#74

I continued reading in my book and I decided to try my hand at meditation again. This time I flipped to a page about one’s darkness and shadow and how it’s a part of you even though most people don’t want to accept it. I drew the bathwater and I laid myself in it and closed my eyes and breathed. I let myself go with nothing but the intent and took slow, deep breaths and forgot the world.

I sat there, sitting there with my eyes closed while I heard the hum of insects around me. Many breaths later I opened my eyes and looked about me and I saw that I was sitting on cypress tilted horizontally on it’s side balancing precariously over the murky waters of the swamp around me. All around me were mangroves with their finger-roots stretching all around and dipping into the soil several feed beneath the surface of the water. The air was hot and wet. I heard a sudden commotion and I turned to face it. It was a flock of birds, crows I think, flying up in commotion. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a slowly-moving black shape. I turned to look and I saw that it was a person clad in shadows and darkness walking silently over the surface of the green-stained water; very very black with a definate black aura about him as well. I looked a bit more closely after that glance and he flickered. He flickered like an old television set with an antenna does when the signal for two stations are both competing for the same channel. One instance he was just a male figure, perhaps a bit younger-looking than one would initially guess and the next there was this huge encompassing form all about the boy/man, taking up 7 or 8 times as much space as the figure. A huge, dark shadow wisping as if he were a slow-burning fire trailing dark ashes into the sky and leaving behind footsteps of darkness and wake of shadow wherever he moved. And then the next moment he was the male figure again. He smiled, but didn’t say anything. I went to open my mouth to speak and…

I snapped out of it and I was in the tub again. I tried to sink back into it and to try again and it didn’t happen; I couldn’t focus for various reasons. So today I have failed at my task; I had meant and intended to talk with my shadow, even though I hadn’t expected him to be so intimidating, nor so aggressive with me. Yet I didn’t even have the time to get a word out it happened so quickly. I surely can do better than a couple of seconds of contact, can’t I ? How else am I supposed to understand it better or even confront it to fix it? I need to do much better than this. Even if it is frightening in some primal, unspeakable way.