darkness, and light

Within light there is darkness, but
do not try to understand that darkness.
Within darkness there is light, but
do not look for that light.

~ zen quote ~

Settling in for a wait at the chiro's office, I grabbed a copy of the National Geographic and sat back to read the feature article: "Our Vanishing Night" It explores how man's desire and need for light had affected our lives, our reproduction, and that effect is spilling into the animal world, affecting migration, predatory patterns, and our relationship to darkness.

"Light is a powerful biological force", it said, birds get drawn to it and that resulted in heads-on collision onto buildings. Nocturnal animals are at higher risk of being preyed upon because man's urge to have light had resulted in them being more easily exposed to predators.

The presence of artificial light is affecting animals' breeding and migratory patterns, and not to their advantage. Turtle hatchlings are lost by the hundreds of thousands each year because they are confused by the artifical light source and lose their orientation, and thus lose sight of the ocean, where they need to go home to.

In humans, rates of breast cancer has been linked to nightime brightness of neighborhoods.

The article ended on a grave note- with our power to create light, we have forgotten the scale of our being; we have become blind to our place in the Universe... we think we have control, but in fact we may be wreaking havoc, upon our very own world.

++

I closed the magazine and thought of how light is so often over-rated. Overly esteemed. Overly yearned for. I pondered my evolving relationship with light and darkness...

When I was young, I was scared of the dark. I had to sleep with the light on. Then an adult will come and turn off the light after I have fallen asleep. My grandma had to come with me to use the toilet during the middle of the night, otherwise I would leave a whole trail of lights through the house.

Then, at some point, I finally awakened to the wisdom of my body and of Nature and I realized that my body needs the dark. It needed the dark to be fully rested. It needed the dark to repair itself. It needed the dark to regulate my biological rhythms. Light resembled noise to me at night. They were intrusive, talkative and annoying. At night, I needed the dark. Now I like to sleep under a thick blanket of darkness. It feels safe, and neccesary. And not just me. The plants too, and the animals. Everything needs the dark.

And then of course, once, I saw an entire sea of stars in a black sky. Enveloped by darkness, with no light trying to assert its presence, I felt I saw through and through galaxies and universes and witnessed every single star in my eyes, every single twinkle of light traveled from light years beyond to meet with my mundane being and I was bowed over. Totally humbled. Without the dark, no beauty; no gasping in the face of the power of what just is.

++

From the moment we learned that Ferdinand had died, it was darkness for me. The nurse dimmed the lights to give us privacy after the horrible news was announced. But I guess symbolically it was a pronouncement of our baby's fate, and a gesture of acknowledgment of how our lives had become from that moment forth- dark, gloomy, sad, oppressively sorrowful.

So often and so many times I have written of sitting in the dark, being in the dark. Strangled by the dark. Suffocated. Blinded. Trapped.

But I also found comfort in it.

The light was too piercing. The light, it represented blatant joy and insensitivy of the other. Like the friend who wrote me about her glorious day with her children, gallivanting with horses and singing to rainbows. That was a blinding light she sent me, piercing into my darkness, saying "Boo!" to me in the throes of my woes. It seemed to me she said, Look! I am in the light. Life is beautiful and gorgeous, can't you see?

And I pulled my blanket closer around me, shut my eyes to the glaring bright, and turned my face to the wall.

++

The thing is, I need both. Darkness, and light. They are inseparable, and essential.

Darkness is not forever, it will turn around and show its other face, the light.

But, to have darkness turn on its own time is different from me flicking on a light myself. Or someone swaying a kerosene lamp right in my face.

I have seen the light, I have.

It comes from the depths of darkness. It comes from the other pools of darkness. The light comes from fellow bereaved.

And therefore it was welcomed. That light is not glaring, loud or self-righteous. It had nothing to prove. That light, from fellow bereaved, is just the right glow. Like a warm, kind nod to me, acknowledging my grief journey and sometimes, just that, and it flickers off again. But I know then that I am not alone in the dark, and darkness cannot be forever.

++

To know that light will come again is important. Darkness is vital- for healing, for rest, for solitude and contemplation. For dreams and for beauty. Light provides something different. Like an exhale after a long holding in of the breath. A change in pace and rhythm. An opportunity to evaluate things in a different light.

We celebrate the Winter Solstice. We watch, as the days grow shorter and shorter, and the nights, longer and colder. We hold out till Winter Solstice, then, we turn off the artifical lights and throw a match into the fireplace, welcoming the light back, enjoying the blaze of warmth and glow while darkness still surrounds us. We go out in the cold dark night, bundled up but still feeling the nippy cold. We raised our heads and look to the dark sky, and over the horizon, wondering about the next new day.

This year, I want to sit and wait and watch the first sunrise after the longest night of the year. I want to see the first light come through; I want to witness that promise, for centuries, that the light shall return, even after the longest night. I need to see that the promise will be kept. I will watch the first light crack through the dark, and watch the embracing dance between dark and light as the long night gives way to the new day. I wish to see that intimate connection.

++

I need both: darkness, and light. They are essential to my being, important to my grief journey. In between are subtle nuances, but I shall not explain.

Photo by Nicholas Hughes, From Verse 1 of the series In Darkness Visible

I loved this photo, the works by this photographer. He seems to have found that transient time and place where darkness and light fuse seamlessly. They need to strike just the right balance as he releases the shutter... so we can see that darkness and light indeed do need each other, and with passion too.

Whatever you need this season, whether it is winter or summer for you now, I wish for you whatever you yearn for and whatever you need, to nourish yourself from the very depth. Be it light, be it darkness.

glimpses

Today's post is the first from a new contributor to the Glow in the Woods family: Jen of There's a New Monarchy in Town.

Jen is a transplanted Canadian living in London, England, and a first-time mama in the first raw months of life without her daughter Sadie. She came on board as the 7th full-time medusa after writing to us to say 'thanks for being here', and 'I've completely lost my writing mojo' ...at which point we ambushed her to join our motley crew.

Please join us in giving Jen a glowing welcome--we're grateful to have her voice in our midst, and we hope you are, too.

I look back at photos from our four days in Vienna last month. Austria is damn nice, yes. And who knew it was so good at wine making? I loved the cathedral concert at dusk: Mozart and More. The end note of each song hanging in the air like it was up for grabs.

I like the tucked-away bar we stumble onto. The music is good here. The ceilings low, arched, stone. Peanut shells on the floor, wine savvy staff. We decide to sample the local stuff only.

Let’s have another.

.::.

We sit in a tiny room on tiny pastel sofas surrounded by four tiny white walls. Three, if you consider the one behind me is all windows. The view is the Thames and Big Ben. If you were in a restaurant you’d be pleased. Here, it’s nothing short of stifling. If you were me, across from the specialist who took care of her in those last hours, you’d want to scream back. He takes off his glasses to look at me squarely, Australian accent thick, and I wonder if he barely remembers. His words are clinical. I’ll bet the farm his own babies are alive and well.

“I don’t care if you believe it would have happened anyway. I would have taken however many more hours or days or weeks we’d have had with her if that nurse hadn’t moved her.”

It’s what I want to say.

Instead, I rock, shuddering through my sobs, conscious of the three sets of eyes fixed on me as I struggle to recover. I yank two, three more tissues from the box beside me angrily. I stay silent. I feel weak and my voice has forgotten how to work.

.::.

I am comfortable enough now that my confidence has grown as steadily as my indignation. I am here to work. Why are you looking at Facebook? Why are you complaining about someone else before you’ve even proven yourself? Why can’t someone give me the answer?

I smile. I put in 11 hour days on occasion. I think about the possibilities. I dream of what I was meant to be doing.

.::.

She would have been six months old on August 20th. I tried in vain to not imagine what she’d look like, what milestones she would have reached. I am okay, then I’m not, and then I am again. Okay being a different, different place these days. Grief, like an unwanted tagalong, saunters alongside me daily. She is vindictive in the way she chooses the most inopportune times to surface. I thought Sorrow was only a word used in love poems that include, ‘hither’ and ‘unrequited’.

Not so much.

If you have ever wanted to see what damaged goods look like, look no further.

.::.

We have been sitting in the garden for five hours or more, and the table is now a sea of glass, empty and full. I look from my brother to my friends and back to my husband. I laugh heartily and often, and realize in the back of my mind that this is where hope lies: among family and friends, new and old. I am grateful and then in the next breath I am homesick.

I am the luckiest unlucky girl.

.::.

While I took the four hour round trip to Luton and back to reclaim my passport, he went to our favourite place. Waited for me, had a beer in the pub that was once a jail. He is proud and a bit secretive of the contents of his shopping bag. I am always in awe at how much this process pleases him.

Later, he serves a stunning plate of monkfish wrapped in bacon. I fold my pajama’d legs under me and tuck in. Tastes like lobster. Baby squash, peppers, asparagus sauteed next to the sweetest new baby potatoes I’ve ever tasted. I wonder if there are two people in the room who have missed their calling. He raises his glass.

‘Cheers. To the future, whatever it may hold.'

.::.

Fleeting moments of "happiness" continue to catch me off guard. Do you remember the first time you laughed, or felt hope for the future, after your child's death? Did you feel guilty for allowing yourself to do so?

reason

There is this forest road some forty minutes away from our cabin. The first time we drove it to check out the sights, it was a few months after our baby died. Sensing how we all need the solace and silence of nature, my husband R packed us all into the car for a drive. The views astounded us. The silence, and the liveliness of it all. And, to see large fields of ferns, growing amongst soldiers of trees, was simply an unforgettable sight, for us used to the gray and brown and small foliage of the desert.

Recently, we took the drive again. I wanted to show you some pictures, but none portrayed the grandness and nonchalance of the place. It is rugged, yet regal. Very quiet. So still, yet brimming over with life (and decay, of course). The forest road runs at a high altitude, so there are several points where you stop and look out over massive areas densely crowded with trees, across mesas and often eye-to-eye with the clouds. You feel you stand almost at the top of the world, centuries-old rocks supporting you. The ground beneath feels solid, after centuries of movement. It feels strong, after it learned to move with the currents of time and forces of nature. Sweet little colorful flowers bloom here and there to contrast with the earth-old trees and rocks.

Here, along the road, amongst the ancient and the transient, I could feel Ferdinand's spirit very intimately. I knew that I am surrounded by the wholeness of his spirit, even his body. I felt then that he was not lost somewhere, or forever, but here, in the present, at one with the nature and the universe, breathing with me everywhere I go. And here, for an instant, I felt that a reason did not matter anymore.

:::::::::::::::::::

For a long time after he died, I wanted a reason. Desperately. Holding the one page pathological report in my hands, I googled furiously for answers. Those laconic yet loaded terms, within them must be encoded the answer to the mystery of his death.

But I did not find any answers. Not at all.

I searched my brains for things I did and did not do through the 40 weeks that I carried him, and tried to find a reason. Why? Because I felt it would give me some control. If it is because I ate shrimps, then, the next time I shall not touch a shrimp and all shall be fine.

Except I know that is wishful thinking. If only it could be that easy, to have that reassurance. Something else could of course happen.

A reason was so important, so I could hold someone (that is, me) or something, accountable. So I can be on the other side, in control and be all-knowing.

Slowly, gradually, I know that an answer, or a reason, may well just serve as a blind. Just something to give me a false sense of control. Just something to give me the illusion that I know the answer to questions that never shall have answers.

So, sometimes, I feel, there is no need for an answer. Because then there is no false perception of being in control. Then there is no illusion that I hold the key to a door that I can open for others. Sometimes, when immersed in the quiet prowess of nature, I feel that no reason is necessary, only love.

But, only sometimes.

Do you seek a reason? How? Why? If you found a reason, did it help?