WEBVTT

1
00:00:05.160 --> 00:00:08.519
<v Speaker 1>Hollo I moalcaned stories all the time. Glad you are here.

2
00:00:09.160 --> 00:00:10.039
<v Speaker 1>Let's get into it.

3
00:00:10.880 --> 00:00:13.880
<v Speaker 2>The festival had drawn people out of their houses, tucking

4
00:00:13.880 --> 00:00:16.920
<v Speaker 2>the riverbank and square with a gentle commotion that felt

5
00:00:16.920 --> 00:00:20.280
<v Speaker 2>as soft and bright as the afternoon itself. There were

6
00:00:20.359 --> 00:00:24.160
<v Speaker 2>rows of bunting spanning the village's old slate roofs, pennants

7
00:00:24.199 --> 00:00:27.000
<v Speaker 2>flickering in the clean air, and the murmur of market

8
00:00:27.079 --> 00:00:31.719
<v Speaker 2>stalls carrying the warmth of newly baked bread. Children darted

9
00:00:31.760 --> 00:00:35.640
<v Speaker 2>beside the river, their path outlined with daubs of wild flowers,

10
00:00:35.880 --> 00:00:39.920
<v Speaker 2>and the swell of laughter that ended in sudden, delighted shouts.

11
00:00:40.479 --> 00:00:43.840
<v Speaker 2>It could have been any cornish afternoon in June, except

12
00:00:44.240 --> 00:00:48.200
<v Speaker 2>perhaps for the quality of the light. I arrived by bus,

13
00:00:48.439 --> 00:00:52.240
<v Speaker 2>a single battered case in tow. Approaching the stone footbridge,

14
00:00:52.280 --> 00:00:55.200
<v Speaker 2>I paused, letting the hum of the festival wash over me.

15
00:00:55.719 --> 00:00:59.359
<v Speaker 2>Sunlight danced on the river's shifting skin, the sky a dense,

16
00:00:59.600 --> 00:01:03.799
<v Speaker 2>unwakeavering blue overhead. The woman ahead of me, hair pinned

17
00:01:03.799 --> 00:01:06.640
<v Speaker 2>in a silver bun a string bag of vegetables at

18
00:01:06.640 --> 00:01:09.480
<v Speaker 2>her elbow, wore a pale linen dress that seemed to

19
00:01:09.480 --> 00:01:13.680
<v Speaker 2>catch the sun with unexpected radiance was I thought a

20
00:01:13.760 --> 00:01:16.799
<v Speaker 2>place rehearsed for company. And yet before I'd crossed even

21
00:01:16.840 --> 00:01:20.439
<v Speaker 2>half the span, something turned in my mind. I glanced down,

22
00:01:20.519 --> 00:01:23.599
<v Speaker 2>expecting to see my own feet. The bridge's iron railings,

23
00:01:23.920 --> 00:01:26.239
<v Speaker 2>each sharply picked out in shadow, as they would be

24
00:01:26.239 --> 00:01:29.000
<v Speaker 2>in Truro or anywhere else on a crisp day. There

25
00:01:29.079 --> 00:01:33.040
<v Speaker 2>was nothing. The cobblestones, smooth and dappled with chips of quartz,

26
00:01:33.159 --> 00:01:37.239
<v Speaker 2>glinted evenly, my shoes, the ornate iron lattice work, the

27
00:01:37.319 --> 00:01:40.200
<v Speaker 2>trailing rushes on the bank. Not a single edge was

28
00:01:40.239 --> 00:01:45.079
<v Speaker 2>cut by darkness or by light. The world seemed curiously flat,

29
00:01:45.480 --> 00:01:48.319
<v Speaker 2>as if the village were floating atop its own reflection.

30
00:01:49.359 --> 00:01:52.599
<v Speaker 2>Perhaps I stood too much in the open, blinded by brightness.

31
00:01:53.040 --> 00:01:56.040
<v Speaker 2>I stopped holding out my hand above the stone. I

32
00:01:56.079 --> 00:01:59.359
<v Speaker 2>twisted it, palm up, palm down, searching for the ghost

33
00:01:59.400 --> 00:02:04.000
<v Speaker 2>of my outlet. But the ground below remained unchanged, no silhouette,

34
00:02:04.000 --> 00:02:07.400
<v Speaker 2>no blur, only a wash of gentle illumination, so diffused

35
00:02:07.439 --> 00:02:10.919
<v Speaker 2>that it felt somehow removed from ordinary sunlight. Even the

36
00:02:10.960 --> 00:02:14.639
<v Speaker 2>plants at my feet, alcamilla and wood sorrel, glowed in

37
00:02:14.800 --> 00:02:20.039
<v Speaker 2>unblemished color. Unsullied by any shadow. I considered an explanation.

38
00:02:20.439 --> 00:02:22.960
<v Speaker 2>Perhaps it was the pale stone work, or the river

39
00:02:23.120 --> 00:02:26.319
<v Speaker 2>catching and flinging up secondary light. But even as I

40
00:02:26.360 --> 00:02:30.560
<v Speaker 2>scrutinized the scene, a local boy shot past, splashing into

41
00:02:30.560 --> 00:02:33.759
<v Speaker 2>a puddle near the bridge's edge. I watched the water,

42
00:02:34.159 --> 00:02:36.840
<v Speaker 2>half expecting to see the arcs of his limbs drawn

43
00:02:36.879 --> 00:02:40.159
<v Speaker 2>in mirrored glimmer, But there were only fractured sun speckles,

44
00:02:40.400 --> 00:02:43.919
<v Speaker 2>and nothing as solid or deep as a shadow. A

45
00:02:43.960 --> 00:02:47.199
<v Speaker 2>woman carrying a tray bearing cups and a china teapot

46
00:02:47.479 --> 00:02:50.759
<v Speaker 2>paused beside me. She must have seen my muted frown,

47
00:02:50.879 --> 00:02:53.159
<v Speaker 2>because she offered, you look like you could do with

48
00:02:53.240 --> 00:02:57.280
<v Speaker 2>a cup, dear. Her accent was broad, her eyes creased

49
00:02:57.319 --> 00:03:01.800
<v Speaker 2>with kindness. I accepted tea, letting my gaze drift back

50
00:03:01.840 --> 00:03:05.560
<v Speaker 2>to the luminous stones. Is it always like this? I asked,

51
00:03:05.800 --> 00:03:08.520
<v Speaker 2>unable to keep the note of wonder, and I suppose

52
00:03:08.759 --> 00:03:12.560
<v Speaker 2>confusion from my voice The light I mean, I couldn't

53
00:03:12.560 --> 00:03:16.840
<v Speaker 2>help noticing their's no shadow anywhere. She pursed her lips

54
00:03:16.840 --> 00:03:19.280
<v Speaker 2>with a trace of wry humor, as if she'd been

55
00:03:19.319 --> 00:03:23.319
<v Speaker 2>waiting for this question all morning. That's just our light love.

56
00:03:23.800 --> 00:03:27.400
<v Speaker 2>Always a gentle afternoon here, you'll find. She gave a

57
00:03:27.479 --> 00:03:31.240
<v Speaker 2>half shrug, as if that answered anything at all. I

58
00:03:31.360 --> 00:03:35.000
<v Speaker 2>cradled the cup, and for a strange moment, uncertainty flickered.

59
00:03:35.520 --> 00:03:38.159
<v Speaker 2>Was I simply reading too much into a turn of phrase,

60
00:03:38.560 --> 00:03:42.560
<v Speaker 2>some local idiom for tranquility? But there the facts glimmered

61
00:03:42.599 --> 00:03:46.960
<v Speaker 2>back at me, cool and unyielding. The absence wasn't metaphorical.

62
00:03:47.319 --> 00:03:50.439
<v Speaker 2>It was as literal as the tea warming my hands.

63
00:03:51.080 --> 00:03:54.039
<v Speaker 2>The curiosity stayed with me across the bridge, through the

64
00:03:54.080 --> 00:03:57.599
<v Speaker 2>square and its slow swirl of festival guests. Maybe I

65
00:03:57.680 --> 00:04:00.319
<v Speaker 2>reasoned it was a trick of cloud cover, but the

66
00:04:00.319 --> 00:04:04.319
<v Speaker 2>sky was cloudless. Maybe the river created some elaborate cauldron

67
00:04:04.360 --> 00:04:07.280
<v Speaker 2>of reflected light. But nothing I saw could account for

68
00:04:07.319 --> 00:04:10.680
<v Speaker 2>the evenness, the way everything glowed, as if newly cleaned.

69
00:04:11.240 --> 00:04:14.120
<v Speaker 2>I recalled stories as a school child of places where

70
00:04:14.120 --> 00:04:17.160
<v Speaker 2>the sun never set. But this was Cornwall, not the

71
00:04:17.199 --> 00:04:21.519
<v Speaker 2>polar North. Why on this ordinary day in New Pennaligen

72
00:04:21.879 --> 00:04:25.439
<v Speaker 2>did the world go about without a single shadow? That

73
00:04:25.560 --> 00:04:27.959
<v Speaker 2>question threaded its way through the bustle as I made

74
00:04:28.000 --> 00:04:31.199
<v Speaker 2>my way up hill, each uneven step making the contrast

75
00:04:31.279 --> 00:04:34.040
<v Speaker 2>sharper I hadn't meant to begin my long week end

76
00:04:34.160 --> 00:04:38.040
<v Speaker 2>wrapped up in practical mystery. But if I'm honest, curiosity

77
00:04:38.079 --> 00:04:40.959
<v Speaker 2>has a way of charming me like nothing else. Even

78
00:04:41.000 --> 00:04:44.079
<v Speaker 2>retired with a shed full of half finished gadgets and

79
00:04:44.120 --> 00:04:48.879
<v Speaker 2>note books, I've always leaned into patterns, strange, subtle and otherwise.

80
00:04:49.920 --> 00:04:52.839
<v Speaker 2>Yet even I hadn't expected the light to steal my

81
00:04:52.920 --> 00:04:57.399
<v Speaker 2>attention so completely. The village looked all the more picturesque

82
00:04:57.439 --> 00:05:01.040
<v Speaker 2>for it. The old limestone cottages, trimmed with moss and

83
00:05:01.079 --> 00:05:04.360
<v Speaker 2>clusters of springing ferns, sloped down toward the river in

84
00:05:04.399 --> 00:05:07.959
<v Speaker 2>a modest riot of color. Here and there blue green

85
00:05:08.000 --> 00:05:11.560
<v Speaker 2>paint peeled away from window sills, exposing the fine silver

86
00:05:11.639 --> 00:05:15.160
<v Speaker 2>thread of local slate. Beneath. You could sense the centuries

87
00:05:15.240 --> 00:05:18.240
<v Speaker 2>tucked into each lane's curve, the sense of a place

88
00:05:18.360 --> 00:05:21.360
<v Speaker 2>grown from its own history, rather than imposed by it.

89
00:05:22.399 --> 00:05:24.959
<v Speaker 2>I passed by the side of the church, its porch

90
00:05:25.079 --> 00:05:29.319
<v Speaker 2>strung with crape paper lanterns in improbable hues. A line

91
00:05:29.360 --> 00:05:32.439
<v Speaker 2>of children tugged at each other's coats, skipping down to

92
00:05:32.519 --> 00:05:36.120
<v Speaker 2>the green where games had already begun. Looking at their

93
00:05:36.120 --> 00:05:40.160
<v Speaker 2>faces shining with anticipation, it was hard to imagine any

94
00:05:40.199 --> 00:05:44.519
<v Speaker 2>place that could feel so safe and brightly ordered. Checking

95
00:05:44.519 --> 00:05:47.600
<v Speaker 2>my watch, I realized I had time before the book talk.

96
00:05:47.680 --> 00:05:51.079
<v Speaker 2>I had come to hear Cornish folklore in the modern age,

97
00:05:51.360 --> 00:05:55.600
<v Speaker 2>promised the program. I let myself wander the smells of

98
00:05:55.639 --> 00:06:00.439
<v Speaker 2>the festival. Sugared buns, slow cooked ham, blooming lilacs mingled

99
00:06:00.439 --> 00:06:04.120
<v Speaker 2>around the market. I found myself chatting with Anne Lambley,

100
00:06:04.360 --> 00:06:10.040
<v Speaker 2>the festival's organizer, who wore her title like a sensible hat, unassuming, relaxed,

101
00:06:10.360 --> 00:06:15.160
<v Speaker 2>but clearly the axis around which everything revolved. So sorry

102
00:06:15.199 --> 00:06:17.839
<v Speaker 2>for the sleepy light, she said when I commented on

103
00:06:17.920 --> 00:06:21.439
<v Speaker 2>the outdoor reading spots. But it's perfect for getting lost

104
00:06:21.480 --> 00:06:24.920
<v Speaker 2>in a book. People loiter linger best kind of trouble

105
00:06:24.959 --> 00:06:29.439
<v Speaker 2>for a festival, I suppose, I half laughed, still wondering

106
00:06:29.439 --> 00:06:33.040
<v Speaker 2>what she meant. As I strolled down Lemon Lane, admiring

107
00:06:33.120 --> 00:06:36.639
<v Speaker 2>neatly clipped box hedges and the irruption of bright nasturtiums

108
00:06:36.680 --> 00:06:39.639
<v Speaker 2>from a stone trough, I found myself blinking again at

109
00:06:39.680 --> 00:06:43.240
<v Speaker 2>the color, the sheer saturation of blues and yellows and reds,

110
00:06:43.560 --> 00:06:46.759
<v Speaker 2>all bright, all alive, almost as if paint had been

111
00:06:46.800 --> 00:06:50.279
<v Speaker 2>dobed directly onto the world without the anchor of shadow,

112
00:06:50.639 --> 00:06:55.439
<v Speaker 2>every hue seemed to burst forward untethered. Outside the schoolhouse,

113
00:06:55.680 --> 00:06:59.040
<v Speaker 2>a jumble of children's drawings had been pegged in fluttering lines.

114
00:06:59.560 --> 00:07:03.160
<v Speaker 2>I slow, more amused than analytical at first. Who could

115
00:07:03.199 --> 00:07:06.199
<v Speaker 2>resist the earnest, knobby fingered scrawls of a class room

116
00:07:06.319 --> 00:07:10.519
<v Speaker 2>art display. Yet as I peered closer, a pattern caught hold.

117
00:07:11.199 --> 00:07:15.680
<v Speaker 2>Garden scenes, rivers, leaves and trees, busy figures, each one

118
00:07:15.720 --> 00:07:19.160
<v Speaker 2>colored boldly, but with not a suggestion of shadow anywhere,

119
00:07:20.199 --> 00:07:23.160
<v Speaker 2>No hatching, no cross hatch, not even a swoop of

120
00:07:23.240 --> 00:07:26.519
<v Speaker 2>darker crayon where you'd expect the shade beneath a hat

121
00:07:26.839 --> 00:07:30.240
<v Speaker 2>or under a cow. It wasn't carelessness. It was as

122
00:07:30.279 --> 00:07:33.120
<v Speaker 2>if the idea of shadow simply hadn't occurred to any

123
00:07:33.120 --> 00:07:36.439
<v Speaker 2>of them. I bought a sandwich, had a tidy bakery

124
00:07:36.439 --> 00:07:39.959
<v Speaker 2>near the square, the air inside thick with yeast and cinnamon.

125
00:07:40.480 --> 00:07:43.920
<v Speaker 2>The baker, mister Tregaes, tossed flower across his apron as

126
00:07:43.920 --> 00:07:47.360
<v Speaker 2>he wrapped my lunch. We exchanged a few pleasantries before

127
00:07:47.399 --> 00:07:51.560
<v Speaker 2>I embold and offered, doesn't it ever unsettle you? The light,

128
00:07:51.680 --> 00:07:55.600
<v Speaker 2>I mean, so bright, but never a shadow? He looked

129
00:07:55.600 --> 00:07:58.759
<v Speaker 2>at me with that slow, cheerful acceptance peculiar to those

130
00:07:58.759 --> 00:08:01.199
<v Speaker 2>who are certain they know the tempo of their own home.

131
00:08:01.759 --> 00:08:05.000
<v Speaker 2>Never been afraid of walking home even at dusk. The

132
00:08:05.040 --> 00:08:08.399
<v Speaker 2>world here just stays gentle. That's what folk say, and

133
00:08:08.480 --> 00:08:13.120
<v Speaker 2>you know it's true. He didn't elaborate or volunteer further detail,

134
00:08:13.480 --> 00:08:18.199
<v Speaker 2>just folded the paper carefully and smiled. Later, the festival

135
00:08:18.240 --> 00:08:21.519
<v Speaker 2>tent filled with people for the folklore talk, hay Bales

136
00:08:21.600 --> 00:08:25.000
<v Speaker 2>drawn up for seats. At some point a visiting author

137
00:08:25.000 --> 00:08:28.079
<v Speaker 2>from London stepped forward, peering out over the village with

138
00:08:28.279 --> 00:08:31.879
<v Speaker 2>arms spread wide. It's like living inside an old painting,

139
00:08:32.000 --> 00:08:35.240
<v Speaker 2>isn't it? She asked. A ripple of polite nods met

140
00:08:35.240 --> 00:08:38.679
<v Speaker 2>her words, but there was little affirmation. No one seemed

141
00:08:38.720 --> 00:08:41.320
<v Speaker 2>to find the notion surprising, nor did they seem in

142
00:08:41.360 --> 00:08:44.759
<v Speaker 2>a rush to correct her. What struck me as the

143
00:08:44.799 --> 00:08:48.600
<v Speaker 2>afternoon waned into its unvarying brightness was how quickly every

144
00:08:48.600 --> 00:08:53.679
<v Speaker 2>one myself, perhaps not accepted, adopted the ambient oddness. Those

145
00:08:53.679 --> 00:08:56.519
<v Speaker 2>who lived here never mentioned it at all, those who

146
00:08:56.639 --> 00:09:00.840
<v Speaker 2>visited stopped remarking. Before too long, the abnormal slipped across

147
00:09:00.840 --> 00:09:04.320
<v Speaker 2>a threshold and became simply the background of the day.

148
00:09:05.480 --> 00:09:08.279
<v Speaker 2>Spent the evening in a small chill room above the green, man,

149
00:09:08.639 --> 00:09:12.279
<v Speaker 2>unpacking my case and rereading an old travelog, hoping for

150
00:09:12.320 --> 00:09:15.840
<v Speaker 2>clues about the region and its peculiarities. Yet my mind

151
00:09:15.879 --> 00:09:19.000
<v Speaker 2>wandered inexorably to the light that gilded the walls outside.

152
00:09:19.360 --> 00:09:22.120
<v Speaker 2>How it refused to bend around corners or submit to

153
00:09:22.120 --> 00:09:26.000
<v Speaker 2>the usual tyranny of sun and stone. Lying awake that night,

154
00:09:26.360 --> 00:09:29.000
<v Speaker 2>I found myself watching the fading glow pooled at the

155
00:09:29.120 --> 00:09:32.399
<v Speaker 2>edge of my window, waiting for darkness, or at least

156
00:09:32.679 --> 00:09:36.559
<v Speaker 2>for a fragment of honest shadow. I never saw it.

157
00:09:37.440 --> 00:09:40.399
<v Speaker 2>The next morning, I rose before the bustle, the day

158
00:09:40.440 --> 00:09:43.639
<v Speaker 2>as clear as a bell and surprisingly cold for June.

159
00:09:44.200 --> 00:09:47.559
<v Speaker 2>Windows across the lane reflected a peach pink streak, the

160
00:09:47.639 --> 00:09:52.399
<v Speaker 2>kind that usually guarantees long, knife edged shadows slanting over pavement.

161
00:09:53.039 --> 00:09:55.879
<v Speaker 2>I pulled on a jacket and left the inn, determined

162
00:09:55.879 --> 00:09:59.080
<v Speaker 2>to test the light for myself. The green in the

163
00:09:59.120 --> 00:10:02.559
<v Speaker 2>center of the village was nearly empty, dew throwing tiny

164
00:10:02.600 --> 00:10:06.200
<v Speaker 2>prisms across the turf. I stood with a familiar physics

165
00:10:06.240 --> 00:10:10.360
<v Speaker 2>teacher's improvisation, a battered novel held in one hand a

166
00:10:10.360 --> 00:10:14.320
<v Speaker 2>compact mirror in the other, sun high behind my shoulder,

167
00:10:14.639 --> 00:10:17.320
<v Speaker 2>I angled the book to cast a rectangular outline on

168
00:10:17.399 --> 00:10:21.360
<v Speaker 2>the grass, or so I expected, But the grass looked

169
00:10:21.360 --> 00:10:24.039
<v Speaker 2>as it had the evening before, every edge picked out

170
00:10:24.039 --> 00:10:27.559
<v Speaker 2>in that unbroken wash of radiance. I turned the book, slowly,

171
00:10:27.879 --> 00:10:30.320
<v Speaker 2>tilting it so that the spine should, by rights have

172
00:10:30.399 --> 00:10:34.679
<v Speaker 2>painted a narrow shadow. Still nothing. I crouched down, waving

173
00:10:34.720 --> 00:10:37.840
<v Speaker 2>the book against my shoe, feeling a bit foolish. No

174
00:10:37.960 --> 00:10:40.759
<v Speaker 2>matter how I twisted or blocked the light beneath and

175
00:10:40.879 --> 00:10:46.320
<v Speaker 2>beside me, only the same easy brilliance lingered, unmodulated. I

176
00:10:46.399 --> 00:10:49.200
<v Speaker 2>pulled out my phone, set to h d R mode,

177
00:10:49.480 --> 00:10:53.480
<v Speaker 2>and aimed for photographic proof. The preview image looked wrong,

178
00:10:53.840 --> 00:10:57.440
<v Speaker 2>almost digitally edited, too dimensional, as if shot under a

179
00:10:57.440 --> 00:11:01.600
<v Speaker 2>photography soft box. Colors were rich, but lines bled into

180
00:11:01.639 --> 00:11:04.799
<v Speaker 2>one another, and there was no sense of foreground or depth.

181
00:11:05.799 --> 00:11:08.000
<v Speaker 2>At the edge of the green stood an ancient oak.

182
00:11:08.480 --> 00:11:11.720
<v Speaker 2>I ducked beneath it, stepping into the circle. Where elsewhere

183
00:11:12.080 --> 00:11:14.600
<v Speaker 2>a canopy of leaves would cast a lattice work of

184
00:11:14.639 --> 00:11:18.919
<v Speaker 2>shifting gloom, here it simply became a dimmer hemisphere. No

185
00:11:19.080 --> 00:11:23.000
<v Speaker 2>crisp boundary, no solid pool of shadow, only a gentle

186
00:11:23.080 --> 00:11:27.080
<v Speaker 2>recession of color. Trying to reconcile the evidence before me

187
00:11:27.159 --> 00:11:31.039
<v Speaker 2>with years of habit, I wrestled quietly with memory every

188
00:11:31.039 --> 00:11:35.639
<v Speaker 2>other Cornish village I had visited, Port Isaac, Mousehole, Saint Agnes.

189
00:11:36.200 --> 00:11:38.360
<v Speaker 2>Morning light made the world new at the cost of

190
00:11:38.519 --> 00:11:42.600
<v Speaker 2>endless shadow play. But here everything was preserved in its

191
00:11:42.639 --> 00:11:46.039
<v Speaker 2>own gentle clarity, as if bathed in a constant, low

192
00:11:46.080 --> 00:11:51.399
<v Speaker 2>intensity glow. A pair of dog walkers strolled past, their retrievers,

193
00:11:51.440 --> 00:11:56.320
<v Speaker 2>straining forward with mild enthusiasm. My sense of reasonable social

194
00:11:56.399 --> 00:12:01.120
<v Speaker 2>distance dissolved. Pardon me, I called, but do you notice

195
00:12:01.200 --> 00:12:04.799
<v Speaker 2>anything odd about the light this morning? One of them,

196
00:12:04.879 --> 00:12:07.679
<v Speaker 2>a woman in a windbreaker with hair the color of rye,

197
00:12:07.840 --> 00:12:10.879
<v Speaker 2>glanced at the tree tops. You mean the soft light,

198
00:12:11.320 --> 00:12:15.480
<v Speaker 2>she sounded, surprised at my emphasis. I s'pose folk mention it.

199
00:12:15.759 --> 00:12:19.240
<v Speaker 2>But it's just how things are, isn't it. Her companion,

200
00:12:19.320 --> 00:12:22.200
<v Speaker 2>a man with a cap tugged low added, keeps the

201
00:12:22.279 --> 00:12:24.919
<v Speaker 2>rain off, gives you more day to work or play.

202
00:12:25.440 --> 00:12:31.480
<v Speaker 2>Nothing wrong with that. Unperturbed, they smiled something between politeness

203
00:12:31.519 --> 00:12:35.600
<v Speaker 2>and gentle exasperation. Then let themselves be towed onward by

204
00:12:35.600 --> 00:12:39.720
<v Speaker 2>the dogs. I watched their retreat, a pair of figures

205
00:12:39.759 --> 00:12:44.039
<v Speaker 2>impossibly luminous against the grass, no outline separating them from

206
00:12:44.080 --> 00:12:48.440
<v Speaker 2>anything else. By this point, a mild frustration stirred at

207
00:12:48.440 --> 00:12:52.200
<v Speaker 2>the edges of my curiosity. The phenomenon was neither an illusion,

208
00:12:52.200 --> 00:12:55.440
<v Speaker 2>nor a casual oversight, nor a trick of village pride.

209
00:12:55.840 --> 00:13:01.080
<v Speaker 2>Direct experiment failed documentation through lens and eye every avenue

210
00:13:01.120 --> 00:13:04.799
<v Speaker 2>I tried denny the existence of even the faintest shade.

211
00:13:05.279 --> 00:13:08.320
<v Speaker 2>The locals, for their part, responded as if I had

212
00:13:08.360 --> 00:13:12.279
<v Speaker 2>asked why the water flowed down hill. Nothing about the

213
00:13:12.320 --> 00:13:16.679
<v Speaker 2>situation was satisfactory, not as atmosphere, certainly, not as a

214
00:13:16.720 --> 00:13:19.799
<v Speaker 2>matter of science, and least of all as the beginning

215
00:13:19.879 --> 00:13:23.679
<v Speaker 2>of the rational answer. I craved, there's a danger in

216
00:13:23.799 --> 00:13:28.320
<v Speaker 2>letting any curiosity go untested. The world, even or perhaps

217
00:13:28.440 --> 00:13:33.240
<v Speaker 2>especially in retirement, can start to feel too predictable. And here,

218
00:13:33.480 --> 00:13:36.840
<v Speaker 2>in a place where all rules seemed gently rewritten, I

219
00:13:36.919 --> 00:13:39.159
<v Speaker 2>resolved to pursue the matter as far as it would

220
00:13:39.159 --> 00:13:42.679
<v Speaker 2>take me. Back in my room, I started a journal.

221
00:13:43.039 --> 00:13:47.000
<v Speaker 2>Old Habits Die Easy Datum. By datum, I stacked up

222
00:13:47.000 --> 00:13:53.519
<v Speaker 2>my scattered hypotheses, some atmospheric peculiarity, low altitude haze perhaps,

223
00:13:53.879 --> 00:13:58.759
<v Speaker 2>or fine mist veiling the village from direct shadow. Unusually

224
00:13:58.799 --> 00:14:02.879
<v Speaker 2>reflective ground may be the crushed slate with flecks of mica,

225
00:14:03.320 --> 00:14:06.399
<v Speaker 2>scattered enough light to prevent darkness, pooling at the feet

226
00:14:06.440 --> 00:14:11.399
<v Speaker 2>of trees and buildings. Constant low overcast, with clouds so

227
00:14:11.600 --> 00:14:14.639
<v Speaker 2>thin as to be invisible but dense enough to scatter

228
00:14:14.720 --> 00:14:19.759
<v Speaker 2>the sun's rays. Subtle micro climate moisture, or river borne

229
00:14:19.840 --> 00:14:25.639
<v Speaker 2>particles producing an even diffusion. The possibility unlikely even as

230
00:14:25.679 --> 00:14:29.399
<v Speaker 2>I wrote it, that the paints and stones themselves, perhaps

231
00:14:29.440 --> 00:14:35.639
<v Speaker 2>mind entreated locally, managed to reflect all available light. Over breakfast,

232
00:14:35.799 --> 00:14:38.639
<v Speaker 2>I chatted with Anne Lambley, who seemed pleased to find

233
00:14:38.639 --> 00:14:42.320
<v Speaker 2>me puzzling through the village's quirks. Ever the host, she

234
00:14:42.399 --> 00:14:46.679
<v Speaker 2>poured coffee over my notes and smiled knowingly. I can

235
00:14:46.720 --> 00:14:50.000
<v Speaker 2>see your catching the pennelig and fever. She said. It's

236
00:14:50.039 --> 00:14:53.159
<v Speaker 2>always the visitors with sharp eyes who ask after the light.

237
00:14:53.799 --> 00:14:57.360
<v Speaker 2>Artists come from London, Dorset, even Florence to chase it.

238
00:14:57.879 --> 00:15:00.919
<v Speaker 2>They find it's easy to get swept along like the river,

239
00:15:01.120 --> 00:15:05.120
<v Speaker 2>I'd say, I pressed her gently. Had she noticed how

240
00:15:05.159 --> 00:15:08.399
<v Speaker 2>the light refused to make shadow. How even at midnight,

241
00:15:08.440 --> 00:15:12.279
<v Speaker 2>the village glimmered faintly, its lines blurred but never hidden.

242
00:15:13.320 --> 00:15:16.799
<v Speaker 2>She shrugged, it's our way. I think perhaps the river

243
00:15:16.879 --> 00:15:19.639
<v Speaker 2>breathes it on to the stones. You'll find the urge

244
00:15:19.639 --> 00:15:22.840
<v Speaker 2>to wander harder at first than it'll just seem natural.

245
00:15:23.919 --> 00:15:26.720
<v Speaker 2>After coffee, I set about testing the world rather than

246
00:15:26.759 --> 00:15:30.639
<v Speaker 2>simply living in it. Armed with a flashlight, a folding ruler,

247
00:15:30.720 --> 00:15:34.519
<v Speaker 2>and a handful of objects, I tried shining light even indoors,

248
00:15:35.159 --> 00:15:39.159
<v Speaker 2>expecting to conjure a shadow behind vases, beneath tables, against

249
00:15:39.200 --> 00:15:43.240
<v Speaker 2>my own cupped hands. Nothing took shape. The light, both

250
00:15:43.360 --> 00:15:47.480
<v Speaker 2>artificial and solar, seemed to wrap around each object, subduing

251
00:15:47.519 --> 00:15:51.600
<v Speaker 2>every edge to a perfect, indifferent clarity. I walked to

252
00:15:51.600 --> 00:15:54.639
<v Speaker 2>the river bank, where the ancient bridge cast its reflection,

253
00:15:55.159 --> 00:15:58.679
<v Speaker 2>but never it seemed its shadow on the slow, green water.

254
00:15:59.559 --> 00:16:02.759
<v Speaker 2>I peered beneath the arches, looking for bands of gloom,

255
00:16:03.080 --> 00:16:06.080
<v Speaker 2>but even there the light bled through the underslung beams,

256
00:16:06.320 --> 00:16:11.080
<v Speaker 2>banishing any trace of sharp darkness. At sunrise, I stationed

257
00:16:11.080 --> 00:16:13.600
<v Speaker 2>myself at the highest point of the village, hoping the

258
00:16:13.639 --> 00:16:17.039
<v Speaker 2>glancing rays might tip the balance. Surely, then, with the

259
00:16:17.039 --> 00:16:21.159
<v Speaker 2>sun low, something would appear, but instead the world simply

260
00:16:21.159 --> 00:16:24.240
<v Speaker 2>lit itself from every angle at once, as if illumination

261
00:16:24.399 --> 00:16:27.080
<v Speaker 2>seeped up from the soil, curved in from the trees,

262
00:16:27.399 --> 00:16:31.200
<v Speaker 2>dissolved out of the river. Sunset fared no better. The

263
00:16:31.279 --> 00:16:37.720
<v Speaker 2>sudden golden slant never materialized, just another velvet haze of day. Returning,

264
00:16:37.879 --> 00:16:39.840
<v Speaker 2>I caught sight of a young woman seated on the

265
00:16:39.960 --> 00:16:43.440
<v Speaker 2>church wall with a sketch book graphite in hand. She

266
00:16:43.519 --> 00:16:46.960
<v Speaker 2>sketched the scene before her, the lane, the oaks, the

267
00:16:47.120 --> 00:16:51.200
<v Speaker 2>arching bridge. Each line spare the blocks of pastel color

268
00:16:51.279 --> 00:16:54.039
<v Speaker 2>flowing into one another, without so much as a smear

269
00:16:54.120 --> 00:16:58.240
<v Speaker 2>of gray or shadow. Mind if I look, I asked,

270
00:16:58.440 --> 00:17:03.039
<v Speaker 2>gesturing to her open pad. She flushed, but obliged, tilting

271
00:17:03.080 --> 00:17:06.759
<v Speaker 2>the page. I keep forgetting to add shadows. I know,

272
00:17:06.880 --> 00:17:10.640
<v Speaker 2>it's silly, just doesn't feel right while I'm here. It

273
00:17:10.720 --> 00:17:15.039
<v Speaker 2>almost seems, I said, like the world doesn't invite them.

274
00:17:15.279 --> 00:17:18.880
<v Speaker 2>She glanced at the stones beside us, squinting. It's like

275
00:17:18.960 --> 00:17:24.079
<v Speaker 2>painting in an old nursery room. The colors are enough anyway. Later,

276
00:17:24.240 --> 00:17:26.480
<v Speaker 2>I browsed the gift shop at the end of Key Road,

277
00:17:26.920 --> 00:17:30.720
<v Speaker 2>ducking between racks of weathered post cards and locally made fudge.

278
00:17:31.240 --> 00:17:35.440
<v Speaker 2>The historical display drew me sepia photographs from the nineteen thirties.

279
00:17:35.799 --> 00:17:38.839
<v Speaker 2>Groups gathered at the river side the same bridge, the

280
00:17:38.880 --> 00:17:43.240
<v Speaker 2>same unbroken dazzle. In every picture, people and trees stood

281
00:17:43.319 --> 00:17:47.519
<v Speaker 2>unsubtly disconnected from the earth, floating without anchoring lines or

282
00:17:47.599 --> 00:17:51.920
<v Speaker 2>pools of darkness. To a trained eye, it looked almost

283
00:17:52.000 --> 00:17:54.359
<v Speaker 2>as if some one had erased every shadow with a

284
00:17:54.400 --> 00:17:59.519
<v Speaker 2>delicate scalpel, leaving behind a world stubbornly afloat. At the

285
00:17:59.559 --> 00:18:03.200
<v Speaker 2>festival tent I leafed through a slim volume of local history.

286
00:18:03.640 --> 00:18:07.000
<v Speaker 2>There it was again a brief mention of the perpetual afternoon.

287
00:18:07.599 --> 00:18:10.359
<v Speaker 2>The author described the legend almost as a joke, a

288
00:18:10.400 --> 00:18:14.519
<v Speaker 2>point of gentle reference Old Penhaligan, where noon lingers and

289
00:18:14.559 --> 00:18:20.160
<v Speaker 2>the evening taris the dusty page announced, but the rest origins, explanations,

290
00:18:20.160 --> 00:18:23.960
<v Speaker 2>mechanisms was omitted in favor of a charming anecdote about

291
00:18:24.000 --> 00:18:28.559
<v Speaker 2>reading outdoors until midnight by the dreamy light. Needing a

292
00:18:28.559 --> 00:18:31.799
<v Speaker 2>more robust constellation of evidence, I sent a long emil

293
00:18:31.880 --> 00:18:36.160
<v Speaker 2>to Graham, my old department colleague, now teaching photonics at Exeter.

294
00:18:36.759 --> 00:18:39.759
<v Speaker 2>I described the light's peculiar omnipresence in as neutral and

295
00:18:39.799 --> 00:18:42.599
<v Speaker 2>scientific a tone as I could muster, asking for some

296
00:18:42.680 --> 00:18:46.680
<v Speaker 2>physical explanation or even a wild guess. His reply bordered

297
00:18:46.680 --> 00:18:49.799
<v Speaker 2>on the patronizing, but not unkind. Sounds like you need

298
00:18:49.839 --> 00:18:54.079
<v Speaker 2>a good sun hat and arrest old friend, atmospheric inversion perhaps,

299
00:18:54.440 --> 00:18:59.559
<v Speaker 2>or village legend enjoy the festival. Unwilling to admit defeat,

300
00:18:59.799 --> 00:19:03.200
<v Speaker 2>I ducked into shop interiors and low alleys. In every

301
00:19:03.279 --> 00:19:07.039
<v Speaker 2>shaded nook, the light hung without source, erasing the distinction

302
00:19:07.119 --> 00:19:11.480
<v Speaker 2>between interior and exterior day and dusk. Even the corners

303
00:19:11.519 --> 00:19:14.559
<v Speaker 2>most protected from windows or open doors were suffused with

304
00:19:14.599 --> 00:19:19.319
<v Speaker 2>a calm, directionless radiance, reducing every object, the broom propped

305
00:19:19.359 --> 00:19:22.279
<v Speaker 2>in the pub, the ceramic jugs in the bakery, the

306
00:19:22.319 --> 00:19:25.640
<v Speaker 2>clusters of onions and lavender hanging from the rafters, to

307
00:19:25.720 --> 00:19:30.039
<v Speaker 2>a state of clean, shadowless presence. I inspected the plants

308
00:19:30.079 --> 00:19:32.680
<v Speaker 2>at the backs of cottages, thinking to discover whether the

309
00:19:32.720 --> 00:19:37.240
<v Speaker 2>botanical world can form to the same strange regime. Astonishingly,

310
00:19:37.599 --> 00:19:40.960
<v Speaker 2>foxgloves and violets on the north facing lanes flourished as

311
00:19:40.960 --> 00:19:44.480
<v Speaker 2>those exposed directly to the sun. Their leaves and stems

312
00:19:44.599 --> 00:19:49.200
<v Speaker 2>undiminished in colour or stature. Normally, plants chased the light,

313
00:19:49.559 --> 00:19:52.640
<v Speaker 2>shading each other. But here life seemed to ignore the

314
00:19:52.720 --> 00:19:57.559
<v Speaker 2>usual rules. Fascination wared with frustration. If I could not

315
00:19:57.640 --> 00:20:01.240
<v Speaker 2>measure it, perhaps I could record it. Otherwise. I purchased

316
00:20:01.279 --> 00:20:04.720
<v Speaker 2>sheets of cyanotype paper at a craft stall, recalling a

317
00:20:04.759 --> 00:20:09.440
<v Speaker 2>school lesson in photochemistry. Exposed to sunlight, rints and the

318
00:20:09.559 --> 00:20:13.319
<v Speaker 2>regions left dark would register as bright blue negatives, while

319
00:20:13.400 --> 00:20:17.079
<v Speaker 2>regions in the light would wash white. In every case,

320
00:20:17.160 --> 00:20:20.319
<v Speaker 2>no matter where I placed the sheets beneath eaves in

321
00:20:20.400 --> 00:20:24.640
<v Speaker 2>clear sun under tables, each exposed evenly, blued right up

322
00:20:24.680 --> 00:20:27.440
<v Speaker 2>to the edge, except where accluded entirely, as if the

323
00:20:27.519 --> 00:20:31.599
<v Speaker 2>light arrived from every possible angle. The implication was clear.

324
00:20:32.079 --> 00:20:35.400
<v Speaker 2>It wasn't just the sun, but the very air surfaces

325
00:20:35.440 --> 00:20:39.960
<v Speaker 2>and village fabric scattering and reflecting daylight so thoroughly that

326
00:20:40.079 --> 00:20:44.079
<v Speaker 2>darkness had nowhere to gain a foothold. I began noticing

327
00:20:44.119 --> 00:20:47.599
<v Speaker 2>the absence of street lights on village squares and winding lanes.

328
00:20:48.160 --> 00:20:51.400
<v Speaker 2>In every other Cornish hamlet there would be at minimum

329
00:20:51.519 --> 00:20:55.880
<v Speaker 2>a gas post or modern solar globe. Here, shops and

330
00:20:55.960 --> 00:20:59.680
<v Speaker 2>homes simply did without switching on lamps inside out of

331
00:20:59.680 --> 00:21:04.359
<v Speaker 2>habit rather than necessity. I asked an elderly man busy

332
00:21:04.400 --> 00:21:08.160
<v Speaker 2>pruning roses in a garden brimming with strange glassy gravel

333
00:21:08.319 --> 00:21:11.960
<v Speaker 2>about it. He snorted, barely need them now, not since

334
00:21:12.000 --> 00:21:15.119
<v Speaker 2>mister Rainer's day, he said, pronouncing the name as if

335
00:21:15.160 --> 00:21:19.359
<v Speaker 2>expecting me to recognize it. Gets dim, but gentle, not dark.

336
00:21:20.519 --> 00:21:24.640
<v Speaker 2>These observations accrude until my note book bulged with contradiction.

337
00:21:25.319 --> 00:21:29.759
<v Speaker 2>My original hypotheses fell away one by one. The phenomenon

338
00:21:29.839 --> 00:21:32.440
<v Speaker 2>was too thorough to be explained by mere weather or

339
00:21:32.480 --> 00:21:35.480
<v Speaker 2>optical quirks, too deep a quirk to be written off

340
00:21:35.519 --> 00:21:39.640
<v Speaker 2>as collective insoussians. The question that chased me now was

341
00:21:39.720 --> 00:21:42.720
<v Speaker 2>why why did the rules only bend in this place

342
00:21:42.920 --> 00:21:47.880
<v Speaker 2>so perfectly and completely? What precisely was different about New Penherligen,

343
00:21:48.240 --> 00:21:52.240
<v Speaker 2>and who, if any one, had orchestrated it. By the

344
00:21:52.319 --> 00:21:54.720
<v Speaker 2>end of the fourth day, the boundaries of my own

345
00:21:54.759 --> 00:21:58.680
<v Speaker 2>skepticism began to dissolve. Curiosity has a way of outliving

346
00:21:58.680 --> 00:22:02.640
<v Speaker 2>the convenient of going through any explanation that arrives too easily.

347
00:22:03.240 --> 00:22:06.480
<v Speaker 2>I retraced old school hypotheses, but there was no method,

348
00:22:06.720 --> 00:22:10.119
<v Speaker 2>no physical law that explained both the breadth and strength

349
00:22:10.119 --> 00:22:13.279
<v Speaker 2>of the effect, nor how it survived indoors after rain,

350
00:22:13.680 --> 00:22:16.519
<v Speaker 2>through the heavy humid haze of July and the weak

351
00:22:16.599 --> 00:22:21.720
<v Speaker 2>sunlight of February. As several residents confirmed, I needed more,

352
00:22:22.079 --> 00:22:26.119
<v Speaker 2>something concrete, something historical, or at the very least, a

353
00:22:26.200 --> 00:22:30.440
<v Speaker 2>record of the anomaly steady enough to study. Hope arrived,

354
00:22:30.480 --> 00:22:33.119
<v Speaker 2>as it often does, in the most innocuous of places,

355
00:22:33.599 --> 00:22:36.559
<v Speaker 2>a low room above the library marked Archive with a

356
00:22:36.599 --> 00:22:40.960
<v Speaker 2>hand painted sign, its door standing ajar. Here among sheet's

357
00:22:40.960 --> 00:22:43.960
<v Speaker 2>smelling of dust and pressed violets, I found the first

358
00:22:44.079 --> 00:22:48.039
<v Speaker 2>true thread, a pamphlet folded in on itself, carrying the

359
00:22:48.079 --> 00:22:51.799
<v Speaker 2>title The Ingenious Mister Rayner and the Light of Penherligen.

360
00:22:52.799 --> 00:22:57.279
<v Speaker 2>The pamphlet's author, a minor Victorian eccentric, described a gentleman

361
00:22:57.440 --> 00:23:02.160
<v Speaker 2>scientist of the nineteenth century, Conathan Rayner, no less a figure,

362
00:23:02.240 --> 00:23:06.400
<v Speaker 2>apparently than the namesake of the Shadowless village. According to

363
00:23:06.440 --> 00:23:10.119
<v Speaker 2>the account, Rayner had devoted his twilight years to dispelling

364
00:23:10.160 --> 00:23:12.839
<v Speaker 2>all gloom from the place he called home, both in

365
00:23:13.000 --> 00:23:17.240
<v Speaker 2>mood and in landscape. Beneath the text was a faded

366
00:23:17.359 --> 00:23:22.240
<v Speaker 2>annotated map of New Penhaligen with neatly scripted notes, diffusion

367
00:23:22.359 --> 00:23:27.759
<v Speaker 2>lens installed here eighteen sixty five mirror garden supplementary. At

368
00:23:27.799 --> 00:23:32.359
<v Speaker 2>another spot, the string of dots ringed familiar features, the church,

369
00:23:32.599 --> 00:23:37.359
<v Speaker 2>the bridge, several cottages, now subsumed by modern additions. I

370
00:23:37.440 --> 00:23:40.799
<v Speaker 2>stared at the page. The notion that a single naturalist,

371
00:23:41.160 --> 00:23:45.880
<v Speaker 2>however imaginative, could engineer an entire village's light, was faintly absurd.

372
00:23:46.559 --> 00:23:49.720
<v Speaker 2>Yet now, as I walked the mapped circuit, I examined

373
00:23:49.759 --> 00:23:53.559
<v Speaker 2>the stones, walls, and window ledges with a new acute

374
00:23:53.559 --> 00:23:57.680
<v Speaker 2>sense of purpose. Here, embedded in the cottage garden next

375
00:23:57.680 --> 00:24:00.960
<v Speaker 2>to the quay were flecks of a glassy minner shimmering

376
00:24:01.000 --> 00:24:04.559
<v Speaker 2>between the cracks. In another place, the roof tiles of

377
00:24:04.599 --> 00:24:06.960
<v Speaker 2>the old post office caught the light in a way

378
00:24:07.000 --> 00:24:11.039
<v Speaker 2>reminiscent of opal or labradorite, throwing thin sheets of rainbow.

379
00:24:11.119 --> 00:24:14.960
<v Speaker 2>As I shifted my angle under foot, the pathway stones

380
00:24:15.039 --> 00:24:18.680
<v Speaker 2>flashed hints of green and purple just beneath their weathered,

381
00:24:18.759 --> 00:24:23.519
<v Speaker 2>water worn surfaces. I stooped collecting a loose fragment, a

382
00:24:23.559 --> 00:24:27.480
<v Speaker 2>mottled sliver of local slate marked with pale veins. Held

383
00:24:27.519 --> 00:24:29.960
<v Speaker 2>up to the sun, it flared with a subtle luster.

384
00:24:30.599 --> 00:24:33.799
<v Speaker 2>In physics, you develop an eye for these things. High

385
00:24:33.799 --> 00:24:37.400
<v Speaker 2>reflectivity is one thing, but this mineral seemed almost eager

386
00:24:37.440 --> 00:24:41.119
<v Speaker 2>to amplify and scatter whatever light touched it. The effect

387
00:24:41.279 --> 00:24:44.680
<v Speaker 2>was delicate, nothing so garish as a mirror, but more

388
00:24:44.759 --> 00:24:49.039
<v Speaker 2>like a thousand invisible prisms, all working in chorus. It

389
00:24:49.119 --> 00:24:51.559
<v Speaker 2>dawned on me that every feature of the village, each

390
00:24:51.720 --> 00:24:55.440
<v Speaker 2>rebuilt wall, every worn roof, even the gravel beds in

391
00:24:55.480 --> 00:24:59.720
<v Speaker 2>the gardens, shone with the same faint, iridescent potential. The

392
00:24:59.720 --> 00:25:03.640
<v Speaker 2>world was not merely reflecting. It was diffusing, amplifying, merging

393
00:25:03.720 --> 00:25:07.880
<v Speaker 2>light until all directionality was erased. Some hand or generations

394
00:25:07.880 --> 00:25:12.079
<v Speaker 2>of hands had chosen, mind and shaped these materials, then

395
00:25:12.119 --> 00:25:15.759
<v Speaker 2>built and rebuilt with them, always choosing the brightest, always

396
00:25:15.759 --> 00:25:19.839
<v Speaker 2>adding a scatter of glass or pale stone. A return

397
00:25:19.920 --> 00:25:23.920
<v Speaker 2>to the archive, intent on tracing further evidence of Rainer's influence.

398
00:25:24.440 --> 00:25:28.319
<v Speaker 2>The pamphlet described his near obsessive pursuit recording in dry

399
00:25:28.400 --> 00:25:31.960
<v Speaker 2>but affectionate prose. How with each new arrangement of lens

400
00:25:31.960 --> 00:25:34.920
<v Speaker 2>and mirror, gloom was driven out, and every year the

401
00:25:35.000 --> 00:25:39.240
<v Speaker 2>village grew lighter. Yet yet crucially it made little mention

402
00:25:39.319 --> 00:25:42.240
<v Speaker 2>of the precise mechanism, nor whether the goal had been

403
00:25:42.240 --> 00:25:47.400
<v Speaker 2>a symbolic banishment of mood or a physical transformation. Indeed,

404
00:25:47.519 --> 00:25:50.640
<v Speaker 2>the more I learned, the more striking the contradiction became.

405
00:25:51.319 --> 00:25:54.400
<v Speaker 2>Even the most optimistic Victorian could not have engineered a

406
00:25:54.440 --> 00:25:59.519
<v Speaker 2>perpetual afternoon using mirrors and oddly sourced slate alone, especially

407
00:25:59.559 --> 00:26:02.400
<v Speaker 2>not at a gale that could endure the onslaught of weather,

408
00:26:02.799 --> 00:26:08.720
<v Speaker 2>time and slow generational change. Yet here I was, decades later,

409
00:26:09.119 --> 00:26:11.880
<v Speaker 2>standing amid a village where the geometry of shadow had

410
00:26:11.880 --> 00:26:15.519
<v Speaker 2>simply ceased to matter. Was it possible that Rainer's mania

411
00:26:15.559 --> 00:26:20.119
<v Speaker 2>had not fundamentally created the phenomenon, but discovered, focused, or

412
00:26:20.160 --> 00:26:24.920
<v Speaker 2>perhaps even formalized, a latent, natural peculiarity, one that had

413
00:26:24.920 --> 00:26:28.839
<v Speaker 2>always existed in this place, made visible and enduring through

414
00:26:28.880 --> 00:26:33.480
<v Speaker 2>the accidents and intentions of local tradition. Was I finally

415
00:26:33.559 --> 00:26:36.640
<v Speaker 2>standing at the edge of a family secret, one so

416
00:26:36.720 --> 00:26:40.240
<v Speaker 2>thoroughly integrated as to have become invisible because it was

417
00:26:40.279 --> 00:26:44.079
<v Speaker 2>everywhere and always as unremarkable to those living within it

418
00:26:44.200 --> 00:26:48.279
<v Speaker 2>as breathing. Of all the explanations that had fluttered through

419
00:26:48.319 --> 00:26:53.400
<v Speaker 2>my mind, this possibility was the most exhilarating and deeply unsettling.

420
00:26:54.119 --> 00:26:57.960
<v Speaker 2>If the world here was curated deliberately by hands human

421
00:26:58.039 --> 00:27:00.480
<v Speaker 2>and mineral, how many other rules man might have been

422
00:27:00.559 --> 00:27:05.599
<v Speaker 2>quietly rewritten? And still the primary question outpaced every answer.

423
00:27:06.000 --> 00:27:09.119
<v Speaker 2>How did it work? Not just in a mechanical sense,

424
00:27:09.359 --> 00:27:12.640
<v Speaker 2>but how did the village, through centuries and the layering

425
00:27:12.680 --> 00:27:17.920
<v Speaker 2>of purpose over geology sustain such an impossibility. I had

426
00:27:17.960 --> 00:27:21.519
<v Speaker 2>to look deeper. I asked Anne Lambley if she knew

427
00:27:21.559 --> 00:27:25.640
<v Speaker 2>anything more of Jonathan Rayner, whether the family line persisted,

428
00:27:26.000 --> 00:27:29.720
<v Speaker 2>whether anyone still maintained archives or traditions in his name.

429
00:27:30.759 --> 00:27:33.880
<v Speaker 2>She pointed me to Becha Toler, a local historian and

430
00:27:33.960 --> 00:27:39.559
<v Speaker 2>gardener whose family had long kept the records of minor oddities, photographs, letters,

431
00:27:39.799 --> 00:27:44.720
<v Speaker 2>curious glassware. Becka herself seemed cautious at first, but warmth

432
00:27:44.799 --> 00:27:48.319
<v Speaker 2>quickly overtook reserve as we sat overlooking her crowded garden,

433
00:27:48.680 --> 00:27:51.400
<v Speaker 2>stepping stones twinkling with what I now knew to be

434
00:27:51.519 --> 00:27:56.720
<v Speaker 2>Rainer's chosen minerals. She welcomed my questions, especially when she

435
00:27:56.799 --> 00:28:00.680
<v Speaker 2>realized I had been actively probing, not just collecting anecdotes.

436
00:28:01.640 --> 00:28:04.279
<v Speaker 2>I suppose I am the torch bearer for local trivia,

437
00:28:04.559 --> 00:28:07.599
<v Speaker 2>she admitted, ushering me into a shed that doubled as

438
00:28:07.640 --> 00:28:11.240
<v Speaker 2>a record's room. Rain as journals, or at least some

439
00:28:11.319 --> 00:28:15.039
<v Speaker 2>of them, are here passed down, usually not regarded as

440
00:28:15.119 --> 00:28:19.440
<v Speaker 2>more than family legend. Over strong coffee, we poured over

441
00:28:19.519 --> 00:28:24.480
<v Speaker 2>pages of wandering Victorian hand diagrams that mapped sunlight, trying

442
00:28:24.480 --> 00:28:27.839
<v Speaker 2>to measure the precise angle and duration of gloom at

443
00:28:27.839 --> 00:28:32.279
<v Speaker 2>each equinox and solstice. Many entries repeated variations of a

444
00:28:32.319 --> 00:28:36.559
<v Speaker 2>single phrase to eliminate glooms bond upon the spirit. As

445
00:28:36.599 --> 00:28:40.119
<v Speaker 2>in the land, so too in the mind. There were

446
00:28:40.119 --> 00:28:44.359
<v Speaker 2>sketches of lens arrays, circular gardens built with glass pebbles

447
00:28:44.400 --> 00:28:48.960
<v Speaker 2>at their hearts, notes on constructing paths, welcome to perpetual brightness,

448
00:28:49.440 --> 00:28:53.559
<v Speaker 2>and most tantalizing, a reference to a midsummer ritual, the

449
00:28:53.599 --> 00:28:59.000
<v Speaker 2>gloaming Banquet. I asked Becker whether these rituals continued or

450
00:28:59.079 --> 00:29:02.960
<v Speaker 2>were mere relics bits linger as excuses for a party.

451
00:29:03.240 --> 00:29:06.559
<v Speaker 2>She said, my grandfather remembered a clean up day as

452
00:29:06.559 --> 00:29:09.880
<v Speaker 2>a child, when people would bury odd glass spheres and

453
00:29:09.920 --> 00:29:12.880
<v Speaker 2>mirror fragments by the river side or dig them into

454
00:29:12.920 --> 00:29:16.119
<v Speaker 2>the community gardens. I guess most folk have one or

455
00:29:16.119 --> 00:29:19.240
<v Speaker 2>two in their flower beds natural enough. After a while,

456
00:29:19.759 --> 00:29:23.359
<v Speaker 2>we always joked that the earth in New Penherligen blooms glass.

457
00:29:24.440 --> 00:29:27.440
<v Speaker 2>We examined a few of the remnants, opal like pebbles,

458
00:29:27.680 --> 00:29:30.680
<v Speaker 2>old fleck tiles, and even a squat chunk of doped

459
00:29:30.720 --> 00:29:34.319
<v Speaker 2>glass that sparkled with trapped sunlight. Becker and I ran

460
00:29:34.440 --> 00:29:38.279
<v Speaker 2>basic light scattering trials. Positioned under a lamp. The mineral

461
00:29:38.319 --> 00:29:42.119
<v Speaker 2>diffused light more efficiently than standard cornish slate, but nothing

462
00:29:42.160 --> 00:29:44.880
<v Speaker 2>to the scale seen out of doors in the village.

463
00:29:44.920 --> 00:29:48.880
<v Speaker 2>Even so, the fragments scattered light at odd beautiful angles,

464
00:29:49.119 --> 00:29:53.559
<v Speaker 2>as if part memory, part tangible effect. Running out of

465
00:29:53.599 --> 00:29:57.039
<v Speaker 2>local options, I sent mineral samples to a contact in

466
00:29:57.119 --> 00:30:01.400
<v Speaker 2>the material science department at the university. When his reply came,

467
00:30:01.799 --> 00:30:06.839
<v Speaker 2>his own skepticism bled away, replaced by technical fascination. The

468
00:30:06.880 --> 00:30:11.440
<v Speaker 2>samples he reported exhibited unusually high levels of a rare

469
00:30:11.480 --> 00:30:16.480
<v Speaker 2>silicate unique to this pocket of cornwall. When ground and polished,

470
00:30:16.720 --> 00:30:21.400
<v Speaker 2>the mineral's micro structure created polarizing effects rarely seen outside

471
00:30:21.400 --> 00:30:25.839
<v Speaker 2>a handful of rare gemstones, diffusing nearly all incoming light.

472
00:30:26.960 --> 00:30:30.359
<v Speaker 2>Not content with this, he attempted to recreate the phenomenon

473
00:30:30.400 --> 00:30:34.640
<v Speaker 2>in laboratory conditions, the same stone, the same humidity and

474
00:30:34.759 --> 00:30:39.359
<v Speaker 2>light source, but the result was disappointingly ordinary. The sample

475
00:30:39.480 --> 00:30:43.440
<v Speaker 2>scattered light, yes, but failed to eliminate shadows, even at

476
00:30:43.519 --> 00:30:48.920
<v Speaker 2>much smaller scales. I returned both heartened and maddened. The

477
00:30:48.960 --> 00:30:53.799
<v Speaker 2>implication was clear. New Penhaligen's peculiarity depended not just on

478
00:30:53.880 --> 00:30:57.440
<v Speaker 2>its material resources, nor even the eccentric vision of an

479
00:30:57.440 --> 00:31:02.799
<v Speaker 2>eighteen hundreds naturalist, but on a influence of factors historic intervention,

480
00:31:03.279 --> 00:31:08.599
<v Speaker 2>rare geology, precise architecture, climactic accident, and perhaps something still

481
00:31:08.640 --> 00:31:13.279
<v Speaker 2>more subtle. Becker nodded at my confusion. You know, there's

482
00:31:13.319 --> 00:31:17.720
<v Speaker 2>an old saying Penheligen's light runs deeper than stone and river.

483
00:31:18.319 --> 00:31:20.960
<v Speaker 2>My grandfather used to say it was the land teaching

484
00:31:21.000 --> 00:31:23.480
<v Speaker 2>itself to be gentle, with a bit of help from

485
00:31:23.519 --> 00:31:27.599
<v Speaker 2>stubborn old hands. And so the piece is coalesced, not

486
00:31:27.720 --> 00:31:29.960
<v Speaker 2>into a solution, but into a thawing of what I

487
00:31:30.000 --> 00:31:34.000
<v Speaker 2>thought possible. The shadowless village wasn't simply the product of chance,

488
00:31:34.279 --> 00:31:38.160
<v Speaker 2>nor wholly of deliberate plan. It was remarkably a kind

489
00:31:38.160 --> 00:31:42.599
<v Speaker 2>of ongoing partnership between mind, matter, and time. Rayner had

490
00:31:42.599 --> 00:31:46.319
<v Speaker 2>perhaps stirred something already present, or perhaps wove something wholly

491
00:31:46.440 --> 00:31:50.440
<v Speaker 2>new into the fabric of place through an admixture of vision, geology,

492
00:31:50.640 --> 00:31:55.400
<v Speaker 2>and unrecorded communal effort. Yet my final and most perplexing

493
00:31:55.440 --> 00:31:58.240
<v Speaker 2>contradiction now stood at the center of it all. If

494
00:31:58.240 --> 00:32:02.759
<v Speaker 2>the phenomenon could be established, observed, and even superficially imitated,

495
00:32:03.279 --> 00:32:06.599
<v Speaker 2>why did it persist only here? All attempts to export

496
00:32:06.640 --> 00:32:11.400
<v Speaker 2>the effect, to mimic it in controlled urban conditions failed entirely.

497
00:32:12.480 --> 00:32:15.640
<v Speaker 2>As dusk gathered, I stood at the river's edge, torn

498
00:32:15.720 --> 00:32:19.119
<v Speaker 2>between awe and humility. What was it about the village

499
00:32:19.119 --> 00:32:23.039
<v Speaker 2>that made shadow and so much else disappear? If the

500
00:32:23.079 --> 00:32:25.880
<v Speaker 2>answer lay in the stones, or in the mirrored wishes

501
00:32:25.920 --> 00:32:28.799
<v Speaker 2>of those who built and rebuilt, in Rainer's image, or

502
00:32:28.839 --> 00:32:32.160
<v Speaker 2>in the untold histories winding through the shallow soil, I

503
00:32:32.160 --> 00:32:36.359
<v Speaker 2>had yet to see it plainly. Whatever the source I suspected,

504
00:32:36.680 --> 00:32:39.359
<v Speaker 2>I was at the threshold of a discovery more remarkable

505
00:32:39.400 --> 00:32:42.519
<v Speaker 2>than I had first dared hope to grasp, not merely

506
00:32:42.559 --> 00:32:45.680
<v Speaker 2>how a village came to banish its own darkness, but

507
00:32:45.759 --> 00:32:48.359
<v Speaker 2>why the effort had lasted, and what it meant for

508
00:32:48.400 --> 00:32:51.480
<v Speaker 2>the place its people. And perhaps for any hope of

509
00:32:51.559 --> 00:32:55.759
<v Speaker 2>easy explanation. Becka and I walked back through her garden,

510
00:32:56.079 --> 00:32:59.440
<v Speaker 2>the path a shimmer of upturned stone, fragments glinting with sun.

511
00:33:00.119 --> 00:33:03.240
<v Speaker 2>My notebook bulged in my coat pocket, stuffed with lists

512
00:33:03.279 --> 00:33:07.160
<v Speaker 2>and sketches, diagrams from Rainer's journal, rough maps of the

513
00:33:07.160 --> 00:33:10.480
<v Speaker 2>mineral deposits, broken off thoughts circling the nature of all

514
00:33:10.519 --> 00:33:13.240
<v Speaker 2>I had seen. Yet, as we crossed the lane, I

515
00:33:13.279 --> 00:33:16.440
<v Speaker 2>felt no closer to any final answer, only to a

516
00:33:16.480 --> 00:33:19.599
<v Speaker 2>clarity of contradiction, a sense that the truth here was

517
00:33:19.640 --> 00:33:23.079
<v Speaker 2>not one thing, but many. I wonder if you ever

518
00:33:23.119 --> 00:33:26.559
<v Speaker 2>get tired of questions, I said, half laughing, as she

519
00:33:26.680 --> 00:33:30.119
<v Speaker 2>rooted for her keys. A wheelbarrow full of green waist

520
00:33:30.240 --> 00:33:35.319
<v Speaker 2>stood near the shed. Becka shrugged a smile, flickering. Only

521
00:33:35.359 --> 00:33:38.119
<v Speaker 2>the ones that want the world to be simple, pennherligands.

522
00:33:38.119 --> 00:33:42.039
<v Speaker 2>Never is not, really, There's always another layer. She angled

523
00:33:42.039 --> 00:33:44.720
<v Speaker 2>her chin at the glass in the stone wall, cloudy

524
00:33:44.759 --> 00:33:48.039
<v Speaker 2>with rain and finger marks. My brother says it makes

525
00:33:48.039 --> 00:33:50.400
<v Speaker 2>his knees ache to walk out of the village, leave

526
00:33:50.480 --> 00:33:54.160
<v Speaker 2>the soft air behind. I asked if we might try

527
00:33:54.200 --> 00:33:57.839
<v Speaker 2>one more experiment, The simplest of all, really could we

528
00:33:57.880 --> 00:34:01.720
<v Speaker 2>map the boundary where exis exactly did the effect hold

529
00:34:02.039 --> 00:34:05.200
<v Speaker 2>and what happened on the other side. She slipped on

530
00:34:05.279 --> 00:34:08.679
<v Speaker 2>muddy boots and fetched a small garden spade, just in

531
00:34:08.760 --> 00:34:10.880
<v Speaker 2>case we wanted to prod at the verge or dig

532
00:34:10.920 --> 00:34:15.039
<v Speaker 2>for another sample. It felt suddenly like embarking on a

533
00:34:15.039 --> 00:34:18.760
<v Speaker 2>miniature expedition, she leading and me trailing with the anxious

534
00:34:18.800 --> 00:34:22.400
<v Speaker 2>awe of a schoolber. We traced the contour of the river,

535
00:34:22.760 --> 00:34:25.119
<v Speaker 2>following the footpath as it climbed away from the water,

536
00:34:25.519 --> 00:34:28.880
<v Speaker 2>toward where the built village faded into rye grass, bracken,

537
00:34:29.119 --> 00:34:32.280
<v Speaker 2>and wind torn bramble. The day pressed down in its

538
00:34:32.280 --> 00:34:36.159
<v Speaker 2>ongoing clarity, blades of grass painted with color so dense

539
00:34:36.199 --> 00:34:42.000
<v Speaker 2>it threatened artificiality. My careful steps found only flatness, shoes, sticks,

540
00:34:42.239 --> 00:34:46.320
<v Speaker 2>tufts of moss, all undivided by any hard edged darkness.

541
00:34:47.039 --> 00:34:50.400
<v Speaker 2>I raised a hand, spread fingers before me, and watched

542
00:34:50.440 --> 00:34:53.920
<v Speaker 2>the palm and knuckles wreathed in the even directionless glow,

543
00:34:54.960 --> 00:34:58.920
<v Speaker 2>but just beyond a line bisected the world. It was

544
00:34:58.960 --> 00:35:02.920
<v Speaker 2>almost comical stepping from one old granite paving slab to

545
00:35:02.960 --> 00:35:06.400
<v Speaker 2>a forlorn bit of tarmac, likely the last flourish. Before

546
00:35:06.400 --> 00:35:09.679
<v Speaker 2>the parish council lost interest. I saw my shadow snap

547
00:35:09.760 --> 00:35:14.239
<v Speaker 2>back into existence. Instinctively, I jerked and grinned the sensation,

548
00:35:14.400 --> 00:35:18.840
<v Speaker 2>both foreign and intimate. There suddenly a silhouette with structure

549
00:35:19.159 --> 00:35:23.599
<v Speaker 2>sharp edged and black as ink. Becka stilled beside me.

550
00:35:24.639 --> 00:35:28.000
<v Speaker 2>See it's abrupt, isn't it. She waved a hand, letting

551
00:35:28.079 --> 00:35:31.960
<v Speaker 2>it dawdle pass the join. On one side, skywashed daylight

552
00:35:32.039 --> 00:35:36.440
<v Speaker 2>rendered her arm insubstantial, featureless, on the other, the familiar

553
00:35:36.440 --> 00:35:40.440
<v Speaker 2>pin number of bone and form. I dithered, crossing and

554
00:35:40.519 --> 00:35:44.719
<v Speaker 2>recrossing the invisible frontier half, expecting some surge or current

555
00:35:45.000 --> 00:35:49.119
<v Speaker 2>or physical boundary. But there was nothing. No temperature shift,

556
00:35:49.440 --> 00:35:52.800
<v Speaker 2>no scent of altered air, only the visual language of

557
00:35:52.840 --> 00:35:58.079
<v Speaker 2>home reasserting itself, all solidity and ordinary depth. We fell

558
00:35:58.119 --> 00:36:01.800
<v Speaker 2>into step with the river circling the upper fields. Fields

559
00:36:01.840 --> 00:36:05.800
<v Speaker 2>outside the boundary showed the usual patchwork, rows of potatoes

560
00:36:05.880 --> 00:36:09.559
<v Speaker 2>riddled with leafy shadows, Crows bickering amid puddles at the

561
00:36:09.679 --> 00:36:12.840
<v Speaker 2>edge of a copse, their bodies punched crisply into earth.

562
00:36:13.519 --> 00:36:15.519
<v Speaker 2>There was a subtle hum in my chest as I

563
00:36:15.639 --> 00:36:19.440
<v Speaker 2>noticed this, the beauty of its banality, the delicate miracle

564
00:36:19.519 --> 00:36:23.480
<v Speaker 2>of the Shadow's return. We returned to the festival green

565
00:36:23.599 --> 00:36:27.199
<v Speaker 2>after and I resolved to try a different tack, less

566
00:36:27.239 --> 00:36:30.119
<v Speaker 2>focused on the stone and more attuned to the people

567
00:36:30.440 --> 00:36:35.079
<v Speaker 2>the patterns of custom. The square was alive, children playing

568
00:36:35.119 --> 00:36:39.039
<v Speaker 2>at sack races, volunteers setting out chairs for the evening's readings.

569
00:36:39.480 --> 00:36:42.440
<v Speaker 2>It wasn't only the locals now, The festival had drawn

570
00:36:42.480 --> 00:36:45.840
<v Speaker 2>in families from truro Falmouth, even as far as Exeter.

571
00:36:46.440 --> 00:36:49.400
<v Speaker 2>I picked out two festival workers who, judging by their

572
00:36:49.440 --> 00:36:52.480
<v Speaker 2>tartan thermos and quick glances at work lists, had not

573
00:36:52.559 --> 00:36:56.639
<v Speaker 2>been here long. I introduced myself and asked point blank

574
00:36:56.920 --> 00:37:00.760
<v Speaker 2>if they'd noticed anything odd about the light. The younger

575
00:37:00.800 --> 00:37:03.280
<v Speaker 2>of the two, a woman named gil, cocked her head.

576
00:37:03.800 --> 00:37:07.039
<v Speaker 2>It's strange. Actually, the first hour or so after we

577
00:37:07.119 --> 00:37:10.559
<v Speaker 2>set up, I kept thinking I'd forgotten my sunglasses. But

578
00:37:10.639 --> 00:37:13.920
<v Speaker 2>then she trailed off, fished for the word. Well, it

579
00:37:14.000 --> 00:37:17.960
<v Speaker 2>stops feeling odd, doesn't it. Everything seems easy. I don't

580
00:37:17.960 --> 00:37:20.400
<v Speaker 2>know how to say it, like you just stop noticing.

581
00:37:21.480 --> 00:37:26.079
<v Speaker 2>Her older companion, a man called Simon, laughed. It's relaxing,

582
00:37:26.199 --> 00:37:28.679
<v Speaker 2>he said, but it does make the paintings in the

583
00:37:28.719 --> 00:37:31.559
<v Speaker 2>festival tent look a bit weird when you first see them.

584
00:37:32.000 --> 00:37:34.239
<v Speaker 2>They've got no depth, no bite, if you know what

585
00:37:34.320 --> 00:37:37.960
<v Speaker 2>I mean. But then by lunch time he shrugged. You

586
00:37:38.159 --> 00:37:42.159
<v Speaker 2>just let it be. I tried probing, asking if either

587
00:37:42.199 --> 00:37:45.599
<v Speaker 2>could recall the moment their attention let go. It seemed

588
00:37:45.599 --> 00:37:49.599
<v Speaker 2>impossible to pin down, as if memory was itself smoothed over,

589
00:37:50.079 --> 00:37:54.320
<v Speaker 2>laid out in that perpetual afternoon. I wondered for a time,

590
00:37:54.719 --> 00:37:57.800
<v Speaker 2>finding myself drawn again to the artist on the church wall,

591
00:37:58.159 --> 00:38:01.480
<v Speaker 2>now painting with oils, the surface of her canvas slick

592
00:38:01.519 --> 00:38:05.079
<v Speaker 2>and luminous. She let me stand beside her, watching as

593
00:38:05.079 --> 00:38:08.280
<v Speaker 2>her brush stroked in rich blue and yellow, the leaves

594
00:38:08.280 --> 00:38:12.480
<v Speaker 2>of the ancient oaks rendered as pools of pure color. Undivided,

595
00:38:13.559 --> 00:38:17.480
<v Speaker 2>I commented, no shadow again, Are you doing that on purpose?

596
00:38:18.480 --> 00:38:22.800
<v Speaker 2>She looked, surprised. I suppose no. The colors seemed enough.

597
00:38:23.000 --> 00:38:25.119
<v Speaker 2>It just didn't feel right to put in the dark.

598
00:38:26.199 --> 00:38:29.679
<v Speaker 2>This isn't like how you paint in say devon or provase,

599
00:38:30.000 --> 00:38:34.199
<v Speaker 2>I asked. She wrinkled her nose, thoughtful rather than offended.

600
00:38:34.679 --> 00:38:37.519
<v Speaker 2>You notice so much more color here. I always chased

601
00:38:37.519 --> 00:38:40.480
<v Speaker 2>the angles of shadow for structure, but here I could

602
00:38:40.519 --> 00:38:43.800
<v Speaker 2>leave the whole page bright. I rather like it, She

603
00:38:43.920 --> 00:38:46.400
<v Speaker 2>glanced at me. Then the lane. Do you find it

604
00:38:46.519 --> 00:38:51.840
<v Speaker 2>strange or RESTful? I hesitated both, I think, but mostly

605
00:38:51.880 --> 00:38:54.360
<v Speaker 2>I want to know how it happens. Is it the air,

606
00:38:54.559 --> 00:39:00.280
<v Speaker 2>the stone, something else? She smiled, not unkind. Perhaps the

607
00:39:00.320 --> 00:39:03.480
<v Speaker 2>way seeing becomes easier a place like this. It's as

608
00:39:03.480 --> 00:39:07.280
<v Speaker 2>if some one trimmed out the distractions, left only gentleness behind.

609
00:39:08.400 --> 00:39:10.840
<v Speaker 2>Her words clung to me as I went about the festival,

610
00:39:11.239 --> 00:39:14.199
<v Speaker 2>visiting the school house, where a science lesson reflected my

611
00:39:14.320 --> 00:39:19.519
<v Speaker 2>own early efforts. Inside, children clustered over white cards, shining

612
00:39:19.559 --> 00:39:23.199
<v Speaker 2>flashlights at paper cubes and hand cut leaves, watching without

613
00:39:23.199 --> 00:39:27.119
<v Speaker 2>apparent confusion. As light, rather than casting crisp regions of

614
00:39:27.199 --> 00:39:31.440
<v Speaker 2>dark merged along the edges into a pearly haze. The

615
00:39:31.519 --> 00:39:34.840
<v Speaker 2>teacher explained the effect that she might explain why apples

616
00:39:34.880 --> 00:39:38.960
<v Speaker 2>fall downwards. It's just how things work here. Light finds

617
00:39:38.960 --> 00:39:41.880
<v Speaker 2>its way everywhere, so we look for differences in color

618
00:39:42.039 --> 00:39:46.760
<v Speaker 2>rather than shadow. I introduced myself, asked if the children

619
00:39:46.840 --> 00:39:50.760
<v Speaker 2>found this strange when going elsewhere. A small girl with

620
00:39:50.840 --> 00:39:53.639
<v Speaker 2>two messy plats looked up. When we go to the

621
00:39:53.679 --> 00:39:56.519
<v Speaker 2>sea beach, you see your shadow again, but it feels

622
00:39:56.559 --> 00:40:00.559
<v Speaker 2>too sharp, like the world's turned up too loud. The

623
00:40:00.599 --> 00:40:05.920
<v Speaker 2>others nodded a consensus without protest. After class, with permission,

624
00:40:06.199 --> 00:40:08.920
<v Speaker 2>I borrowed their flashlight and tried pinning a shadow with

625
00:40:08.960 --> 00:40:12.280
<v Speaker 2>it behind a wooden block. The result was an ambiguous,

626
00:40:12.360 --> 00:40:15.880
<v Speaker 2>faint ellipse, the shape of light, not darkness. I switched

627
00:40:15.880 --> 00:40:19.119
<v Speaker 2>to a laser pointer I'd borrowed from festival staff. The

628
00:40:19.199 --> 00:40:22.679
<v Speaker 2>light potent and narrow skimmed the white card I'd set up,

629
00:40:23.039 --> 00:40:25.360
<v Speaker 2>but instead of a crisp dot or a hard shadow,

630
00:40:25.519 --> 00:40:29.400
<v Speaker 2>the beam bloomed, curving around the edge, scattering in a soft,

631
00:40:29.559 --> 00:40:34.039
<v Speaker 2>feathered oval. Becka, who trailed in behind me, snapped a

632
00:40:34.039 --> 00:40:38.199
<v Speaker 2>picture on her phone and watched my face. It's beautiful,

633
00:40:38.320 --> 00:40:41.840
<v Speaker 2>isn't it, she whispered. It doesn't insist on anything hard

634
00:40:41.960 --> 00:40:46.840
<v Speaker 2>or cold. I turned over the facts. No matter how directed,

635
00:40:47.159 --> 00:40:51.239
<v Speaker 2>how intentional, the energy and information of light here resisted

636
00:40:51.239 --> 00:40:55.079
<v Speaker 2>being resolved into difference, into clarity of before and after,

637
00:40:55.519 --> 00:40:59.599
<v Speaker 2>of brightness and gloom. In the afternoon, I made my

638
00:40:59.639 --> 00:41:02.880
<v Speaker 2>way up Anne Lambley's stall, finding her among crates of

639
00:41:02.920 --> 00:41:06.639
<v Speaker 2>books and seed packets. She released her clipboard long enough

640
00:41:06.679 --> 00:41:10.360
<v Speaker 2>to pour me tea and listen to my theories. I

641
00:41:10.400 --> 00:41:13.280
<v Speaker 2>feel as though the whole village has conspired down to

642
00:41:13.320 --> 00:41:16.840
<v Speaker 2>the stones to flatten and soften the world, I told her.

643
00:41:17.280 --> 00:41:20.599
<v Speaker 2>But it's more than physical. People stop remarking on it,

644
00:41:20.800 --> 00:41:26.039
<v Speaker 2>stop needing the difference. It's contagious. Somehow, even memory goes vague.

645
00:41:26.960 --> 00:41:30.280
<v Speaker 2>She nodded, setting the teapot aside. I've lived here most

646
00:41:30.320 --> 00:41:32.599
<v Speaker 2>of my life, and I do think the air holds

647
00:41:32.639 --> 00:41:35.400
<v Speaker 2>the day still. You could read forever in this light.

648
00:41:36.039 --> 00:41:39.719
<v Speaker 2>Her face grew distant. Folk from away sometimes struggle for

649
00:41:39.760 --> 00:41:41.920
<v Speaker 2>a day or two. Then well, they seemed to fall

650
00:41:41.920 --> 00:41:46.239
<v Speaker 2>into step. She paused. Maybe it's relief, Maybe it's permission,

651
00:41:47.400 --> 00:41:51.119
<v Speaker 2>I asked quietly, if anyone felt the loss, the world

652
00:41:51.199 --> 00:41:56.239
<v Speaker 2>without shadow, without the clarity of light's interruptions, Anne smiled,

653
00:41:56.280 --> 00:41:59.519
<v Speaker 2>not quite sadly. There are people who move away, some

654
00:41:59.559 --> 00:42:02.480
<v Speaker 2>come back. Some say it's the only place their mind

655
00:42:02.559 --> 00:42:07.280
<v Speaker 2>feels quiet. Others say it unsettles them, too gentle, too untroubled.

656
00:42:07.639 --> 00:42:09.960
<v Speaker 2>But for most of us, it's the comfort of knowing

657
00:42:10.000 --> 00:42:12.880
<v Speaker 2>where you are, the part you can change, and the

658
00:42:12.920 --> 00:42:16.599
<v Speaker 2>part you simply inhabit. I sat for a time after

659
00:42:16.679 --> 00:42:19.440
<v Speaker 2>she returned to her duties, thinking in the low hum

660
00:42:19.480 --> 00:42:23.800
<v Speaker 2>of voices and shifting light. The festival wore on, guests

661
00:42:23.880 --> 00:42:27.880
<v Speaker 2>circulating through book readings and games, the village investing all

662
00:42:27.880 --> 00:42:32.840
<v Speaker 2>its gentle curiosity in every transaction and Errand as the

663
00:42:32.920 --> 00:42:35.800
<v Speaker 2>evening set in, I found myself by the green again,

664
00:42:36.159 --> 00:42:39.039
<v Speaker 2>staring at the old stone bridge and the water beyond.

665
00:42:39.719 --> 00:42:46.320
<v Speaker 2>I'd accumulated countless details, mineral analyzes, historical quirks, architectural flourishes.

666
00:42:46.760 --> 00:42:49.920
<v Speaker 2>But a new thread threaded itself through my mind, one

667
00:42:49.960 --> 00:42:54.400
<v Speaker 2>that wove together phenomena of material and mind. I rang

668
00:42:54.519 --> 00:42:58.840
<v Speaker 2>my scientific contact at the university, a friend, not Graham,

669
00:42:58.880 --> 00:43:03.079
<v Speaker 2>but Julia, who worked in material chemistry and atmospheric optics.

670
00:43:03.719 --> 00:43:06.920
<v Speaker 2>She answered, just as the river mist began its slow climb,

671
00:43:07.320 --> 00:43:12.599
<v Speaker 2>voice laced with fatigue and intrigue. Your mineral sample is extraordinary,

672
00:43:12.800 --> 00:43:15.559
<v Speaker 2>she said, But what's odder is how it doesn't replicate

673
00:43:15.599 --> 00:43:19.519
<v Speaker 2>the effect anywhere else. I tried your experiment in several labs.

674
00:43:19.960 --> 00:43:24.239
<v Speaker 2>Nothing nice light diffusion, but not enough to collapse shadows.

675
00:43:24.639 --> 00:43:27.480
<v Speaker 2>It seems there must be a synergy, something about the

676
00:43:27.480 --> 00:43:32.320
<v Speaker 2>physical orientation, local humidity, perhaps even organic compounds from the

677
00:43:32.440 --> 00:43:37.199
<v Speaker 2>river or soil. She hesitated this isn't publishable. You know,

678
00:43:37.599 --> 00:43:41.599
<v Speaker 2>I've never heard of an entire microclimate producing omnidirectional diffusion

679
00:43:41.599 --> 00:43:44.840
<v Speaker 2>at this scale, not with a simple mineral, and especially

680
00:43:44.840 --> 00:43:48.599
<v Speaker 2>not preserved through generations of building and weathering. I can

681
00:43:48.679 --> 00:43:52.519
<v Speaker 2>only suggest that in new penaligen, some threshold has been crossed,

682
00:43:52.920 --> 00:43:56.920
<v Speaker 2>a reinforcing loop between the geology, human habit and perhaps

683
00:43:56.960 --> 00:44:01.119
<v Speaker 2>even a unique environmental field. It might be almost trained.

684
00:44:02.199 --> 00:44:07.360
<v Speaker 2>Her words clung, a trained field, a threshold held for generations.

685
00:44:08.000 --> 00:44:11.880
<v Speaker 2>After dinner with Becker's family, talk punctuated with laughter and

686
00:44:11.920 --> 00:44:15.480
<v Speaker 2>familiar argument, the air awash with the perpetual low glow,

687
00:44:15.960 --> 00:44:20.119
<v Speaker 2>I walked the lanes alone. Rain had fallen earlier, and

688
00:44:20.159 --> 00:44:23.719
<v Speaker 2>the light fractured in millions of droplets on stone and flower,

689
00:44:24.159 --> 00:44:28.760
<v Speaker 2>never once issuing the hard demarcation of shadow. My thoughts

690
00:44:28.840 --> 00:44:33.519
<v Speaker 2>tumbled together Rainer's pursuit of brightness, the annual rituals, the

691
00:44:33.639 --> 00:44:38.480
<v Speaker 2>ongoing reenforcement by way of gardening, rebuilding, and simply accepting

692
00:44:38.519 --> 00:44:42.320
<v Speaker 2>the way things were. I realized the phenomenon here could

693
00:44:42.320 --> 00:44:45.800
<v Speaker 2>not be explained by a single mechanism. The rare silicate

694
00:44:45.880 --> 00:44:49.639
<v Speaker 2>minerals embedded over centuries in slate and glass may have

695
00:44:49.679 --> 00:44:54.559
<v Speaker 2>created the physical possibility for omnidirectional scatter. Rainer's lends, gardens

696
00:44:54.599 --> 00:44:59.119
<v Speaker 2>and mirror arrays, part science, part ceremony might have intensified

697
00:44:59.119 --> 00:45:03.079
<v Speaker 2>the spread creaking the geometry of light and expectation. The

698
00:45:03.199 --> 00:45:07.360
<v Speaker 2>river deep with generations of reflected sun, supplied a steady

699
00:45:07.400 --> 00:45:12.480
<v Speaker 2>feed of humidity and charged dust, but these alone went enough.

700
00:45:13.400 --> 00:45:16.280
<v Speaker 2>I returned to the boundary at dusk, stepping over the

701
00:45:16.320 --> 00:45:19.920
<v Speaker 2>scolloped edge where the paving stones faded into ordinary tarmac,

702
00:45:20.280 --> 00:45:23.400
<v Speaker 2>I saw, as before the world tipped from gentle unreality

703
00:45:23.440 --> 00:45:27.239
<v Speaker 2>into the familiar. But this time I brought a notepad

704
00:45:27.360 --> 00:45:31.119
<v Speaker 2>and a sample of Penholigens stone, a piece snagged from

705
00:45:31.119 --> 00:45:36.199
<v Speaker 2>Becker's garden, its edge glimmering with mineral inclusions. I set

706
00:45:36.239 --> 00:45:38.800
<v Speaker 2>the stone on the ground outside the boundary and shone

707
00:45:38.840 --> 00:45:42.639
<v Speaker 2>a narrow flashlight beam across it. The stone scattered the light,

708
00:45:42.760 --> 00:45:47.760
<v Speaker 2>but failed decisively and unmistakably to dampen the emergence of shadow.

709
00:45:48.599 --> 00:45:52.239
<v Speaker 2>My own hand, interposed before the lamp, threw a clean,

710
00:45:52.480 --> 00:45:56.400
<v Speaker 2>sharp silhouette across both ground and mineral. I did the

711
00:45:56.400 --> 00:46:00.320
<v Speaker 2>same on the Penholigen side. The stone nested aung its

712
00:46:00.400 --> 00:46:04.440
<v Speaker 2>kin and washed by the village's peculiar humidity, diffused the

713
00:46:04.480 --> 00:46:09.559
<v Speaker 2>beam in every direction, profile, erased faintness, blending seamlessly with

714
00:46:09.599 --> 00:46:13.960
<v Speaker 2>the background. The effect was not inherent to the mineral alone,

715
00:46:14.280 --> 00:46:19.679
<v Speaker 2>nor to the person observing, nor to a single constructed array. Instead,

716
00:46:19.840 --> 00:46:22.360
<v Speaker 2>it was the combined effect of all these things, of

717
00:46:22.440 --> 00:46:25.639
<v Speaker 2>habit and memory, of mineral and weather, of a story

718
00:46:25.719 --> 00:46:29.079
<v Speaker 2>passed from Rainer's first experiments down to each person who

719
00:46:29.079 --> 00:46:32.360
<v Speaker 2>rebuilt a wall or set a glass pebble in their garden.

720
00:46:33.079 --> 00:46:36.480
<v Speaker 2>The act of maintaining and inhabiting the phenomenon was itself

721
00:46:36.599 --> 00:46:40.840
<v Speaker 2>essential to its existence. The villagers never mythologized or called

722
00:46:40.880 --> 00:46:43.800
<v Speaker 2>attention to the effect, because to separate it out to

723
00:46:43.880 --> 00:46:47.079
<v Speaker 2>consciousness was in some way to break the feedback loop,

724
00:46:47.280 --> 00:46:51.559
<v Speaker 2>to make it fragile. I understood something quietly staggering. Then.

725
00:46:52.039 --> 00:46:55.440
<v Speaker 2>The perpetual afternoon was as much a social and perceptual

726
00:46:55.480 --> 00:46:59.679
<v Speaker 2>construct as it was geological. The people of Penherligen, in

727
00:46:59.679 --> 00:47:03.199
<v Speaker 2>building with rain as stone and glass, in teaching their

728
00:47:03.280 --> 00:47:07.320
<v Speaker 2>children to draw without shade, in continuing the festival, in

729
00:47:07.400 --> 00:47:11.599
<v Speaker 2>tending their gardens and cleaning their windows, perpetuated the phenomenon.

730
00:47:12.599 --> 00:47:18.119
<v Speaker 2>The annual afternoon celebration, the artistic conventions, the easy acceptance.

731
00:47:18.639 --> 00:47:22.079
<v Speaker 2>All these behaviors fed back into the system, sustaining it

732
00:47:22.159 --> 00:47:25.199
<v Speaker 2>not only with glass and stone, but with a constant,

733
00:47:25.519 --> 00:47:30.719
<v Speaker 2>gentle act of communal reinforcement. Even visitors drawn in by

734
00:47:30.760 --> 00:47:35.199
<v Speaker 2>the strangeness played their part. Their initial surprise faded as

735
00:47:35.239 --> 00:47:39.960
<v Speaker 2>the world's difference became the village's ordinaries. Memory softened by

736
00:47:39.960 --> 00:47:44.599
<v Speaker 2>immersion in a world without contrast, adapted afterwards. They might

737
00:47:44.639 --> 00:47:48.920
<v Speaker 2>remember the quiet, not the oddity. That was the consequence

738
00:47:48.920 --> 00:47:51.679
<v Speaker 2>and the secret. The effect could not be exported because

739
00:47:51.679 --> 00:47:54.199
<v Speaker 2>it was not merely a mineral property, or a quirk

740
00:47:54.239 --> 00:47:57.000
<v Speaker 2>of weather, or an act of will. It was the

741
00:47:57.039 --> 00:48:00.760
<v Speaker 2>emergent property of a place, a material, a hitty, and

742
00:48:00.800 --> 00:48:04.840
<v Speaker 2>a set of minds, all agreeing, however unconsciously, that the

743
00:48:04.880 --> 00:48:09.639
<v Speaker 2>world could be kinder, gentler, and perpetually bright. Standing with

744
00:48:09.719 --> 00:48:12.760
<v Speaker 2>one foot in the shadowless zone one foot out, I

745
00:48:12.840 --> 00:48:15.880
<v Speaker 2>felt a profound humility. There was no puzzle to be

746
00:48:15.960 --> 00:48:19.480
<v Speaker 2>solved in the satisfying, finite sense. There was only the

747
00:48:19.519 --> 00:48:23.679
<v Speaker 2>invitation to see, to understand that place and perception and material,

748
00:48:24.199 --> 00:48:29.000
<v Speaker 2>overlaid interdependent, could rewrite the most basic facts of experience.

749
00:48:30.039 --> 00:48:32.440
<v Speaker 2>I stayed like that until the last of the evening's

750
00:48:32.519 --> 00:48:36.440
<v Speaker 2>light thinned out and the festival's crowds melted away. The

751
00:48:36.559 --> 00:48:40.159
<v Speaker 2>river carried the day's warmth out to sea. In the square,

752
00:48:40.440 --> 00:48:43.920
<v Speaker 2>only a few lanterns bobbed lazily in their lines, catching

753
00:48:43.960 --> 00:48:49.000
<v Speaker 2>the last glimmer of that unwavering, undeviating clarity. Back at

754
00:48:49.039 --> 00:48:52.840
<v Speaker 2>my cottage, I packed my suit case in quiet, familiar motions.

755
00:48:53.320 --> 00:48:57.079
<v Speaker 2>The pipes gurgled, The air was cool and faintly herbal,

756
00:48:57.119 --> 00:49:00.199
<v Speaker 2>with the scent of rosemary from the neighbor's garden. My

757
00:49:00.320 --> 00:49:04.079
<v Speaker 2>reflected face in the window was featureless, pearl like, half

758
00:49:04.119 --> 00:49:08.079
<v Speaker 2>lost in the luminous absence of shadow. I thought about

759
00:49:08.079 --> 00:49:12.199
<v Speaker 2>how the villagers had chosen, generation after generation not to

760
00:49:12.239 --> 00:49:16.920
<v Speaker 2>commercialize or even commemorate the phenomenon. No guided ghost tour,

761
00:49:17.280 --> 00:49:20.960
<v Speaker 2>no legends sold on mugs, just the rhythm of daily life,

762
00:49:21.239 --> 00:49:24.960
<v Speaker 2>the festivals, the class rooms, the gardens, seated with light

763
00:49:25.079 --> 00:49:29.239
<v Speaker 2>and glass and memory. My note books, thick with scribbled

764
00:49:29.280 --> 00:49:34.079
<v Speaker 2>half theories and hastily drawn diagrams, felt almost irrelevant. What

765
00:49:34.119 --> 00:49:37.159
<v Speaker 2>I had found in Penaligen was not a scientific coup,

766
00:49:37.679 --> 00:49:40.960
<v Speaker 2>but a lesson in attention, not the solving of a mystery,

767
00:49:41.000 --> 00:49:44.480
<v Speaker 2>so much as the recognition of how rare and sustaining

768
00:49:44.519 --> 00:49:48.480
<v Speaker 2>a gentle anomaly could be. In the morning, I stowed

769
00:49:48.480 --> 00:49:51.440
<v Speaker 2>my bag, left a note for Becka, and walked once

770
00:49:51.519 --> 00:49:54.280
<v Speaker 2>more through the village, crossing the footbridge on my way

771
00:49:54.320 --> 00:49:58.199
<v Speaker 2>to the waiting bus. Sunlight glittered on the cobblestones, the

772
00:49:58.239 --> 00:50:02.880
<v Speaker 2>world spectrally bright, everything and everyone floating untethered by shadow.

773
00:50:03.920 --> 00:50:06.559
<v Speaker 2>I stepped off the far side and watched the transformation.

774
00:50:07.199 --> 00:50:09.679
<v Speaker 2>The first wedge of my own shadow slanted onto the

775
00:50:09.719 --> 00:50:13.880
<v Speaker 2>road before me, unexpected, so sharp and so dark, it

776
00:50:13.960 --> 00:50:18.119
<v Speaker 2>felt miraculous. My feet felt heavier against the tarmac, the

777
00:50:18.159 --> 00:50:23.079
<v Speaker 2>angles suddenly familiar and strange. In that little moment, I

778
00:50:23.119 --> 00:50:26.880
<v Speaker 2>realized that shadow, too was precious, not because of its

779
00:50:26.880 --> 00:50:30.760
<v Speaker 2>presence or its absence, but because it marked the unexpectedness

780
00:50:30.760 --> 00:50:34.119
<v Speaker 2>of things, the places where reality chose to break its

781
00:50:34.159 --> 00:50:39.400
<v Speaker 2>own rules. Somewhere behind me, the gentle afternoon held its ground.

782
00:50:40.000 --> 00:50:42.960
<v Speaker 2>The story of Penherligen's light would not, perhaps could not,

783
00:50:43.280 --> 00:50:46.440
<v Speaker 2>be retold in another place, but I carried a piece

784
00:50:46.480 --> 00:50:48.760
<v Speaker 2>of it out into the world, a sense of how

785
00:50:48.760 --> 00:50:52.920
<v Speaker 2>the improbable can be patiently grown, sustain not only by geology,

786
00:50:52.960 --> 00:50:56.559
<v Speaker 2>and human effort, but by the endless communal invitation to

787
00:50:56.639 --> 00:51:01.760
<v Speaker 2>marvel and sometimes leave the puzzle incomplete. And I wondered,

788
00:51:02.000 --> 00:51:04.679
<v Speaker 2>as the bus turned from the village and the shadows

789
00:51:04.679 --> 00:51:07.679
<v Speaker 2>of hedgerows rose and fell around me, how many other

790
00:51:07.719 --> 00:51:12.320
<v Speaker 2>places waited and detected, how many other gentle afternoons, just

791
00:51:12.440 --> 00:51:15.400
<v Speaker 2>beyond the line where we believe the world must always

792
00:51:15.440 --> 00:51:20.559
<v Speaker 2>behave itself. What an unassuming, beautiful secret that even the

793
00:51:20.599 --> 00:51:24.000
<v Speaker 2>most basic laws of nature might, for those patient enough

794
00:51:24.000 --> 00:51:28.760
<v Speaker 2>to notice, be coaxed into the shape of human curiosity.

795
00:51:29.960 --> 00:51:32.440
<v Speaker 1>And that is the end. Thank you for listening, and

796
00:51:32.480 --> 00:51:42.719
<v Speaker 1>I will see you in the next one.