A Meditation on the Dark

It is long since I sat here to write. The snow has started to melt, and spring is on the way. I can feel her in the warm sunshine, the sticky mud, the calls of birds returning home from the South. In the season of growing light, why do I still persist in chasing the darkness?
It is important, I have found, to keep perspective. Without darkness, light means nothing. There is no contrast, no joy. I seek the dark because I am exquisitely at home there. It is my place of origin...I was born at night in February, in the middle of a howling storm, in the plains country of Montana. Dawn was a happy surprise, no doubt- but darkness came first and it will surely follow after.
Today, readers, if you wish to be inspired, try a 10 minute free write on darkness. Free writing is a fabulous tool for exploring the outer reaches of your mind. When you start, simply write whatever comes to mind and let the words flow. Do not pause to check your spelling, grammar, parts of speech- throw them out the window and keep writing. Do not let your hand stop moving for any reason until the ten minutes are done. Your mind will wander, jump off a cliff, and run hard and fast away from the topic you've chosen...this is normal and natural. Do not resist. Follow the flow and see where it takes you.
The following is an excerpt from my article on Leanan Sidhe, the Dark Faery Muse of Ireland. You can find the complete article archived on the www.creativity-portal.com website under my Multicultural Muses series. It began with a free-write on the dark...

Darkness
A damp green mossy darkness, eyes aflame, luscious smile luring you in. Shining wetly in the foxfire of a lonely March night.
Colors: Twilight blue ascending, stone-grey, mahogany, emerald green, evergreen, the green-black of a lush peat-field. Bluebell-blue, amethyst, opal, jade, and sapphire. Storm-grey, misty white. Deep indigo midnight blue, moonlight. Frogs and toadstools, fairy-rings. Swamp-fire glowing eerie, eldritch, witchy green and leading men astray. All things half-glimpsed, not quite seen, and all the things you thought you saw that were never really there at all. Starlight, uncertainty, faltering steps in the darkness… losing the path, then finding it again with bald relief in new unexpected places. Lose your way, she beckons you deeper, deeper into the woods, deeper still… to a secret sacred place down by the river.
A pool in the moonlight, cold and still, a silver-blue mirror reflecting starlight, moonlight, and your fortune there. .. for those who dare to look!
O that mad blueberry violet glint in her eyes, she knows secrets un-numbered, untold, un-named. Innumerable. Her secrets, her mysteries a blue legion, prancing through the owl-struck night on faeries’ wings.
Will ‘o’ the wisp, o wander…lead me on a wild chase til morning, a-hunting over fen and fog…wander through the wood with me. Lead me down that shadow-path, the hie me safely
home!
Reveal your dark secrets, Moon-lady, Divine. Beloved Muse, take me wandering! Call to me, my heart will answer.
Feed me fat upon moonbeams and silver water… make me smile sadly, knowing too much.
Enchant me! Weave your webs to bind me, know I will always escape to tell my tales, to weave webs of my own…
Dark wanderer, I need you! You are part of me already, though you may know it not. Who conjures who? She needs no wand to cast her spells.
Blue pearls and black-eyed girls… will drive you mad for wanting… leaving you all hollowed out and alone, forlorn, o sweetly forsaken one.

I will always cry out in surprise and joy for the light... but my true home is in the shadows.

Molly Childers
March 5, 2008
Durango, Colorado