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Show 6 - TEN TIMES - NOVEMBER 1992 LETTER toTheTimes LIVI ng Together was a high-tech sodium or argon or perhaps To Editors of Castle Valley Times: even kryptonite beacon set atop a steeple— the kind you expect to see fitted to rocky outcroppings on hazardous coasts. Valley neighbors far and near complained that when the lamp was lit, it invaded their privacy, unhinged their serenity. Given what it costs to pay the Utah Power piper, my first thought was that this chap was doing them a favor. After all, they Castle Valley-dwellers live in a condominium. Obviously it is not one of those modern pueblos proliferating throughout urban and resort environments. But, as Jack Campbell pointed out in “Who’s Interfering in Whose Life?", we are tenant-owners whose lives are bounded by common rights and shared responsibilities. Most of us are not kin through ties of blood. Neither is this agglomeration of unique critters and distinctive codgers one in spirit and lifestyle. But we are a community in the legal sense and, perhaps equally as important, in the ethical evaluation. As Jack put it, our rights are defined and circumscribed by the geography of where our neighbors' noses— and sometimes their ears and eyes—begin. My introduction to this aspect of our wouldn’t have to turn on their own lights to read a book. Or find their way to the woodpile. They could piggyback on someone else’s energy to provide their lumen needs. Become conservative consumers (two or more end-users of a single commodity for the price of one ticket) share a scarce resource, be eco-hip. But I reckon these neighbors didn‘t see it that way. So they proceeded with overtures of polite diplomacy. Please shade common life came on the long reach when a polite and well-crafted letter from Mayor John Groo arrived at my former home on or douse the light, they asked. But the light— installer/light—keeper was unmoved by their reasoned petitions and would not comply or Puget Sound. Apparently the family developing my property on Shafer Lane felt cooperate. The stage was set for a show— down between conflicting rights and the need to erect and use a yard light. It was privileges, that gray zone inhabited by presumably equal warrants. One person not a small caliber monk’s lamp. Instead it thought his right to use or not use his yard light was inviolable. Others believed that his freedom to light the night ended at his property line. Light, like smells and sounds and dust, is brazenly careless when it comes to respecting artificial boundaries drawn on plat maps. Of course, one or the other of the aggrieved parties could have built a wall. That would have been a condoish solution, everyone retreating to their cubby, keeping to their hidey—hole. TRANSFORMATIONAL BODYWORK Swedish, Deep Tissue, Lymphatic MASSAGE ENERGY BALANCING RADIANCE BREATHWORK LAURA MACERSKY, Ms.T. CVSR Box 1705 MOAB, UTAH 84532 801-593-8702 But walls are expensive to build, aesthetic eyesores. and notoriously ineffective. Witness the walls of Jericho and the Berlin Wall. But a wall was hit—the one at the end of patience. Eventually some candle-snuffmg acolyte turned the damn light off. Vigilantism? Good old frontier justice? It's what you‘d expect in coyoteland, in Ed Abbey country. Who knows, had [been a part of that brouhaha, perhaps I would have helped build the rampart to monkey-wrench the contraption. Surely patience is a significant moral virtue. But forbearance has limits. Offenses against privacy, aesthetic or otherwise, begin as misdemeanor hazings. And from there. if the will isn‘t aroused to reason together and time isn't taken to sort through the tangle of competing rights, well, come soon or late the proverbial merde hits the abanico. The original draft of the Bill of Rights assured to each citizen the right to ‘life, liberty, and the protection ofprivate property.’ Property is tangible. Happiness is a feeling. Presumably that implies that our interior life, the intensely private domain of affect, has rights. Since they are a part of our skin, moral calculus based on noses is often uncomplicated. Here’s mine, there's yours, each is obvious and and distance between them is measurable. Feelings are something else. Ask Anita Hill. Judge Clarence Thomas did not assault his colleague's physical body. He violated her feelings, lrespassed her sense of decorum in the man/ woman tandem. His rights and liberties ended when she began to feel uncomfortable and threatened. And that was no inconsequential infringement of her personal space. He breached an invisible but sturdy moral boundary. The Judge’s right to pursue his happiness ended where her right to happiness, her sense of decency and personal safely began. The balance of prevailing rights was tilted for her. God help us. butI guess that neither Judge Thomas nor the Senate committee could grasp that subtlety. Back to this business of the conflict between neighbors. The light-erector sold out. He no longer makes his home here. There's a sorrow in that. It's the ache of fractured communication, the sadness of failing to develop consensus, the sorry clinching that hits the gut when the bonds of community fray and come undone. I forwarded my copy of the Mayor's letter to the family renting the property. We agreed to defuse the issue; indeed, we pulled the breaker feeding the light at the box. No more lighthouse on Shafer Lane. At long last, and through the long winter nights, this small spot in Castle Valley will be and shall be tenebrous and dark as the womb. Just as I like it, as neighbors in this community like it. But damnit, having said all this, light is why I moved here. Specifically the soft light of dawn and dusk twilights. Dylan Thomas screamed, “rage, rage against the dying of the light . . . ." Like hell. These arenas for dancing gods are my favorite moments. An isthmus bridging sunlight and moonlight, twilight is the time of pause when creation posts the changing of the guard. The pendulum of the furnament stops for a moment at the zenith of its arc, shifts on an unseen pivot, then reverses direction heading for another cycle of time. |
