darkness | sandylikebeach

I’m lost in thought. Or is thought lost inside of me? So many thoughts chase each other around. Are they trying to build on each other or are they simply trying to become something other than what they are? And what exactly are they? Half truths or distantly remembered platitudes or a snippet of dialogue or the terrifying task of putting feelings into words. I don’t know and I can’t figure it out which is probably why the previous sentence isn’t even a sentence in the truest sense of the word. Or the only sense of the word, since I believe a definition of sentence would be something along the lines of a word or group of words conveying some type of thought or action and containing both subject and predicate.

An example may be in order. But not an example of a sentence because examples of sentences are everywhere here if you know where to look. And by the simple act of reading, you know where to look. (I had to go back and add the comma in the previous sentence because I wasn’t sure that you would pause where I paused as I was thinking the thought that became that sentence and if you didn’t pause where I paused then you might not experience my thought the way I experienced it. Of course, that might not be such a terrible thing.)

So far, every word is an example. Darkness falls. That’s another example. But where does darkness fall from? Are we applying a metaphor? Are we equating darkness with a curtain that comes down over a window or a stage? But not all curtains fall. Some are pulled together in some way. And the way the light leaves a space when a curtain falls or is closed is not the way we experience the change from day to night unless you’re on the equator. If you’re on the equator the change from day to night or night to day is quite abrupt. I know because I was there once with there being the equator or thereabouts. It’s not like there’s a sign. But I was told I was about twenty miles from the equator. South, if you crave details or are a stickler for directions.

I didn’t check the coordinates with a GPS because GPS wasn’t a thing back then. Nobody even talked about it. Though some people must have been thinking about it because enough satellites were launched to get us to where we are. But it’s not dark where we are or where I am but it will be eventually.

And that’s the problem with ‘darkness falls.’ It’s the gradual eventuality of it on most parts of the planet. Something to do with being tilted on an axis, I think. Darkness doesn’t so much fall as it becomes. It is an ever changing state. It slowly becomes more dark until it becomes more light. Light and dark are just different versions of the same thing. One cannot be without the other. Light and dark define each other.

We are all light and dark. Not necessarily equal parts of each and probably not even a constant state. (Not every group of words masquerading as a sentence is really a sentence. I have no excuse. My high school English teachers would be appalled.) And of course, we’re probably all a little tilted on an axis, too. I’m less appalled by my fondness for sentence fragments but that probably has something to do with the tilt of my axis.

Perhaps the axis is ever changing the degree of its tiltiness. Tiltiness isn’t a word or it wasn’t until I just used it in a sentence. I’m pretty sure that’s all that matters. Mainly, because most things don’t matter. It might even be that nothing matters. But if nothing matters why do I care if darkness falls, or wraps around us or slowly becomes? Though darkness doesn’t become everyone and not everyone becomes dark.

I suppose I care because darkness gets a bad rap. Many are afraid of it. Most don’t want to embrace it. But there is a depth to it. Much the same way there can be a brilliance to light. And while most tend to want to step into the light, darkness offers a respite or perhaps just invisibility. It becomes a place to be lost in thought. Or a place where thoughts come to play and lose themselves in the inky depths.