It Comes From The Light

Light comes in layers. Bright, revealing, glare that cast shadows. Shadows that seem even darker because of the light. Shadows that hide everything we ever imagined, or were afraid to imagine.

 

Loud, yellow, light, the kind that reveals flaws. The kind of light that makes you think about your choices. It magnifies defects, it shines on the imperfections, making small imperfections seem enormous. Light can show us things we don’t want to see, and we never want to share.

 

There is the smaller, distant light that hints at a direction. It offers a thin ray of hope when times are tough. Light at the end of the tunnel kind of light. It comes from the manufactured hope of a lost generation. It could have been any generation. They’ve all been left at the alter in one way or another. “Surely,” they can all say to themselves, “things haven’t always been this bad.” And they are right, and they are wrong. Things have always been this bad, and things have always been better.

 

The old adage, “don’t go toward the light,” rips at our most ancient shame, fear of the darkness. We’re afraid of the dark because there are too many questions, maybe even worse, too many answers. Questions may haunt you but, it’s the answers that terrify you. 

 

It’s never a clear line between dark and light, lines of gray, murky, indistinct pockets of dread. There is an old belief that fear has an odor, pungent and raw. 

 

Once, when I was young, for a reason I can’t remember, I walked across an old cemetery at night. It was one of those you see on the side of county roads. Surrounded by a barbed wire fence, cornfields on three sides, with a swinging aluminum gate. I was driving, just trying to remember what life was really about. I was stoned. I decided to walk through. I hadn’t seen a car for hours.

 

It was almost quiet, even the bugs paid their respects.  I remember thinking it was easy, no problem. I walked from the gate, around the left side to the back, and when I reached the back fence, directly across from the gate I turned to look out at the corn. It was right next to the fence. It rustled softly, quiet murmurs, centuries of regret, whispering, I stood there listening, trying to pick out voices, words, until I thought I heard my name, I decided to leave. I walked, with more purpose than I want to admit, across the short breadth of the graveyard. More than I remember anything, I remember the shadows, they moved, and grew, and were black, they were more than black, they emanated blackness, they swallowed the light. And I remember the smell, fear, and dread, mixed with decay and death. Sometimes, on bad nights, when sleep won’t come, I can still smell it. 

 

I never know which is worse, light or dark. They both have shadows. They both reveal things we might not want to see. Worse than that, though, they both make us look at ourselves in a way we aren’t always comfortable with. Either way we have to keep going, from light to dark and back again, and we call it life.