Dark Places

I enjoy my Facebook friends, even those who have different politics and different opinions of life.  I've reached a point where I no longer get mad because we disagree.  I don't try to retaliate. Getting even is no longer on my agenda. Instead I have learned to listen and learn, to beg them to teach me what they know--and then I keep what I want and discard the rest.

So it is with the Dark Place....

It is a place where the mind goes so it can look at itself from within and without.  It is almost akin to depression as opposed to sadness.  I hope I have learned what the friend is only beginning to teach me. The Dark Place, as I understand, is part of the conscious state.  I need to be wide awake to be able to use it wisely.

This Christmas I am not happy.  I am in that Dark Place.  At this moment, I have ups--like the Christmas concert--and downs, like Mom-in-law's illness and adjusting to a new job.  The trick, so I've been trying to understand, is to use the Dark Place creatively, to look within and find something good in there.  I have to look at the depression, unhappiness, whatever as a thing and not necessarily a state of mind.

I'm not sure I've got it right. It doesn't matter.  It fits how I think of the mind with its many rooms and many file cabinets and many phases. I want to explore them all and tap whatever is there. It isn't the lack of ideas that has been keeping me from writing, it is the energy it requires.  It isn't the lack of desire that keeps me from cleaning the basement--I would love to see the things I have forgotten are there--it is the overwhelming challenge of it all.  I'm hoping that by examining the dresser drawers in the Dark Place that I will find reasons for the inertia.

Meanwhile, I have been writing but not publishing.

Tonight I will do some publishing but not writing.

Somewhere in this Dark Place is a switch.

It's time to turn it on and shed some light on the subject.