A Call to Shadow

I came across something the other night while going to sleep. It’s funny now that I think about it, but then, scrolling through default audio book previews, it was just another way to pass time. The book was called Duma Key, it was the key unlocked the enigma and let my light shine upon it. Light. My mind works in mysterious ways. I will start with a statement, a statement that baffles the average human mind, because all good written pieces must contain a hook (even those scientific journals have them: The Question That Needed To Be Tested). The statement? I’d rather live in darkness than in light.

This is the seed that was planted, like the Inception movie, and grows rapidly till it saturates every crevice in this beautiful cranium I call mine. It doesn’t make sense at first but that’s my plan to make you keep reading- don’t worry though, the answer will come. However, I must first analyze the statement above me. There arrives the obvious question of the meaning of light and darkness.  In doing so, I must reveal another statement: The meanings of darkness and light are absolute, flawed, and shadowed. We know by default that darkness is absence of light, whether you are spiritual or not, this remains true for all humans. We also know, scientifically, that darkness is born through the presence of light.

 These facts shape us, giving the foundations, to which next arrives color. Darkness is black. Light is white. This is irrefutable. At last, humans feel the need to, subconsciously of not, give feeling to colors. As a result, the final product of darkness: Black, endless void of nothing and yet containing every fear in our imagination. Black, warm fuzziness or black, sudden relief and shocking pain. Black, the veil to hide under when we commit an unspeakable act. The final product of light: White, salvation, bright and calming, just good. White is also nothing at all. In the words of Stephen King, “Black is the absence of light, but light is the absence of memory.”  This is an opinion, though popular, and I concede that that this can be refuted. Yet, I must proceed down the path I have chosen with this evidence, for it is the only thing I have to carry. 

I must first revisit the path to these feelings and perception of darkness because, in my belief, the concept of darkness is more flawed than light. As humans, according to survival of the fittest, we are programmed to fear darkness because darkness holds enemies that we cannot fight with our poor visibility contributing to an impaired hunter and prey. In the spiritual sense, darkness hold demons, amplify their powers of persuasion to encourage us to do wrong. Darkness is used in torture because it forces our senses to amplify, allowing us to fully smell the stench of sweat, tears, blood, urine, and excrement’s, to taste the tears, blood, dried saliva, to hear to the sounds of pained whimpering and blasted screams from other victims, to feel the slab of stone or soaked plush that act as your bedding. To humans, darkness is the epitome of evil and fear. Yet, darkness also means sleep, means rest, means hunting the millions of other animals sharing the world with humans.

I next observe the contrasts of black and white. Our perception of white in total blackness is first. Total blackness is filled and therefore unable to create. The spiritual teaching alludes to the “bright white light at the end of a tunnel.” This is the perceived death- or heaven? We know it to be calm nothing. We also see the light as the one speck of goodness in a world of evil, like the church. Yet, visa-versa, the meaning differs. Yes, the image of darkness in white alludes to sin persevering even in the most purest of a person, But, Imagine the total white- like a piece of paper. The whiteness of that paper means (to me) a possibility to which the black strokes of this keyboard will fill the white creating memory, words that (in theory) can never be erased. As the first unsteady stroke of black touches the possibility of white, Creation occurs.  The stroke becomes a line and that line has a choice to become a word, to which letters appear and sentences follow with meanings " with purpose, or a picture to which the meaning will hold itself in emotion.

Therefore I explain the statement: It’s the simple reason that darkness is creation. I’d rather live in creation than possibility of creation. Darkness to me is something- a memory. A memory is something, it’s everything. A memory is an identity. A memory defines you. White is nothing. You can lose yourself in nothing. I’d rather live in darkness than in light. I’d rather live as something "whether a blot, a dot, a line, a letter, a sentence, or a picture than nothing at all.

Author's Note

Any Comments or Critisism is welcome