It’s really dark in here
Can someone turn on a light?
Photo by Vladimir Fedotov on Unsplash
Everyday I wake up and I breathe in the new day. Pretending that everything is ok. Because that’s what we’re supposed to do, right?
I remove myself from the safety of my bed, make my coffee, turn on the fountain on my patio to drown out the wailing of the trees outside my apartment. Light my candle and list all the things I am grateful for. Have my first sip of said coffee and my first drag off my morning smoke (Yes, I smoke, even after all of the warnings..Jeez… Can I have nothing that allows me to feel like I actually exists here?!)
Force my teenage son out of bed, like I am Mary fucking Poppins and we’re living in a fairytale. I used to sing him awake until the rage that he threw my way became more my rose-colored glasses could shield. These days I just exude excitement for the NEW DAY!!! Yay! It’s another chance to make everything ok and threaten him with some punishment if he doesn’t get his shit together and get ready for school. Pretending I have my shit together in order to force him to play along. Because what else can we do with our children but force them to play along in a game that’s rules are changing as we gleefully bounce about the board.
I’m lying to him, just as I lie to myself. Everything is not ok.
Right now, I am sitting in a fancy little faux winery in the tony little town on the West Coast, drinking a glass of Napa red, observing a sea of fellow humans laughing and drinking, all dressed up in the latest fall attire while the temperature still sits at 85 degrees. Women teetering in heels not created for the dirt they are required to stand upon. It doesn’t matter. Just as long as we’re all keeping up with the narrative, because ultimately that is all that matters, right?
We’re all just trying to pretend everything is ok. Meanwhile the world is burning. People are dying, people are killing each other, wars are being fought, people are Stravinsky, people are suffering.
Each day I busy myself with things to do. Buying overpriced eggs and milk, writing stories that inspire people to believe that something better is just around the corner. I wash my face, do my yoga, brush my teeth and dream that my happily ever after is coming, I just have to be patient.
I just took a break to check my dating profile. Another reminder that I am alone in this world, because while I can put on my makeup and dress accordingly when required, more and more these days I have isolated myself because I am having a hard time pretending everything is ok and being around people is hard when I am not able to paste the fake smile on my face like I used to.
I wake up every day, I do the things and I go to sleep. Well, I try to sleep, mostly I just lay there, in a square box, on a square bed, clutching a velvet pillow as if it is the only real thing in my reality.
It’s odd that even as I feel a deep sense of darkness taking hold of me and just about everyone else with any smidgen of empathy, there is also a feeling of peace. Like this is necessary for the change so many desire to come through.
It’s as if the promise of utopia requires a pound of flesh to be delivered.
I ask daily if peace is truly attainable or if humanity is destined to suffer. Greed, power and control dominates our DNA.
As I sit quietly and observe the strikes, the protests, the rage being expressed by the masses. Pushing up against the narrative we’ve been forced to swallow for so long, as I watch the old guard fighting hard with their last breath to keep the same the same.
I hear the rumblings of the new generations and I pray they have it in them to lift us out of this pit of muck and fear.
Can we stop the wars? Can we find a way to co-exist? Are we willing to do what is necessary to shift the pendulum of power from a war machine to a peace machine? Have we taken it so far that future generations will have no choice but to carry on the fight?
Many many years ago I went to Africa. I was visiting Kruger National Park with my now ex-husband and we wanted to go outside the park and meet with a true medicine man. Our private guide took us to a village close by and we were sent into a large arena where the tribe danced and sang and… well… put on a show…. This wasn’t anything more than a tourist attraction and after the drums had stopped, we were ushered into the gift shop. I bought a beautiful drum laid in pearls. Because that’s what us white people do when we go to Africa, we buy things and tell ourselves we’re helping the economy.
As I stood at the checkout, a small boy approached, grabbed my hand and began to pull me away towards a back door. Our guide, an over-sized South African named Dutch began to shoo him away. This little man was insistent, and I was impressed that Dutch’s girth and height didn’t frighten him. The child spoke emphatically to Dutch, and I demanded to know what he wanted. I felt in my heart that this child was not here to harm me.
Dutch explained that this boy was sent to bring me to the medicine man of his village which was about ¼ mile into the bush, but it was not safe and probably a trap to rob us.
I looked squarely into Dutch’s eyes and spoke. “Did we not ask to meet a true medicine man?” And I took the child’s hand and walked off. My husband looked at Dutch and said, “She’s going whether we go or not” and so off we went, walking ¼ of a mile into a small village.
What struck me about this place was its dancing with time. Huts next to homes. Cars next to carts. It was as if all of times existed simultaneously, and everyone there just walked between them. Beautiful colored skirts worn with a branded T-shirt. Converse and sandals or nothing at all.
As we arrived towards the very back of the village, in the doorway of a small hut stood a very old man with shocking silver hair held tightly to his head. He wore a Nike t-shirt and shorts, and the skin of his knees reminded me of an ancient tree with thousands of rings indicating he had lived many lifetimes.
He greeted my husband and pointed to a chair, and I kid you not, and to an old-style coca-cola cooler on his porch, he smiled at me with a mouth void of most teeth yet filled with the love of an entire universe.
The boy looks at me and speaks in beautiful English, “Sit there and have a coke and a smoke” Did this child, light years from my reality just utter my mantra? He did.
And so I did.
When I was a small child, my dad and I would go for a walk every Saturday to the local liquor store, where they had these small glass bottles of coca-cola. My dad named them “The Betsy size Coca-cola’s”. My dad and I would then sit on the porch of this store, enjoying our sodas and candy together, my dad would chat with the owner of the store about the goings on of the world, politics, life. I don’t recall the nationality of this man, it doesn’t matter, they were just two men from different worlds connecting. I relished these days even if I had no idea what they were talking about. It felt safe, it allowed me to experience differences of opinion and yet a connection to their humanity, both men, fathers and humans co-existing simultaneously. I was very close to my father, who died much younger than he should.
So, when I opened the cooler on the porch of the Medicine man in the village outside of Kruger Park in South Africa and I found “Betsy size coca-colas”, there little glass bottles stating “made in Mexico”, my heart swelled, and I heard my father in the slight breeze. And I sat in the chair and had the most amazing coke and smoke I have every experienced in my life.
Time didn’t matter and eventually my husband emerged from the meeting he so desired and I stood, ready to go back to the hotel. Feeling complete in my own experience. Everyone is smiling and nodding and then the man looks to me and I suddenly felt as if I was being seen inside the places I kept hidden from everyone. I caught my breath as if I could lock the doors to my soul, but I wasn’t really frightened, just surprised. He speaks to the boy and the boy grins and giggles and looks to me and says. “You are a dancer between the worlds, you will never feel oneness with this place because it isn’t your place. But you are needed here. You must continue to see and to feel what you feel, and you will make it make sense to those who will listen. You will want to float away, so smoke, it will ground you when it feels dark and unwinnable. Because there will be times when you want to leave, but you cannot, you must always bring the light, even when it feels the darkest.”
And with that, the old man smiled, nodded and pushed me off his porch. He had to, because he knew I would never leave. It was the only safe space I had ever experienced.
And here I sit, surrounded by the walking dead, not knowing what to do as the reality we know incinerates into the ground we thought existed.
Pretending it’s all ok. But seeing it’s not and wondering if humanity will make the great leap.
This is why I try, with every ounce of my being to find hope every morning instead of dragging my feet through the mud of hate that covers our ground. This is why I feed the birds and the squirrels, plant flowers and water them. While I cannot pretend the world isn’t in a dark night of the soul, I can and I must try and bring light.
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