When very young, before I was 10 years of age, I guess you could say I was afraid of the dark. The surrounding blackness always scared me, for I always saw (imagined) that there was a dark figure standing there, just watching, but scary all the same. Of course it was just the corner, even darker than the rest of the room. Closets where the same, for they became deep, pitch black cavern’s, from which all kinds of creatures would be looking out at me; so I kept those doors to other darker dimensions closed at all times. I suppose I was like many boys, a lot like Calvin in the “Calvin and Hobbes books”. In fact I still have a bit of him in me.
After a while, the dark became a friend to me, soothing, quiet, life affirming, also a place where I was just alone, with no demands placed on me, just me with my thoughts and of course dreams; of which I always had many. Until I was ten I had nightmares every night, with music, thick green fog coming in, alone in a dark, dank, dingy, dismal, dungeon like forest and of course some people chasing me; sort of like the modern day zombie movies. Maybe that why I love ‘B” moves so much, I manufactured them in my dreams, everything was there but the credits.
I love low clouds, dark, and the closer to the earth the better. I feel more comfortable in that kind of environment, than in bright sunlight. I find nothing soothing about too much sun. Perhaps it is because I am light skinned, and in the past have had some serious run-ins with over exposure, leading to second degree burns all over my body. Very painful, so to this day I can say, that while I love the sun, the thought of being in it too long makes my skin crawl, give me darkness, cool and soothing.
I love to get up very early, perhaps at 2 AM and go for walks, listening to the breezes, the crickets, movements in the woods, deer running across my path, and yes the soft shining moon with its soft reflection of the sun upon the night landscape. I love waking up in the middle of the night when it is raining and find listening to the soft music of the rain better than sleep, a truly beautiful, almost ecstatic experience.
When a teenager, because the family was so large, it would become for me at times a little to chaotic, I would feel like a stretched rubber band, ready to snap. So having my driver’s license I would get in the family car and simply drive. Sometimes listening to music, at others just driving with the windows down allowing the moist Panama air into the car with me. Loving the glow of headlights on the road before me, very few other vehicles on the road; just darkness, in all of its gentleness and beauty, alone, allowing me to rest and to just think or not. Vegetating has its charms every once in awhile. With or without music, for sometimes it is just noise, at others, it speaks to my soul. I like all kinds of music, classical, country western, rock, heavy metal, rap, world music, each in its own time I seem to crave, at others it is just silence that I need. Music plays a large roll in many people’s lives, for me I just like to listen when driving.
I needed that escape from time to time, for I was a big part of the chaotic fun, fighting, arguing that went on in our home. We can be a hyper lot. So since I over did it I would become exhausted and needed to refuel. In fact I still do, when around people I can get on a roll, get hyper and yes exhausted. I guess many people have this kind of cycle that can’t be broken, at least I can’t, and perhaps some aspects of our personalities take a whole lifetime to integrate.
Perhaps when I am 90 I will not need that going and coming, I will be a perfectly integrated human being. Well I won’t hold my breath. It is kind of funny, that some of the aspects of my nightmares are what I came to love a little later in life. Don’t worry…. zombies are not one of them. Just the darkness, the forest and the fog; what was once nightmarish is now healing.
Br. Mark Dohle, OCSO
Holy Spirit Monastery
