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Dear Void,
You are much fuller than people suspect upon first impression. I previously misunderstood just how vibrant your vast emptiness actually was. Instead of limitless vacuum out there in the universe, there are enormous bands of gas churning in and out of galaxies like breath. There are energies known and, assuredly, unknown. There is a dark, even the utter darkness in the pupil of a black hole, but that dark, while terrifying, is yet beautiful and magnificent. I wonder... are there not byways crisscrossing over that big black? Are there yet the jet-trails of those who have passed before?
So when I speak to you, Void, I speak not to a great emptiness, nor a fathomless meaninglessness, I speak to an as-yet-fully-known vibrancy. I speak to space magnanimous. I speak to eons. I speak to the halls of creation, if for no other reason than to hear my own voice carry on and on and on... for infinity.
Today, in my newly revamped blog, I'd like to speak about the weather.
It was inky black out when I left the house this morning. I recognized the apprehension I felt, stepping out the front door. The dim porch light barely pierced the utter darkness through our neighborhood. There are no streetlights, just the woods and other houses nestled, hidden, under the trees. I had to just put the trash out and get to my car and then feel safe confined within its little dome of light. I needed to be cut off from this vast dark, spend as little time in it as possible because my imagination runs away with itself and I start seeing ghosts in the corner of my eyes.
Not only ghosts, but other things walk the darkness...
I've seen stray dogs wandering our neighborhood. Packs of them. I've seen large spiders spinning their invisible webs. I've seen deer just on the cusp of sight, staring, full-eared, back at me; far more aware than I of what moves unseen in the near dawn.
The darkness was so complete this morning because a ceiling of cloud cover obfuscated even the starlight. Grabbing the trashcan, I welcomed the sound of an airliner veering over the mountain we live on, headed for Dulles. They say West Virginia is the most flown-over of the fly-over states because it happens to be right on the edge of the east coast hub.
I sat the trashcan at the end of the driveway and, turning back, the wind picked up in the leaves and the air was cool and fresh this August morning, and I wasn't apprehensive anymore. I felt that much of this side of the world slept, even the trees slept, and there was a great abidance. A feeling of peace came over me.
Then, once driving down Gingerbread, my headlights now blaring a path through the dark for me, I remember thinking: I'm pretty content with life. I might be dog-tired, but it's worth it. It might be dark, but the dark is good. I feel comfortable in the dark, even if I was, or am normally, apprehensive at first. It's cool under the canopy of the trees. It's safe, like down in a dark hole or hovel. In fact, one of the best sensations of being in the dark is letting that fear of it wash out of you as you become accustomed to not necessarily seeing what's around you, but letting your other senses takeover. You become much more aware of the world when in a dark place. You "see" another side to the world.
As the dark side of the Earth shifts, bound by its endless dawn and its endless dusk, we might enjoy our sojourn in the darkness, welcome it, be thankful for it. Even as we enliven the night with more and more and yet more electric lights (light pollution, they call it), still, there are dark places we might find and cherish. For darkness stretches further and deeper than any of our mere lights, even in their multitude, can yet reach. For it is the quiet, cool dark which permeates at least half of our whole lives, still.
Darkness is half of what we are. Darkness is a gift. I should step into it more often.
That's all for today.
Come back again, or subscribe, to enjoy yet another Letter to the Void.