Entry 5: Carpe Noctem

So. I decided to do things a little differently for this particular visit to my mandala. I braved my fears, grabbed a flashlight and headed to the field.

            Yes at first I had trouble getting over the feeling that I was in a horror movie. Outside the view of my little flashlight it was so dark. When I had shone my light up into the tall weeds on either side of the path, they were not officially dead and all brown from the ground to the tip. Beyond them though, instead of the cheery bright blue backdrop and vast field backdrop behind them, there was instead darkness and uncertainty. The first time I looked out at it, childishly, I half expected Leatherface or something to appear from the blackness.

            Admittedly, in 23 years of living here I had never ventured out into the fields at night by myself. I had been down my driveway in the dark a few times back in High School when I would sneak out of the house to go out, but never into that mysterious field.

            So anyways, I stood in the path for a few minutes shining my small stream of light all around trying to get acquainted and also trying to tell myself to stop being a goofus and that nothing here was going to hurt me. The field is like a completely new and different place at night. It was difficult to grasp a sense of direction or tell where I was going. I was fumbling around in the dark-even though it’s pretty much a straight shot to my spot. I thought I was on the wrong path or that I had gone too far a few times, so I tried to look for familiar land marks: certain trees, maple, that I always pass on my way to my spot that once I found them, I continued on.

            The next thing I noticed was the grass. It was frigid outside, maybe just barely enough for some frost-just enough to make the ground sparkle. I saw it as a final precursor to winter. (That’s the one thing I love about the first snow. In the evening, the ground sparkles and gleams in the moonlight and as a poet-I eat it up and swoon over it) So I got my reminder of what’s just around the bend.

            Once I was finally to the right spot, I looked around and tried to find what else would be different, that initial fear of the dark still would try and pop back up in my thoughts, but I was determined to stay for a while. When I exhaled, my smoky looking breath got caught in my flashlight and whirled around in the beam of light, over the glittery grass, and the dead weed walls surrounding me. I was really caught up in all of the new textures colliding and forming some kind of collage before me.  Finally, I was brave enough to turn my light off and immerse myself in complete darkness. I held my breath and clicked the light off. But instead of being enveloped and overtaken by complete darkness, there was something at my back. I turned around to find a crescent moon above me. My own little beacon. Even though things in nature like the phases of the moon run on a constant cycle, I still felt like nature knew that there was still a scared child underneath all of these layers of age and that I wasn’t ready for complete darkness. I love the moon, there’s something so mystical about it as tacky as that might sound but there’s just something about it.

            Standing there, staring up at the moon, I noticed how everything was even more still and silent than in the day, like even the plants and wind had gone to bed as well. It was like existing in nothing, (almost) no light, nothing to see, nothing to hear, no movements there in the darkness. It was an entirely new world.