The darkness of the light

Read Time:2 Minute, 47 Second

The Port of Tacoma – Milwaukee Way

It was after midnight and the rain had slowed to a drizzle. In the bright lights, against a backdrop of darkness, the needle-like drizzle looked like tiny slivers of light attacking the darkness. It was raining silver pins! All was quiet; the wind did not attend; the leaves on the trees were motionless. Except for the train which stood on the Tacoma beltline rail and the truck parked beside the rail which served as a guide, no one else was present. I was beginning to think that there really was no life here, when I noticed a to my right, just behind a mound of gravel, a white rabbit was hopping across the lawn, skipping merrily on his way to visit distant relatives.

I froze in my seat, trying not to breathe for fear of startling it; it seemed undisturbed by the lights of the truck, or even the sound of the engine; perhaps because these types of disturbances were normal flora in this area. I thought that this was rather a peculiar time of the night for a rabbit to be social, especially seeing that rabbits have little night vision and prefer to dally about during the daytime.

I sat gazing at the white rabbit through my windshield, feeling like Alice in Wonderland without the looking glass. As I slipped into a fixed, mindless stare, allowing my subconscious to drift aimlessly, I became aware of a dawning; a slow moving awakening, like a frisson that excursions your spine in the wintertime. Suddenly the significance of this port – the glistening light which surrounds the darkness of this lacuna I had chosen to call my site- crept into my consciousness. I realised that everything in its immediate vicinity around The Port of Tacoma, and everything globally connected with the port, had adapted itself to accommodate the port’s operations and to ensure its success.

The significance of this awakening knocked the wind out of me, and I had stopped breathing again. My mind raced back, digging into my memory bank, riffling through every day and every occurrence for the past eight weeks of my visits here. My mind became flooded with everything I had seen here in the past eight weeks: the rabbit, the weeds, the vehicles, the trains, Don, Dave, the forklifts at the docks; everything around me, nature and man alike had adapted and were adapting to suit the port’s activities. I thought of the Bougainvillea at home and how I had tricked it, by altering its surroundings into changing its life cycle; so has this rabbit been tricked by the port’s activities into altering its patterns; so has everything been caused to rotate around the port – the light – the wielding power of commerce.

I’ve observed the port’s activities for the last two months, I’ve studied its history in libraries and via internet and various propaganda mediums; but it appears that I have been asleep; in the brightness of the daylight the true significance had eluded me; and only now, in the darkness of the night and the stillness of the morn has this the significance and intensity of the power that surrounds me been illuminated; this elucidation made possible by a simple white rabbit! Now I truly understand Alice’s experience in wonderland.