On Interior Lights

That time of year is here again (already? how fast the summer fades!) when the bus’ interior lights flicker into life sometime during the ride home. On a rainy late afternoon, heavy clouds bring premature dusk.

The light outside reminds me of a solar eclipse I sat out for some years back (a little disappointing, I hoped for dramatic daytime blackness, not a simulation of overcast Manchester.)

Autumn is drawing in, descending with a weight that will brown the leaves, then pluck them from their branches.

And with it the buses become illuminated. While exterior light penetrates walls and breaks boundaries, opens paths and frees us to the world, interior light confirms edges, secures exclusion, enhances boundaries.

So as autumn comes, so does a heightened sense of our spaces, those enclosures we move between, that hold out and keep in.