Yera. Andemir?
Andemir. Hey Yera.
Yera. Hey where have you been? I haven't seen you around in a couple of weeks.
Andemir. I was getting tired of all these lights. You can't see anything but the lights around here.
Yera. Light pollution.
Andemir. Exactly. So I wanted to find a dark place, a place where light was necessary.
Yera. Did you find it?
Andemir. I had to consider it, but I did. I had to find an observatory. There would be darkness there.
Yera. I've been to an observatory once. It was in India. Remember Gvidas?
Andemir. Ah yes. Gvidas.
Yera. We went trekking along the southern coast and found our way to one of the British hill stations near Madras to get away from the heat. It had an observatory there at the top of one of the hills. It was weird though. No one was there. All that was there were black beetles the size of golf balls.
Andemir. No one was at the observatory when I got there either, but it was what I was looking for. By half past nine, it got dark. All color faded to black, the stars came in clusters, it was what I needed.
Yera. So you stayed there for a couple of weeks?
Andemir. Yeah, I found a cheap place to stay.
Yera. What did you do when it was light?
Andemir. I went to the library and did some reading, did some hiking in the forest, ate at the diners and cafes there.
Yera. You know, when I was at the observatory with Gvidas, it didn't occur to me that we should have stayed until it got dark. We hitchhiked our way back down the hill and had dinner at the first place we found. I can only remember the sprigs of mint in our lemonade.
Andemir. It must have been deeply dark at that hill station.
Yera. It might have been, but I guess I wasn’t looking for it. You were escaping the light. I was escaping the heat.
Andemir. I can’t remember if it was cold.
End. Unnecessary Light and Heat