Dark Corners

And Then…

Dark corners.

Every mind has them, and every one of us fears them. We are also curious about these hidden pieces of ourselves. It’s a special kind of curiosity; made up of equal parts of hope, dread, yearning, and despair. This curiosity, I believe, makes us similar to the character of Tomas Holly in “Blades of the Diram Ring,” torn between desperate longing and fear of disappointment. The longing is rooted in the need to get that gaping hole in the soul filled, to become complete, to at last belong in this time and place and within this particular skin. The fear draws its strength from the eternal skeptic, the things-are-probably-just-as-shitty-as-I-think-they-are creature that attempts to protect us by never allowing false hopes to rise. It accomplishes this through crushing all hope.

Twenty-five hundred years ago, there existed the famous inscription on the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi: “Know thyself.” Yet, most of us make do with Googe’s “Out of syght, out of mynd.” If writing the stories in this collection has taught me anything, it is this: out of sight isnever out of mind, although it is often going outof your mind. Those things we hide out of our awarenesses do not go away, and that is because of where we have hidden them. They lurk there in our minds, discharging their destructive energies, altering everything else within the mind. For computer nerds, it’s like dealing with a computer virus by refusing to check for it.

Have you ever been in a really foul mood for no apparent reason? Have you ever walked around in a depressive funk and everything you look at is okay, but you can’t shake yourself out of the feeling? Have you ever been filled with anxiety or dogged by a feeling of impending doom and you can’t figure out why? It’s the contents of your dark corners yanking your chain.

Just for the thrill of it, not to mention the possibility of improved mental health, take a big risk and turn a light on those things hiding in the shadows. You are going to find some real maggot feasts in there; horrors, pains, and feelings you wouldn’t wish on a tax assessor. There are many wonderful gifts and valuable potentials hidden there, as well. Our heads are filled with truths we don’t want to know and lies we’d like to believe, and we wonder why stress is such a persistent part of being a modern human.

If modern science is to be believed, we get to go around a lot of times, perhaps an infinite number of times. This time, however, is the only time I get to go around as the me I call “me,” and the only time you get to go around as you. Do we run and hide from our mental selves, or do we take that risk, and go boldly where no chicken has gone before?

C’mon, grab that failing flashlight, push those cobwebs aside, and begin climbing down those crumbling stairs into the musty darkness. It’s not just for the chills and thrills. There’s a whole new life down there.