When 8:30 means "bedtime"--and has for several years--a person could start to believe that great heaps of the 24-hour cycle either don't exist or are carrying out the last act of an elaborate play, despite your absence. The thing is, there is another end to that argument. A person who tends towards "early to bed" also knows "early to rise," a time that is equally steeped in darkness and even less populated by people.
My friend Victoria loaned me a jewel of a book last week--Barbara Brown Taylor's "Learning to Walk in the Dark." I've read a handful of Brown Taylor's books and already knew that I liked her voice. Her exploration of the dark, then, intrigued me, not only because I miss out on so much of it, but also because I was certain that she had something important to say on the subject.
Her chapters, which follow the phases of the moon, are held together by a profound thread that argues that we cheat ourselves by dividing our lives into dark and light, body and spirit, good and evil; and that the associations we make with "darkness" are downright libelous. Brown Taylor, a minister by training, argues that Christian churches shortchange people by "teaching us, over and over again, that we [have] two natures, two sets of loyalties, two homes--and that only one [is] close to God."
I have grown to appreciate the messy in-between of life. It seems more honest and--always--more interesting than the sanitized hard lines we so often like to draw between things. Reading Brown Taylor's book, then, has reminded me of the good things I have taken away from the darkness:
Going Bats
--When we moved to this neighborhood 10 years ago, we quickly learned that people weren't the only beings who were drawn to this area. Come spring, hundreds of local brown bats shake off their doldrums and squeeze through the cracks in our homes--cracks we were certain we'd filled last summer--emerging into a world of wide-open spaces and airborn insects. It was in our first summer here that we learned from the neighbor kids the trick of tossing a pair of socks into the mid-evening sky, hoping to draw the attention of a bat's radar. Never before has a pair of socks brought so much joy to me, as I hold my breath, secretly hoping the bat won't follow them all the way to the ground, where I stand, my mouth agape.
Going Bananas
--Many summers ago, I was inspired by a Pioneers Park naturalist, who told me how to attract Luna moths. Her formula for attracting these elusive, magical moths? Smear an old bedsheet with overripe bananas, hang it outside at night and wait. And so, I held a luna-moth party that started at the scandalous hour of 10 p.m., serving up banana cake in honor of the trap's main ingredient. Surprisingly, a dozen or so friends showed up, as much for the cake, I suppose, as for the spectacle. Around 10:30, we headed out my back door to inspect the sheet. Turns out that roaches and ants and beetles enjoy a good banana as much as the still-elusive Luna moth does. Despite their absence, I would not have changed a thing about that night, going to bed knowing that--somewhere--a whole flock of these magical moths was enjoying a banana split, just not here.
Going Undercover
--After college, my roommate Matt--an unusual, earthy Big Thinker--took me to Nine Mile Prairie for an evening of discovery. By the time the sun was a memory, he positioned us in a clearing next to some woods. And he told me that our job was to stand perfectly still and simply observe what happens next. "Next" took a while, but, eventually, the rest of the world--the part that perks up when the sun falls--started finding its rhythm. By the time we finally called "Uncle" and moved our stiff limbs, we'd watched possums and deer and even a coyote cross near us, focused more on their nightly routines than on the pesky human invaders nearby. It was one of the best evenings of my life, fading into the woodwork of a local copse, while the overnight shift gave me a peek into their world.
How many early mornings have I awakened in the dark, feeling for my slippers and sweatshirt, then sneaking into the still-dark air on my back patio? Always, I look upward to find the stars' familiar patterns in the night sky, comforted by their reminder that I am smaller than I think, my problems more manageable, my joys still sweet enough to fill me.
"To know the darkness, go dark. Go without sight and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings." --Wendell Barry
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