For various reasons i get caught in the darkness. I take up temporary residence in the last, ill-lighted house on the street.
I begin to live in the blackness of thought, of vision of hope.
The light fails to draw me. It seems weak, foolish and unexciting. Akin to the drama of a florescent light bulb or a the weak beam of a dying flashlight.
I respond to what fascinates me, the thing that will stimulate the gland or nerve to fire and makes me feel alive.
It may be as innocuous as dead flowers in a bilge-water vase. A dead bee or beetle on the sidewalk, a sleeping seed pod bursting prematurely. These things are shadowy in a sense, and some may not want to look at them, but they contain a wholesome sense of the nature of the world.
But it can also violence, bestiality, blood, pain, soul wrenching savagery.
And when i become enmeshed in these worlds peering through the grimy windows, it becomes harder to find a way out. Everything in life takes on a sinister cast; the evil of the dark is living at the center of me. I don’t want to leave. I dwell in the mud of being.
When it gets this deep and dark, i look for a ladder despite myself to climb up to the light. It no longer seems feeble but powerful, and desirable, and healthy and loving. Living under the sun is the only place i ever really wanted to be!
As I climb those worlds recede. Seeing and knowing from a distance isn’t as terrible. Shall I dismantle the bridge that takes me there? Destroy the ladder so once in, i can never leave? I prefer now to occupy a place in between, a little more in the sun than the shade.
CELLOPHANE 