Walking in the Dark
Just my Mumble Jumble, My Day Tagged ambon, fear, rig 3 Comments »These last few days have come with disappointment. Lots of them. I can’t even start with one to tell because as I recall one, many others will pour in my thoughts and my head is crammed with all the frustation.
Have you ever walked in the dark before? Not figuratively, but literally. Once in a while we would experience it, like when the electricity was cut out and we had to make our ways in the dark through the furniture in our houses. No matter how familiar our house was to us, we just couldn’t help knocking at things. We were so accustomed to light and clarity that once we lost it we acted like bat in daylight.
I walked through the darkness, literally, today.
It all started with me waking late this afternoon. My night shift was calling my senses to wake up but my logical brain denied any muscles movement on the consideration that there was nothing to do anyway. I thought, why the haste? So I slept on a little.
That was how I missed the crew change truck. The sky had gone bluish dark. No stars and moon were visible. They might have hid themselves behind the clouds..
The camp gave out its eerie glow into the penetrating darkness. Nothing could be seen passing through the lonesome road that laid silently beside the camp. The grass and bushes that bordered the road stood still in the dark, as if hiding their lifetime secret of watching us, mocking us.
There was no point in waiting the truck to come. So I decided to walk. With the novel “Doctor Zhivago” and my beloved iPod on one hand, and my helmet at the other, I paced forward.
The first stretch of the walk was easy. They had installed four high-power, high intensity lights at a pole on the back of the yard beside the campsite. Their light shone its surrounding, stripping anything bare to sight in darkness.
As I threw my glance on the light source, it blinded me, and the background shrunk surprisingly into coal dark. At that time, dark and light existed complement to each other at the same time, like two forces embracing one the other rather than repelling one another. Like two lovers longed to be together, their own respective borders marked the long awaited convergence of their skins. So harmonious yet so contrast.
I paced on.
The bushes rose to the heights of my shoulder on both sides of the road. As the light pole fell behind me as I walked on, the ray became less intense. The bushes’ shadows reached into the road, like limbs trying to put a gentle stroke on me.
My own shadow was stretching long, reaching the bushes on the other side. In my imagination, I could see dark creatures roamed about among the dense bushes… awaiting my shadow to fall on them. They would pull it, my shadow that was. My whole being would be sucked, as they feasted on my shadow, throwing thrilling excited shrill that vibrated the cold night air. I tried to avoid glances at my shadow.
The remaining paling light of the lightbulbs that still survived the distance shone on the strange lonely trees that stood like sentries in the middle of the bushes. No other trees were around them, like they were the last survivors of long fought battle. At daylight, the trees were covered with big leaf vines that had covered it from bottom to the top. At night, it was standing taller than usual. The darkness had enhanced its grandeur. The vines had turned into their majestic robe, shining in pale glow. It was like seeing a forest king, stepping into the meadow, ready to jump on its adversaries. I dared not look at it too long. I didn’t want to be his enemy.
So I looked at the road.
It was a gravel road, full of dust, small stones, and irregular surfaces. It was ordinary country side road in the daylight. But what remaining light there was, had transformed its face. At surfaces where the light had reached through, it shone with pale gray dullness. But at surfaces where the light had failed, it turned into pitch black shadow. The black spots were everywhere among the pale surface. They looked like a deep water pool. Walking through it, I kept expecting I would step into water and made a splash, but all it was just shadow. I couldn’t help thinking I might fall into its terrifying depth. And I kept bracing myself as I walked on, as if I was expecting to fall though I knew it was impossible.
And then the last ray fell behind me. All ahead was darkness. The road, bordered with trees on right side and meadow of bushes and occasional lonely tree groups on the left, looked gloom. I treaded on.
Jason Mraz’s I’m Yours was playing for the uncounted times from my iPod. I had been trying to get the feel of this song. But as I walked halfway, I realized I hadn’t been listening to the song at all. I had been ignoring my hearing senses and heightening my vision instead.
It was not completely dark, and I could see the outline of the road. The dark bushes were cramming with the whirring of grasshopper. The sound of my boot grinding the gravel added to the merriment. But the sound was giving nothing but restlessness to my soul.
In the darkness like this, where the road seemed to stretch much much longer and the sign of its end was not visible at all, hope and merriment were the last thing my heart could come up with. Standing there, in the middle of the road, I felt consumed. My red coverall lost its color. The dark trees were taking away my senses. I dared not open my iPod as I feared its glow would anger the thick darkness.
The whirring seemed to grow louder, contrastingly adding the intensity of the loneliness. That was when I realized my heart had beaten faster and the blood rushed to my head in gushing stream. It slowed me.
At times like these, fear would strike. It did not matter if I believed in ghost or not, in alien creatures, beasts, gods, whatever. I felt like I could vanish into the dark. In an instant. Just a snap, and I would melt into the darkness.
And fear for something might appear in frightening suddenness among the trees, or the bushes, attacking me, robbing me from all the dignity of humanness, ripping me off my soul. And the consciousness would still be there to witness the gory and the terror of it.
And fear. A horrible feeling to have. It was like a downward spiral. It was like dark matter. As you are caught even in the fringe of it, you are bound to be sucked deeper. Despair is a common companion. And they freeze all. It never gets better.
But it gets better sometimes.
I focused my mind on something else. I thought of happy moments and of other troubles of my life that needed sorting out. I focused on Jason Mraz’s melodious sound. I looked at the sky.
And it ebbed away. The fear receded to the corner of my brain.
A pair of light suddenly came from the turn ahead. A truck. Its penetrating light was a soothing sight. It cast away the loneliness and dismay. The darkness shrank in cowardness and I regained myself. Someone shouted my name from the passenger seat. I couldn’t see who it was, but the sound gave a notion that it was Marcus, a man not just big in sound but also in every part of his body, especially his belly. The truck passed me to different direction.
I reached the turn, and the road was turning from dark into pale gray. The rig was visible ahead. Its brilliant light shone penetrating into its surrounding darkness, sharing me a little bit of its courage and arrogance. I paced on and this time, sang along with Mraz, twising my tongue to follow his fast pronunciation. I reached the rigsite whole.
I am not religious, but this passage comes to mind
Psalm 23:4a
“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me”
