In The Dark (II)

I wonder why the dark makes me want to bare it all - figuratively. (And, I suppose, literally too ... well, maybe.)

There’s something about the dark, something about not being able to see who you're talking to - and, maybe, not being able to see yourself - something about disembodied voices that float in the dark like the wispy spirals from a lit cigarette.

Maybe not being able to see provides the illusion of a mask of sorts, a cloak of protection: security - the passing blindess both a sanctuary and a confessional.

I talk more openly in the dark, maybe because if I can't see myself, then nobody can see me and attribute the voice they hear to me.

And, when it's so late in the night, my voice is so much lower, I don't sound like myself; it's just too easy to make believe you're someone else.

Last night, sitting on a squeaky swing-set outside of Soundbar, sipping at a lychee martini and nibbling on hot wedges, I enjoyed the cool night air and sneaking peeks at an adorable half-grown Labrador Retriever puppy. I do appreciate the company I was with, but I'd wished for something else.

Someone else.

Someone who could inspire me to write or draw something, there and then, of that particular moment in that particular night.

Instead, our conversation got progressively more morbid into the early morning; light-hearted, but undeniably morbid.

That's something else about the dark (or maybe it's the night?) too: conversations tend to center around depressing subjects like mortality - life, and death, and the afterlife.

I like being in the dark, although I sometimes wish it were darker and more impenetrable: being in the dark can be simultaneously too obscuring and too elucidating.