Homicide.

Finally, here’s something you should know before you go to a hardware store, right now, and reverse this obscene error.

Overhead lighting gives you chlamydia.

True story.