Light making me Crazy

My eyes are heavy and my whole existence screams for a moment where I can slip away into the blissful nothingness of sleep. Instead, I shake my head and slap my cheek, forcing my blood-shot eyes to focus through the glowing blue light that emits from the screen in front of me.

The room around me seems to flicker, I wonder if it is the instability of the fluorescent bulbs that light the computer lab. I shake my head, these lights always make me feel crazy, am I the only person who always questions my own sanity when the world around me flickers almost imperceptibly?! How can the harsh, yet somehow dusty light of this room bring out my creativity? I am not a scholar who can sit in the sterile, dim glow of a lab for hours without seriously contemplating a drastic escape plan. But my fear of failing in the sight of society keeps me sitting here. Bathed in a light that is artificially bright yet still makes me feel like a dusty film is covering my eyes and preventing me from seeing clearly.

The fluorescent light strips cast dome-like shadows on the walls although they are long and angular. This confuses my sensibilities so I look up at the bulbs to discover their mystery. How can such a dull, functional light emit from a light so bright, it stings my eyes? Am I destined never to be able to truly look at the sources of light and life in my life? All I can do is look at the shadows cast by the items that get in the way of the artificial light, and in seeing where the light is blocked, I begin to see the qualities of the light better. Each light has a different sphere it covers (not in the sense of a circular shape but rather in therms of domain). By looking at the different shadows beneath a row of chairs, it becomes obvious that the variation in the placement of the shadow relative to the chair above it is entirely due to the differing light sources and the positioning of the chair relative to the nearest light source. It is almost like the closest light is the key light for the scene that will take place in the chair below it and all the other lights are just fill. Which light is the key light? It depends on which chair you are sitting in.

So maybe these lights have a dignity of their own. They create the texture of the room- and while it seems rather dismal to be stuck inside under row after row of mercurial, wavering lights, there is still a poetry that could be pulled out of this place. A sterile and rather dusty record of many hours of diligence and yes, even creativity... But to be able to fully appreciate this place, I'm gonna need a camera.