“The dark, too, blooms and sings”
A meditation on knowing the dark
On most winter evenings, driving the first half mile up the mountain wasn’t too bad. The bigger trucks that belonged to the folks who lived higher up packed down any new snow on the shared easement drive. Gabriel (a great friend of this newsletter) would navigate his little Toyota pickup over the narrow driveway—the mountain face rising up in shadow to our left, a precipitous drop into darkness on our right.
Once we turned off the shared easement, though, the snow drifts were too deep to continue. We’d pull over in the field, cut the engine, and turn off the headlights that had just moments ago glared into the bright, white snow. The sudden silence and darkness in that moment was utterly complete. I could almost hear it settling around us as we hoisted our backpacks filled with groceries, books, or other supplies and started up the last half mile to the house.
The first time Gabriel suggested we keep the flashlight off, I, a city girl, was terrified. I imagined coyotes or strange white men jumping out from the woods to attack us. I was scared of what I couldn’t see. I felt tiny in that mountainous landscape, vulnerable, soft. Somehow, the thin light cast by the flashlight made me feel bigger, more in control.
But one day, I said OK. And slowly, over the course of that long winter more than 20 years ago, I learned that I could navigate the dark though my peripheral vision, my muscle memory, my ears. Up the steep hill, past the pond that reverberated with frog song in the summer, over the icy creek that fed the cistern. Familiar landmarks soft and shape-shifting in darkness and snow. The vast sky overflowing with thousands of stars or none at all. Crepuscular and night-time creatures padding and gliding around us, their breath mingling with ours, their rustling accompanying our footfalls crunching over the snow.
I learned to enter the dark on its own terms, not mine. And I came to learn the texture of the night, of the landscape, of my own breath in ways I never could have experienced if I’d stayed in the beam of the flashlight.
~~~
I recently read a blog post about the trees that make up the understory in mid-Atlantic forests. Author and druid Dana Driscoll noticed that in the fall and winter these trees—witch hazel, rhododendrons, ironwoods—thrive. Not shaded over by the impressive tall oak, maple, and beech trees, the understory plants have their moment to shine in the seasons we associate with death and dying back—the time of Samhain (Halloween) and winter solstice, literally the darkest time in the cycle of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.
Driscoll posits that, under extractive capitalism, our culture is in a Samhain season. Indeed, here in the U.S. we are in the grip of late capitalism, with its extreme income inequalities and its roots of brutal extractivism and white supremacy revealed. These systems are unsustainable, misery-inducing, wretchedly harmful to the vast majority of people and to the earth.
I believe we can build new systems, new and far better ways of relating to each other and the planet. But the growth of spring is always preceded by the dying back of fall and winter.
If we are in the winter of the dominant culture’s existence, what might we—as individuals and as a collective—learn in from the dark? What wisdom can we develop in order to bloom anew in the spring—better as a people for the night we are traveling through?
What are the lessons the understory plants teach us about surviving, maybe even thriving, in a season of long, cold nights? What can the ironwood teach us about endurance, moss about resilience, and witch hazel about shining in the dark?
~~~
I’m thinking in spirals and cycles, not binaries. The waxing and waning of the moon; the deep night making way for dawn and daybreak into afternoon into dusk into evening; the spiral of the year in which we return to each season changed from the year before as we travel the grooves of time.
Every new moon is an opportunity to clear away what doesn’t serve and to plant new seeds. Every night is an opportunity to rest and reset the body. Every winter is an opportunity to slow down, to turn inward and listen to where we are being called, what changes we are being called to make.
The lessons I began to learn in the dark on the mountain serve in these moments: attending to all my senses to discern and intuit where to go next. Connecting to my inner wisdom rather than looking for outside validation. Finding the possibilities that open up when I engage with the dark on its own terms rather than forcing it into something more comfortable for me or rejecting it altogether.
So, in this moment, I’m asking myself:
What are the ways of knowing or understanding that I’ve over-relied on? How do I let those muscles and senses rest, and how do I build up the power of the ways of knowing that I haven’t had as much access to?
How can I tap more deeply into my intuition to help me navigate what’s to come?
How do I more authentically connect to my innate self-worth, trust my own wisdom, and listen more deeply?
What are ways I can surrender to this moment? How do I more fully accept the realities of this time—not in a passive way but in a way that allows me see the possibilities that are available in the situation as it exists?
And how can I apply what I learn in this process to how I’m engaging with my work, with my community, with my art?
~~~
Night after night as I walked through the dark, snowy path on the mountain, I thought of Wendell Berry’s poem, “To Know the Dark.”
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
To know the dark, go dark.
I send this to you on a full moon, just about a month away from the Spring Equinox. Across our days and weeks, we have access to times of light and dark and all the gradients in between. Perhaps over the next four weeks, you might want to pay attention to the light times and dark times in your daily or weekly cycle. And in the dark times, if it feels right, go dark. See what happens, what lessons you might connect with, what learning is waiting for you in the dark. I’ll be doing the same.
Prompting
As the moon wanes, choose a night after the last quarter moon to spend with this prompt. (That is to say, choose a dark night.)
If you have a deck, pull a card for this question: What is waiting for me to turn off the light so it can come forward? If you don’t have a deck, light a candle, take a few deep breaths, and then freewrite for ten minutes on this question.
If it’s available, to you, go outside and take a walk in the dark. Go for half an hour at least. If this isn’t available to you, turn off all the lights in your home, close the curtains, and sit, walk, dance, lie down in any room or area.
Be quiet, be still, be attentive to what arises.
When you return to light, write down what you noticed, what came to your attention, what called to you. You may want to keep your eyes closed as you write.
If you want, use this as a seed for a poem, story, or song.
Engaging
This month, I’m lovin’ on:
The social justice sci-fi stories in Octavia’s Brood, edited by Walida Imarisha and adrienne maree brown.
The sharp, smart, funny commentary by Alicia Garza in her podcast Lady Don’t Take No.
The community, kinship, and vulnerability of the QTBIPOC presenters and participants of Bloody Transitions: Queers Decolonizing Menopause.
How Asian American folks are engaging in conversation about solutions to building community safety that don’t perpetuate anti-Blackness or call for more policing.
The folks who stepped up in Texas to provide mutual aid. (And sending love to TX readers, with hopes for your safety and well-being. 💛)
Community/Announcements
As part of the new kind of book launch I’m forging, I’m excited to use this space to feature forthcoming books by other writers of color. Please check out Tiana Nobile’s Cleave, and pre-order it if you can!
In her debut collection, Tiana Nobile grapples with the history of transnational adoption, both her own from South Korea and the broader, collective experience. In conversation with psychologist Harry Harlow’s monkey experiments and utilizing fragments of a highly personal cache of documents from her own adoption, these poems explore dislocation, familial relationships, and the science of love and attachment.
Also, we are less than a $1000 away from our goal to raise funds to send books to organizers and activists! If you have been meaning to donate and haven’t gotten to it yet, now’s the time!