Useful Darkness, Precious Light

These past few days, one degree of separation. You know that list that everyone talks about, the top stressors in life? Whenever I move through the transitions of home, work, relationship, loss – someone always reminds me, “Well, of course your stressed, what you’re going through is on the list of major stressors.” We expect to visit this territory every one in awhile, and then have plenty of time to process and integrate before the next visit.

Let’s just say it’s where I seem to find myself more often than not; during the times in between I vacation in normalcy and calm. It seems to be the way it is for so many of us. Sometimes as I walk down the street, I repeat to myself In these times… I don’t finish the sentence, I let it remain a fragment because that’s how the experience feels – hard to find a cohesive thread.

I hear through the vine that the one who dropped off the planet is back. Literally flat on her back. Something about a lost phone and the flu and forgetting to call. Uh huh. This is how it is. Important to check your sanity like a clock, keep the time straight in your head, because someone else may try to define what is real and make it real for you, too, which can result in serious discrepancies. Keep your compass close to the warmth of your own skin.

And then other calls inform of police, threats of murder, temporary institutionalization. We just laugh after exchanging facts. “Ok, so what else are you doing with your day, Starbucks?” We don’t even have to say, “How did we get here?” That’s covered in the tinge of hysteria in our laughter, and then it falls into a deeper pool of release, true laughter. Letting go to what is. Laughter from heartbreak, where you are so damn grateful for the Starbuck’s drive-thru because it has everything to do with continuance.

Or the song just now, how it can enter the bones from the café speaker: Yeah, yeah, God is great. Yeah, yeah, God is good. Yeah, yeah. What if god was one of us? Yeah, yeah. Just a stranger on the bus, trying to make his way home. Trying to make his way home.

I tend to watch TV to balance it all out, and it really puts a damper on things if there are reruns when I’ve been waiting all day. Two nights ago my husband tells me to turn off the TV. I know something is wrong – he’s talking directly to me. “Prem, that great couple, the guy who teaches Tai Chi, their eighteen month old baby died suddenly last night.” I turn to the Christmas tree lights, cover my eyes so that the light blurs through crevices like stars, like when I was a kid, and I cry.


There is a limit for laughter and how it can bring medicine. It’s built in – when we can’t think one more thought, the one in us who is old and wise and seasoned walks from door to internal door, gently opening each to the night, and walking toward the chapel in the heart, repeats, “Let the water flow. Let the river run. Let this life and all that connect be washed clean by the salt of the land."

Blessings to the mother and father, buoyant, vivacious, who must burry themselves in pillows and arms and dark rooms. I can feel their pain. And it’s important to carry that weight. A half move later, a second ago, in one missed moment – it could be my child...or yours. And so we do what we can – we weave prayer and stitch remnants of the best in us on wings of thought and send it to them.

And so. I say that a lot. And so.

And so the day. Today. I’m getting over that flu and that infection and that outbreak and beware: Clomid is a monster in nice clothes. Around all the news of the week, it turns my impulses into a Doberman, and I am dragged this way and that, but I know how to dig in my heels and keep a tight hold on the leash. Mantras are good. Om Namah Shivaya.

I’m supposed to be painting a room, dealing with the crashed computer, editing my husband’s twenty-one page paper, transitioning a business, Christmas shopping, food shopping. And the carwash.

But now, just the music and the medicine of words.

Just a note about darkness. I'm not feeling dark. This is not sad. It's the end of December,and despite what we are led to believe about the joy and cheer of the season, it is also the time of natural darkness. We are pulled to the light - by the extension of darkness. This is how it is in nature. And we are natural. We are still natural. It's ok if you feel the pull into the quiet and into the dark. We are given a promise about the pending light. Soon the scale will tip and we will follow the sun, more and more light each day. But not now. It's good to follow the rhythm of nature so we know our true location.