Darkness, my old friend

A few years ago, I wrote a poem late in November that began, "No getting out of this box for six long months ..." Every winter the darkness and the cold, but especially that darkness, reminding me, I suppose, of the grave, would seep into my psyche, into my muscle fibers. It would cross the boundaries of decency without warning. It was like being invaded by a parasite or a demon lover.

I grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska, and yet didn't get used to the darkness. Antidotes and placebos were available: full-spectrum light bulbs, chocolate, St. John's wort, memberships in the Rec Center for its artificial environment of brightness, sociability, warmth and exercise-induced release of endorphins. On the indoor running track, one could be back in the temperate zone for 40 minutes, and that seemed to help.

But that was years ago. Gradually something has happened. I have found that a little bit of light goes a long way, and it's possible to have too much.

In the middle of winter, the brightest place in Fairbanks is probably a dentist's chair. Is that one reason why too much light is now associated in my mind with all things dentistry, the pain, the drills, the exposure of bad habits? The floodlight in the face reminds me that I am nothing but my own mistakes.

Flying into Fairbanks at night, I am chagrined at the lights spread over the Tanana Valley, like a would-be Seattle beneath us. They vanquish the black, featureless night. I'm not sure I like it. Now my husband might wonder if I feel this way, why don't I remember to turn off the lights when I leave a room? Like the woman in T.S. Eliot's famous poem, I respond, "That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all."

If we can get past the simple fact that we cannot see a thing at night--physically inadequate creatures that we are, we need to override the darkness in order to survive--darkness, as Paul Simon wrote, is a friend. At least it is a kind of blessing. It invites that which is within us and fears exposure to rise to the surface of our thoughts.

In my religious tradition, darkness in a cathedral or confessional was important. Only in the dimmed light were we able to bring our sins to the surface of our thoughts and confess them to a priest. But in churches today, lamps blaze as if we have gathered to carve a turkey, not to coax our inmost secrets to consciousness. Sometimes I feel that in modern churches the individual is slightly less welcome, although the community may be valued considerably more. That's a good thing, and yet when my sorrow is vanquished by light, it does not mean that my sorrow has gone away.

What happens when so many lumens are turned upon an individual is that demons and ghosts and the shyest parts of the soul simply take cover. They hide. An excess of light, in other words, can rob the individual of some of the richness of life itself.

I have no desire to live in darkness. We follow a light in the forest; we feel reassured by a lighthouse on the stormbound coast. In the darkness, when one candle is lit, then another, and light gradually returns, so too our thoughts and our imagination are encouraged, Is it "light pollution" coming to Alaska that inspires these contradictory thoughts? Right now I am staring at a brilliant flat screen of light, as I do most of the day, most days of the week. Is all this light robbing me of discernment? Have we fallen into the whiteness of the whale?

All I am certain of is that darkness reminds us that there is a place where our flaws are not on display. Without this reminder, we are truly lost. The word "darkness" has a bad rap. "The Prince of Darkness" is the lord of evil. But darkness is also like God's quilt, drawn up over Us, reminding us, "Hush, my favorite, you may set your burdens aside for now and let someone else take care of everything." A regular reminder of our lack of power is a good thing.

Sometimes on winter nights, my husband lights a few candles inside blocks of ice and sets them in the snow. The flickering lights illuminate the low branches of the birch tree in the yard. Light on its frosted branches seems to weave a basket against the night. These are reminders of a world that would hold us tenderly rather than harshly during our brief stay on the planet, of light that does not conquer the natural world but rather beckons and invites human beings to be safe together.

[Marjorie Kowalski Cole is the author of a novel about Fairbanks, Correcting the Landscape, which was published in 2006 by HarperCollins.]

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