darkness – amo vitam

A Newsletter and the Sleepy Time of Year

Happy New Year, Gentle Reader. I just put together the January edition of Clay and Words News, my newsletter (are you subscribed yet? You can do so over here: https://amovitam.ca/newsletter/).

Red Bench Cottage, 5x6x5″, stoneware, the feature piece of “From the Studio” in the January newsletter. The fairies are chopping wood to keep warm.

It’s very January-ish around here right now, dark and cold. Although it hasn’t been nearly as cold as is normal for this time of year, the lack of snow makes things seem even darker than usual. We still need the electric lights on at 8AM, and of course turn them back on by at least 4PM. Good thing we’re past solstice, and it’ll only get brighter from here on.

Every January I wonder how our ancestors lived through that dark season, with nothing but candles to illuminate their houses, and poor quality candles at that. Beeswax was expensive even then, reserved for the church and rich people (Jane Austen, Emma: “Wax-candles in the schoolroom! You may imagine how desirable!”), and from what I understand, tallow candles, which ordinary people used, don’t give a very clear light. Never mind rush lights, which are about the equivalent of a tiny flashlight with the battery in its death throes.

I was reminded of a post I wrote a few years ago right around this time, when I realized that January is, in fact, the Midnight of the Year. The tiredness so many of us in the more Northern latitudes feel right now, and the urge to just curl up with a blanket and a good book and not move until spring, might well have a good reason, and perhaps instead of fighting them it would be worth humouring our desires. It’s probably healthier for body and soul.

As per usual, the cat has the right idea. I think I’ll go follow his example.

Life, the Universe, and the Midnight of the Year. Stay warm and carry on.

Tangles and Darkness

This week in telegram style: RAN ERRANDS STOP DID SOME GARDENING STOP TRIED TO UNTANGLE THE STORYLINES OF CHECKMATE STOP TRIED TO UNTANGLE THE TANGLES I CREATED BY UNTANGLING STOP SIGH STOP (In case you’re wondering what a telegram is, it’s a form of communication from the last century that no longer exists. It was kind of like texting on paper. The world’s last telegram was sent in July 2013 in India.)

With the way I write, events tend to flow from one scene to the next – I write something, and then the next thing is the logical step after that, referring back to a small piece of information that I’ve given in the last chapter, or the one before that. Now, when it comes to implementing some of my most excellent beta readers’ suggestions to the tune of “This really ought to happen sooner/later/not at all/much more often”, I can’t just take one scene and drag and drop it into an earlier part of the story. It would have the effect of taking a chunk of fish net and yanking really hard – the whole weave is destroyed. So I have to carefully un-knot the section and reconnect it elsewhere – this sentence could go here, three chapters previously; while this piece of information could come in there, in the middle of chapter 22; and this bit here could be deleted altogether, but then we better add another paragraph over here. Speaking of chapter 22, that got moved about three times this week – first up behind chapter 16 (so it, and all the intervening chapters, had to be renamed); then both of them back down again to become chapters 22 and 23 (or maybe it was 21 and 22, can’t remember); then back again to position 16 & 17… Oh what a tangled web we weave / when first we practise to, umm, write a story.

In other news, I’m reading a fascinating book at the moment: At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past, by A. Roger Ekirch. It’s totally shifting my thinking about history, about my fictional world (which is, after all, a pseudo-pre-industrial-European setting), and even about our current sleeping habits and lifestyles. What is so revolutionary about this is the realisation that up until about 150 years ago, nighttime was dark. I know, I know, that’s pretty much a “d’uh” – but is it? Today, we can have daylight brightness whenever we want. Even when we’re gingerly making our way along a dark campground lane towards the outhouse and back to our tent, we know full well that when we go home tomorrow, we’ll be right in 100-Watt-lightbulb range again. And even then, the little flashlight we carry to keep us from tripping over roots on the way is multiple times brighter than any lantern our ancestors had. We only play at being in the dark, but in the past, once nighttime fell, that’s all you had until the sun came up again in the morning. I wonder if the invention of artificial light wasn’t one of the most revolutionary moments of history.

Life, the Universe, Tangles and Darkness. That’s today’s news from the writing and reading trenches.

Enough!

Enough already. Enough with the Facebook posts, the rants, the forwards; enough with the anti-anti-vaxxer posts, anti-Fifty-Shades, anti-Muslim, anti-everything. Enough with the hating.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that I’m necessarily for any of the ideologies those posts are against. I’ve had my kids vaccinated; I haven’t read Fifty Shades; I’m not Muslim; and I don’t intend to change any of those practices.

But I’m so very, very tired to hear the harping, the incessant banging, clanging, beating of the drums, the tapping of the hammer that keeps driving home the message that YOU are right, and [insert opposing position on issue du jour] is wrong, evil, and to be resisted with every fibre of our beings.

Telling me of your opinion once is fine – please, I really do want to hear what my friends have to say. But not over, and over, and over. Because, you see: all that energy you’re using to be AGAINST, that is energy that is no longer available to be FOR. It’s negative energy, energy that takes away. And it’s sucking the life out of me.

Darkness, someone once said, isn’t an active force – it’s simply the absence of light. Contrary to what Star Wars would have you believe, The Dark isn’t a power in its own right – bring one single candle into a dark room, and you no longer have darkness. Light is the overpowering force. I don’t have to push back against the dark bits underneath my couch, build barriers to keep the darkness from flowing out into the room and overwhelming the light that is coming in the big picture window. I don’t have to relentlessly draw attention to the fact that there is darkness under the furniture, hold my book beneath the sofa to demonstrate just how dim and impossible to read it is under there. All I have to do is draw back the curtains.

I let off a plea for the antidote yesterday, on Facebook. I asked my friends – rather with a tongue-in-cheek attitude at that moment, not expecting to be taken seriously – to post some cute pictures of their kids, or pets, or what-have-you, because I was just so very fed up with all the controversy. And within minutes, I had responses. Picture after picture of smiling children, furry critters, funny captions – it was wonderful. Because trivial as those images might seem, they testify to what really matters. They put the attention back on the light.

And that, people, is what it’s about. Don’t bewail the darkness, light a candle. Or throw the electric light switch, as it were; draw back the curtains; step outside into the sunshine.

If you’re concerned about unvaccinated children, show me how you are keeping yours strong and healthy. If you are worried about extremist Muslims, show me that your religion does not inspire you to similar self-righteous hating – and let me see the potency of your faith in engendering life-giving love. If you despise Fifty Shades, show me what powerful romantic love is really about – or even better yet, write a heart-gripping novel that lets me experience it for myself when I identify with your heroine, and leaves me feeling empowered and inspired, ready to take on the world – because that is what love can do.

Don’t show me everything that’s bad – let me see what is good. I’m tired of being asked to stare into black holes. Show me the light, instead.