Long winter dark…
On the longest night I meet the winter dark. The sun sets with a suddenness shuttering the afternoon into evening. The remains of the day are left to be done in darkness. My eyes grow heavy, but it’s early still. Lights flash on creating pockets of day-like spaces. I’m awake again. Hours pass through softly lit rooms, harshly lit hallways, glaring traffic light, hollow commercial light, and the passing ever changing scrolling screen light. There is no time in the false day. Bright light means no more or less than low light, and all around the light bubbles is dark. The dark is the real time, only night time. Without a clock to read out the numbers nothing tells the minute, the hour, the time until dawn. The dark night is all consuming. The creep of cold is all that suggests a passage of time. No light, no heat. Cold grows in the dark. Cold grows in that negative way where its increase is really a decrease. Less and less and less heat. Unyielding seeping away of the left over energy of light. The dark gives nothing away. It is an inscrutable and persistent companion. Dark is everywhere. It surrounds light. It lies beneath every object, below the surface of lit up things, in their shadows, in the hollows where the light does not reach, on the unlit sides of things, at the end of every day, behind my eyelids. Dark contains everything while revealing nothing. It is the backdrop, the scene on which the holographic show of light paints a new story that seems like the real story, but it’s only a print, a stamp, a moment of impression and then another, passing, fading, transient. Dark holds potential, unrealized possibility. Possibility, or uncertainty. What’s in the dark is unknown. In the dark may be once was, could be, shall never be, shall always be, must be, I wish would never be. My dreams are in the dark. Dreams that I loved, that I believed, that did not happen and now can never happen. Dreams that I have yet to dream are in the dark too. I cannot see them, but they will make themselves known someday. My fears are in the dark. What could happen that I don’t know, can’t see? How big is that problem? How long will this last? Am I in danger if I do, if I don’t, if I wait, if I try, if I fail, if it’s different than I thought it was? I’m tired. The lights I shine to see in the dark are limited, illusory, and wearying. Turning them off, I embrace the dark. There is rest in the dark. There is peace in the dark. Instead of seeing, the dark lets me feel, and I feel tired from seeing. I welcome the rest, the pause, the return to the dark.
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