Summer Solstice

It’s the longest day of the year.

From here on out, the days will get a little shorter and darkness will come quicker.

Darkness isn’t really something I fear too much nowadays. Though every now and again the wide, gaping hole of blackness that’s my closet freaks me out for a moment when it decides to spit out a cat (one of the cats likes to make it a nest for long periods of time).

Let’s chat about darkness a bit.

Many years ago when I ran around in one of my fan fiction worlds (we’re talking like 1999), I wrote a Sailor Moon fan fiction called “Senshi of the Dark Star Alliance”, the story no longer exists anywhere except maybe in the wayback machine because my drive crashed in 2003 and took everything with it–just after I deleted everything in order to redo the site. However, one thing that I still (vaguely) remember from it is a couple of the themes from it were “The storm of darkness plants the seeds of rebirth” (or something like that) and “Darkness is just another shade of light”. The story was grim (not like Edgelord grim–I’ve never really been that deep into that), but in the end the “light” triumphs and the world of my “Dark Star Senshi” was reborn.

In the present day it seems a lot of things have taken a grim, dark turn in our media and I feel like that is spilling over everywhere. You can’t tread anywhere (even the local news) without echoes of a coming dystopian age. As much as I prefer happier endings (though oftentimes my endings are bittersweet) and happier things, I have to acknowledge the draw of the darkness. There is that moment as you get drawn deep into the shadows and you can feel the oppressive press of every heartbeat, every breath, and, for a moment (theoretically), darkness is the only thing you can see.

The problem now is along the lines of a meme that appeared in my memories on Facebook today (I’ll post the quote not the meme): “There is a rule of writing. If everything is funny, nothing is funny. If everything is sad, nothing is sad. You want the contrast.”

The same goes for darkness.

If everything is dark then there is absolutely nothing but dark and you’re just numb and in the midst of the numbness you aren’t going to remember any particular thing, it’s all just dark. However, if you light up that dark now and again–fairy lights in a jar, fireflies in the clearing–there is something to remember. It’s watching a disaster movie where everything is broken down and destroyed, but then you get that image–a flower poking up out of a crack in the broken concrete or a bit of sunlight through a broken stained-glass window that lights something up. It’s that moment when the ship’s crew’s been fighting against a massive storm, they’ve lost their friends, they’ve lost their cargo, and they’re damn close to losing their ship, but then a light breaks through the clouds or the sun’s visibly coming up on the horizon and they know that, for the moment, reprieve is near (or you can take it away a breath later to make it even worse).

The trick with darkness is that there has to be some form of light to make it matter, to make it real. You can use that light as a beam of hope or you can use it to lead to more crushing despair depending on your purpose.

I always prefer hope to despair, but that’s a personal thing.