This is an excerpt from D is for DARKNESS by Bridget Trafford. You can find more excerpts to download in the Downloads section of the website.
She lit the sage smudging stick. It took some time to get it properly alight. It was a last ditch attempt to change the downward spiral of events. To commit all the negativity that had surrounded her and filled her thoughts for weeks now, to the sacred smoke; have them carried away and herself and her environment cleansed. The negativity was like lead, in her head and in her heart, souring her every thought and action, drawing more and more negativity to her, like evil iron filings to a grotesque magnetic field. She wanted to quit everything- her relationships, her hopes, her dreams and her beliefs- her belief in the order of the universe, in the timeliness of all things, in circles- she just wanted to give in and give up – she didn’t even know why she was doing this-
when she finished the ceremony she broke off the lighted bits of the stick to extinguish the burning embers. It would not stop burning. Normally it was a fight to keep the damn thing alight at all. It just kept burning. She tried putting a pot on top of it, like a candle snuffer. It kept smoldering away, the smoke flowing serenely heavenwards. She got a wet cloth and wrapped the stick in it. When she unwrapped it, the stick was still burning. She put it back in its holder and regarded it with respect. I’m getting a message here, she told it. I want to quit, but there is no quitting. No matter what happens, no matter what I do, the inner light still burns…
The mind, the mind has mountains
Cliffs of fall
Sheer
Child ! It is all possible,
You’re well along the way;
For intent to be, creates the path
On which will dawn the day
That you and your desire meet,
And turn, and looking back,
See the route, and forward too,
A fresh, unblemished track…
A new mission to explore.
Prologue
Summertime and the living was easy…
Steve had trained and become a private and well patronized private music tutor in guitar and piano, well liked and reasonably well paid, steering would be impresarios towards a career in the music industry or just pursuing a lifetime hankering for some soul searching. On the side he wrote his own music using Sam’s lyrics. Supported and encouraged by Steve, Sam continued with her writing leaving Steve to send off her manuscripts to largely disinterested agents and publishers while she worked part time in the local animal rescue centre. He was religiously persistent with the regularity and number of the approaches.
“It’s a numbers game?” said Sam demurely.
“Well yes” said Steve surprised. He had been considerably more competent at Maths than Sam and went on to propound various statistical theories while Sam thought about Rob and Kate and wondered.
Life was tidy and equable and almost normal.
One evening Steve came home and while slapping peanut butter onto digestive biscuits to fill the hole until dinner out of the blue said
“What about a bit of island hopping?”
“What’s brought this on? What sort of island? Define hop!” said Sam suspiciously.
Steve had been known to hop in the Hebrides, watching seagulls and other airborne carnivores. Sam had nothing in particular against seagulls as such. She was sure that in their own way they were fascinating. Especially to each other. But hopping over tumultuous seas in horizontal rain to be shat on and pecked half to death even by the most fascinating of creatures was not top on her list of fifty fun things to do before you die.
To be fair her opinion of seagulls was somewhat unfairly coloured by a boat trip off the coast in Wales in her youth. She was small and had ingenuously thought to share her sandwich with a member of the seagull family in a gesture of friendship and common bonding. The said individual had snatched the whole thing from her grasp (not unlike Kevin she much later reflected but with rather more pointed bits and less finesse) and half her finger with it. Miserable, cold and sore, she had spent the next thirty minutes keeping her head down and watching rivulets of water making their way across the boat’s deck and wondering if they were going to sink and she was going to be fish as well as seagull fodder. The result of this relatively innocuous occupation had been nausea followed by violent vomiting, sandwich first and the preceding meals of the day in reverse, chronological order.
It was a lot later that she learned of the importance of horizons to the human orientation.
Steve was also known to do motorcycle hopping. He had a very smart Honda 750 and hopped over the English Channel to France but to judge by the photos he had brought back and the state of his bike leathers, rain, although perhaps not the horizontal breed, had also featured quite prominently.
“What sort of islands?” she repeated. “Where exactly?”
“Greece” said Steve.
“Oh!” said Sam, seasickness forgotten. “Just fucking, freewheeling and food?”
“yeah” said Steve. “Why not. Just not necessarily in that order.”
“Yes! Where were you thinking?”
“How about Paros, Delos, Mykanos, Sifnos and Santorini?”
“How about it! What’s brought this on?”
It was very unSteve like to do organized although he did have a fascination for grubbing around in historical and archeological dirt.
“What’ve you got planned?” she added before he could answer.
“Nothing” said Steve grinning.
Very Stevelike.
“But it’s summer, we’ve got a gap and I’ve got money! D’you have a better offer?”
The truth was precisely, No.
“And when’s all this happening?” said Sam.
“When you book it” said Steve with a disarming smile.
“Ah”
There was always a catch. But heh! – small price- for starters – Santorini! – Thera! Where the tumultuous volcanic eruption had covered the town of Akrotiri in molten lava and preserved its haunting beauty – And – she looked at Steve in his blue jeans and his black biker jacket – and for desert-
“How long were you thinking of going for?”
“Oh I dunno” said Steve laconically. “Five months?”
“Five months?!” said Sam splattering peanut butter and digestive biscuit all over him. “Sorry but five months?”
“Well there’s a lot to see” said Steve absentmindedly brushing bits of biscuit off the front of his T-shirt.
“But what happens if we don’t get on?”
“”We do get on. We live together.”
“Yes but only in the evenings. We’ve never spent five months together twenty four seven! The only person who has had that dubious honor with me is my mother and she hates me!”
“Well as it seems you’re worrying about how I’ll cope with you for five months I give you my solemn word that I will behave with the utmost tolerance and fortitude” said Steve.
Sam gnawed her bottom lip.
“Five months” she said again. What would Kevin think?
For a few moments she stood looking down through the silvered depths to the shadowed walls beneath. A shallow breeze stirred the hair at the back of her neck and a shiver ran up her spine. It seemed to gain in intensity and the bent cypress at the waters edge murmured in response, and she heard her name.. Soft at first, no more than a whisper; then more insistent.
Without hesitation she crossed the empty road and unfalteringly stepped onto the ancient road which led to the acropolis. It was some moments before she realised that the path was no longer overgrown. Like a ribbon of woven light, it lead directly to the temple walls. Strangely calm, she began the ascent. As she climbed, she noticed a new order in the ruins, as if an unknown hand had tossed them all up in the air and they had fallen back in their original symmetry. Reaching the summit, she paused, lost for a moment in wonder and awe. The temple facade was restored to its original glory, and stood bathed in light, set against the ink blue of the night sky. Looking back down the hillside she saw the path, obscured by darkness and strewn with fragments of stone, shards of pottery and tangled undergrowth..
She entered the temple through the gate. Its walls were smooth, painted with intricate patterns in deep blue, soft brown and cream. But the wall painting had gone..
Sam gave herself a little shake.
Steve was watching her closely.
“I’ll take that as a yes shall I?”
“And what happens if we have a major falling out?” she persisted.
“Well we can always get separate rooms and not talk” said Steve.
“You really are serious aren’t you?”
“You bet. Seems like a fair test of a relationship and you don’t need words for sex and-”
“And?”
“And it might be fun!”
It might be an unmitigated disaster thought Sam.
What the hell.
“OK. Lets do it.”
“You’re helping with the booking remember?”
“Yeah but I need to know where the hell we’re planning on going first!”
*
Kevin said
“It might be an unmitigated disaster.”
“I know” said Sam.
“You might end up not speaking for the entire five months” said Kevin.
“I know” said Sam soberly. “Do you think I’m capable of that?”
“Oh yes” said Kevin
“Thanks!”
“You might meet someone out there you prefer to be with” said Kevin.
“I know” said Sam, who’d thought about that too.
“Have you got enough money to get back if it all goes pear shaped?” said Kevin.
“Yeah.”
“It might be fun. You might end up married!”
That’s not my idea of fun right now!” Sam scowled at him. “And how come that one was at the bottom of your list?”
“To be frank, Sam” Kevin began,.
“I’ve only just got used to you as Kevin” said Sam in a vain attempt to lighten the mood.
“I’m more worried about Steve” Kevin ignored the interruption, “than I am about you. I mean he’s a really nice guy and-”
“Thanks a lot!” Sam bristled. “And I’m not!”
“Not when last I looked! You are what you are Sam. Kind, dedicated, spirited-but”
“But?”
“But frighteningly honest.”
“Ah” said Sam.
*
She was in the old house, the house where she had grown up. Steve was there too. He was about to go out. So was she. They were both about to leave the house. She watched Steve go out of the front door. He turned and waved. She went back to getting ready to go out. She had to be somewhere important. She was sitting on the bed. At first it was very light. Then it got dark and it was late and she called out for Steve but he wasn’t there and she called his name again and again but it was dark and instead of the doorway there was a wall…
D Is For Darkness.
Let it be light.
I am bewildered.
I am contrite.
I saw it once.
I will again.
A citadel, river, a peak, a plain,
Though strewn with ashes,
Dowsed in rain,
This journey path is not in vain.
D Is For Darkness.
Loss and pain.
When prayers go unanswered.
Who is to blame?
Hopes unfulfilled
And chaos rain.
The cause is lost
The pathway gone
The end unknown
D Is For Darkness.
I will go on
She walked into the water, warm around her ankles and clear, like the Mediterranean sea, transparent, all the way down, so you could see every individual stone and pebble, a mosaic carpet beneath your feet. In front of her was a narrow opening and she passed through into the cave beyond. It was blue, blue, translucent blue and rang with the voices of the Seals, the melancholic Dan nan Ron, the song of the Seals calling from the beginnings of the earth, from the beginnings of your birth. There were columns at the far side, like the entrance to a temple and through them another cave and beyond that some kind of aperture through which streamed rose aurora light which dipped into the water and diluted it to a soft violet.. It was a house of worship; it was a place to find God…
Just like the unknown within the self, filled with amazing landscapes – jungles, deserts, oceans, peaks and chasms – vast universes. If you can place yourself beneath the sea, underground, or even a high mountain top, somewhere where the noise of living does not exist then it is possible to project those inner worlds onto your landscape and see them clearly. Together the inner and the outer conspire to create a tableau of myth, magic and mystery and feel, and feel, not outside creation but part of it. Not an evolutionary advent a random accident or a divine afterthought but an element, like the trees or the stars. When you go beyond what is familiar and known into your own unsafe hotspots, that’s when you are most likely to see what has always been there, behind the blindness of sight. To hear the silence speaking, the silence where insight hides, waiting…
Just like the unknown within the self-
Oh, the mind, the mind has mountains;
Cliffs of fall, frightful, sheer, no man fathomed…
Cliffs of fall – yes – and sometimes the chasms are not rose aurora but black, black as the pit… *
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