Day 10

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

T. S. Eliot

I feel heavy and stupid today, as though I had run a marathon or fought a great battle. And so, when I reached the beach this morning I hardly remembered to walk. I became entirely lost in the beautiful lacework of the clouds feathered across the sky. Somehow my feet must have been moving because I found myself witnessing new scenes as time passed. Amidst the early surfers, a lone kayaker paddled slowly and rhythmically towards the south, parallel to the shore. It was lovely to see him as I rarely do see kayaks these days; it’s all about stand-up paddle boards.

The wet sand took on a mirror-like quality in which the clouds became reflected, and I saw a group of seagulls standing on this glassy surface. A strange optical illusion was created whereby they seemed suspended in an infinite sky. I could see the surface on which they stood but reflection and reality blurred and became one, so that the boundaries ceased to exist. And then I also was suspended, neither of the Earth nor above it, but somehow weightless and timeless, belonging everywhere and everywhen, or nowhere and nowhen. For a time I forgot both who and where I was; I simply existed as part of the rising day. I did not try to make this happen; it came about spontaneously as the result of my own dullness and foggy mind. I may have to rest for much of today, but it will have been worth it to float within the world. Like levitating with Fanu.

The last time I was at the beach was not 24 hours ago. It was last night. I risked being seen and went there as the sun was about to set behind the maze of buildings to the west. I could say that I have become stir crazy and desperate for distraction after nine days of mostly hiding away in my own small apartment. And perhaps that’s true. It is an irony that, when I was working every day, I was absolutely desperate for time to stop so that I could think. Now, confronted with the reality of thinking and being present to myself, there are times when I crave distraction almost as badly as I have always craved stillness.

But that’s not why I went. I went because I have become obsessed with understanding the hold of darkness over my imagination. Having discovered, by sheer accident, how deeply beautiful this time of shadow and infinite expansiveness is, I am beginning to regret that I arrive just as it is ending. I want to explore deeper within and hear what it is trying to teach me.

I don’t remember Kelly-Ann covering the subject of darkness in the 29 shadows. Strange. I didn’t think of it at the time, but it seems like an interesting omission now. Perhaps it was a bit too “obvious”, but then, given that she has said that she fears to be alone in the dark, perhaps the obvious sometimes needs to find its way to the table. And so I haven’t ever even considered my reluctance to be out in the dark before now. It was just never worth worrying about, like it not being worth worrying about a fear of spiders. I can live my life perfectly well without training myself to be calm in the presence of a spider, so I’m quite happy to keep that fear right where it is. And the dark has always been the same. Until now.

One thing Kelly-Ann did repeatedly emphasise was the importance of showing up for ourselves as part of our practice of self love. So last night, that’s what I did. I waited until the shadows were lengthening and the light had taken on an eerie cast, and, with determination, I headed out the door. It was only as I did so that I realised how rarely I do this. I have managed to live without even thinking about the habits that keep me safe from ever thinking about the dark. Normally, because I rise early, I come straight home from work and settle in to the usual routine of YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and books. And on weekends it’s pretty much the same practice in the evenings. The time flies past so rapidly as I try to fit everything in that each day, each evening, passes by in a blink and is lost to conscious consideration. There have, of course, been times when I have had to work late and it has been dark by the time I reach home. But if I catch the tram, I can get on and off very close to my destination at each end, and I am usually so looking forward to spending as much time as I can in my own company that I completely forget to notice the darkness that hovers just beyond the well-lit main streets. That is a very different thing, I discovered last night, from consciously and slowly walking out the door, locking up, and heading out into the shadows of the open spaces.

And for some reason I fear the open energy of the beach the most. It feels the most wild, the most untamed. Perhaps it is its very beauty that scares me. And that reminds me of something I had completely forgotten until right at this moment, a kind of urban legend about Canberra, where I grew up. When I was very young, there were many densely forested areas around Canberra. It was that amazing city, with bush and city in happy co-existence and collaboration. Sadly, bush fires later wiped out the forests and it is only recently that they are beginning to re-grow. It was depressing to see Canberra so bare and denuded for so long, and I missed the beauty and protection of the great pines I loved so much. But it felt also like the fires had to happen, to burn away all that had gone before.

Because I was very young when it was all supposed to have happened, I have no idea whether any of it is true. I could easily look it up I suppose, but for some reason I don’t want to. I think I would rather think that it was an exaggeration – or better yet, a total fabrication created by “witch hunters”. I do not want to consider the possibility that it may in fact have been true. Especially as I also remember once being in the waiting room of a doctor’s surgery and seeing a young woman in a wheelchair being led to an appointment. For some reason, the woman next to me leaned across and whispered that the lady in the wheelchair had been so badly abused as a child that she now required 24/7 care and probably would for the rest of her life. I don’t want to think this might be true, or perhaps even connected with that urban legend.

Apparently there was a cult – a coven – operating in Canberra. It worshipped in darkness, in the middle of the very forests I loved so much. And it fed on sacrifice, human sacrifice. Certain girl children were chosen to become breeders. They were kept off the birth records and hidden in secret, where they were ritually sexually abused from a young age. As they reached physical maturity these girls in turn bore children in secret to the men of the coven. Apart from any new girl children required to perpetuate the coven, the babies resulting from these pregnancies were ritually tortured, mutilated and then offered up as human sacrifices to dark gods at the full moon.

That story had a very powerful hold on me, and I mourned desperately to think of my beautiful pines hiding such a secret. And the idea that somewhere as bureaucratic and ordinary as Canberra could hide such horror terrified me. My mind could not take in what must have been the experience of those girls. Because, even if they existed only in imagination in Canberra, they surely existed elsewhere. By bringing the story to Canberra, I could not escape the reality that a person can be absolutely and completely isolated, alone and without hope of aid, even in the midst of one of the more staid and boring cities I have encountered.

Thinking about it now, it’s a wonder I ever had the courage to become a Pagan, given the prejudice I so early absorbed. But I wasn’t thinking of any of this last night, as I walked out into the shadows. I was aware only of my intensely beating heart and of the fear – and excitement – that gripped me. I gave myself up to the intensity of the experience and to the enormity of the gift I was giving to myself. I was giving myself access to the infinite shadow that so beguiled me. It was still very early – I am lucky that it gets dark early here. So my fear was absolutely ridiculous. But it felt heroic nonetheless, like a great quest into the unknown. A quest to discover what Emilie Bourdet calls the unconditional love that is night.

The Norfolk pines felt different at this time, more brooding and sombre. As for the beach, it felt as though someone had turned everything around. The light had taken on the shimmering, faded and pearlescent hues I have often seen in the mornings. But the people on the beach were entirely different. These were the people of the daytime, still enjoying their daytime lives as though the world was not changing around them. There were children running and splashing, ball games played by adolescents – even a cyclist, choosing, for some reason, to ride along the sand. My heart was frozen in time, and these people had not even noticed that anything had changed.

Until, all of a sudden, as though a switch had been flicked, they were gone. I did not see them go – they simply weren’t there anymore. I don’t know how that happened. But instead, to my west, still high enough to be visible, was the newly-minted moon. I cannot tell you how beautiful it was to see it, and I realised that, with my habits, it’s a sight I have seldom witnessed. At once I had a friend, and a powerful one. I allowed my walking to become more even and my eyes to gaze further outwards. There were still a few people about after all. A group of young people had set up night-time volleyball, with bright lights to maintain visibility on the sandy court. I sat nearby, to watch, and discovered that in the distant shallows a group remained to challenge the waves. They grew steadily less and less visible, until at last I could mostly see them only when a whitecap broke directly behind them. It seemed insane to tempt the ferocity of the waves and currents of this area at night, with so little visibility, but as I attempted to watch them confront each new wave, I realised that they, also, in their own way, were offering up a challenge to the universe.

Eventually they retreated to the very edge of the water and I was greatly relieved. I hadn’t realised I had been watching them so intently, as though afraid that if I didn’t, a wave would snatch one of them. And then finally, they headed off in different directions, dispersing and dissolving into the night. Only the volleyballers continued on, and occasional shadowy shapes moving past for some unknown purpose.

The world of night, I discovered, belongs to very different people from the world of early morning. These people are younger and wilder, baring their teeth at life and demanding to have their fill of it. They do not stop in contemplation and wonder, as do the meditators, fishermen and early dawdlers of the morning. They writhe and celebrate, furiously pulsing their energy into the dark. And there are lights everywhere. Lights radiating from the car parks and the clubs. Lights from the storybook line of skyscrapers, clinging to the edge of existence as they peer out into the unfathomable forever of the sea. I would have to wait a long time to again reach the point of quiet.

From my vantage point on the high sands, I watched the stars slowly emerge and brighten. Flights of gulls could be seen, brilliant against the darkness, lit by the bright lights of the volleyball court and appearing strangely fluorescent in their passage. A lone helicopter whirred, high above, just visible against the stars, and I wondered what its purpose might be at this hour. I fixed my attention on the stars, remembering the moon that preceded them and felt myself part of the immensity of this strange energy. The more I focused and listened, the more I began to feel the seduction of the unseen. The mini-dune I had chosen on which to sit gave me a sense of height and I spread myself so that my arms and feet had resting places. It began to feel like a throne and I the High Priestess. I held communion with the stars and drank in their knowledge as I sat enthroned in the majesty surrounding me. I was surprised at my capacity to enjoy, despite fear.

Every now and then an unexplained rustling in the sand and grass made me tense up, or a shadow appeared with no apparent cause at the edge of my vision. For a moment I would be hyper-alert and then I would consciously relax again. The more fear I felt, the smaller I became. The more I relaxed, the more I expanded to fill the horizon, even unto the stars themselves.

As my body reacted to the sudden, mysterious noises with no obvious owners, I took time to be still and listen to my own fear. I became more and more curious about where this fear resided and from what it was attempting to protect me. I have more than enough reasons to understand my fear but I wanted to feel it, to know it with my heart and rest with it there. Perhaps if I could be with it, walk with it, we could move on together and the dark would open up to me. Because, I realised, as I sat there, darkness is a choice. It is inhabited by very different beings, but it is no more closed to me than the morning. If I wanted to be a part of it, I could. It opened its arms to me last night and told me that all this could be mine, if I so choose.

But my listening revealed nothing to me. Oddly, no echoes or images of Satanic covens, or people murdered in their back yards, reached my still focus. Instead, incongruously and ridiculously, I heard the creak of floorboards. Such an ordinary, uninteresting sound! And so unrelated to this outdoor world of terror and exhilaration! For a moment I felt myself invaded by those floorboards, and felt a shadow pass over and through me. But then it faded and was gone. It was just a sound, as unexplained and meaningless as the rustlings in the sand – both whispers of the imagination.

I imagined staying there later and later, watching the end of games, the end of dining and drinking, and the blinking out of all those great skyscraper lights. But I knew I was not yet ready. So eventually I sighed and stood, preparing to return to the safety of monotony. But I found I could not give in quite so soon. After the near-emptiness of the beach, the rest of the world was a shock; I had forgotten how early it still was. Cars everywhere, and people, including children running and yelling, enjoying the relaxed indulgence of their parents. But as I moved away from the main street, quietness returned and I became aware of bats passing occasionally overhead. So silent! Gracefully and beautifully they glided, somehow very different from birds. I do not normally get the opportunity to see these spots of inky darkness on their eerie flight. What a privilege!

Sirens screamed mournfully in the distance and music blared from a party just getting underway. But at the same time, the listening quiet reached out and embraced me. It was at once both loud and silent, a time of contradiction. Much more complex and multi-faceted than the morning. A lone skateboarder came under the glare of a street light, weaving back and forth across the full expanse of road, taking advantage of the now quieter back streets. Older couples set out on foot towards the clubs. And I found myself walking with swaying hips and raised head, owning, as Anita Moorjani would say, my own magnificence. I had given myself the gift of facing my fear and opening myself up to the beauty of the night. This night was mine, at my choice. And choice seemed such a beautiful word.