Dark nights of the numb December soul

Some reflections and poems

“I put the lights out on the porch every year same as all the other neighbours do. My house looks the same as the rest.”

He said.

“But inside the house, what the neighbours don’t see is….”.

I could tell you the rest but I won’t.

I didn’t know him. Just saw his words online. But as I read it, it perfectly encapsulated the art of facade to me. Keeping up appearances. The way someone can appear to have everything under control on the surface. His house looked the same as those of his neighbours. The lights shone bright.

On the outside.

His words reminded me of the poem ‘Not Waving But Drowning’. The idea that something can be misinterpreted because people see what they want to. They see a prettily decorated street, want to believe that behind each window lies something fairytale, just like an advent calendar……...and so they do.

It’s a strange time of year. The strings of fairy lights we employ are in stark contrast with the long hours of darkness. We clumsily craft what we miss. Illumination. But we can never replicate the magnificence of the sun we grieve. Our amateur efforts are greedily gulped down by the black jaws of night.

As I said in my last post, I’ve felt fed up of late and the poems I post here reflect this.

Sometimes you feel so drained, you’re like a ghost. You see yourself detached and wandering, a vague form without colour or substance. You’ve transitioned through intense emotions that felt engulfing, only to emerge in a trance like state.

You move through your day like a spirit trudging the grounds of an old castle. The surroundings are familiar. You see people but cannot meaningfully interact with them, an onlooker in your own life.

Numb.

Numb is an interesting feeling, in that it’s actually a lack of feeling. As children, perhaps our first understanding of it, is its physical interpretation. Pins and needles. We shake ourselves, stamp the ground. Fight it.

Numbness has always intrigued me. As a child, my teacher told of explorers who went to places so cold they were able to snap off their extremities and feel no pain. I’d imagine it vividly, breaking off my own fingers like a kitkat. The idea of not hurting seemed like an enviable superpower.

“But when you eventually returned to a warmer place, you would most definitely become aware of it. And it would really hurt.”

Oh. Ouch.

Maybe that didn’t sound so good after all then. A little like ‘what goes up must come down’, isn’t it? Any loss of sensation tends to return. And with a vengeance.

Phantom limbs always fascinated me too. My uncle had one. His foot became mangled in a machine at work and was subsequently removed. Yet still he felt it. Still ‘felt’ pain in his phantom foot.

His foot that wasn’t there.

Hm….so how does that work then?

Phenomenons such as this illustrate the extent to which the brain rules the rest of us. Tricks us. A part of us can literally cease to be, we look down and see with our own eyes it is gone - yet our ache begs to differ.

So, can it be the same for parts of us we can’t see? Are there parts of our psyche that can die off yet we still convince ourselves they must be there?

I wonder whether people can overdose on strong feeling, permanently injuring or killing off a part of their soul for it never to return. But whereas we can look at an arm or a leg and ‘know’ it’s gone, it’s different with your soul isn’t it? If it is possible to damage or disfigure one’s soul, how would that look? Could you tell? Could you trust your mind to deliver the truth?

What would this look like on a grander scale? What would a numbed society look like? A society so damaged it operates in zombie mode?

Would it look like a man who arranges dozens of guys to rape his unconscious wife or a young woman who wants to have sex with 1,000 men in a day to set a world record? Of normalised plastic surgery and highly processed foods? Of dubious ‘medicine’ that people fear?

I believe we are now at the point of collective numb. The world is traumatised. Yet we cannot transcend this state by switching off. It’s a false win. A temporary gloss that coats a deep seated rot. Pain is warning. When we stop feeling it and succumb to numb, it masks all manner of things we were meant to feel.

At what point does our own personal indifference and resignation inform the collective consciousness? What part do we play in raising vibration? Are we actively fighting the numb we experience as individuals, just as we shake ourselves free of pins and needles?

Sometimes we describe people as being ‘full of life’, even though in measurable terms they are just as alive as the next person. Other times we look in someone’s eyes and talk of them being ‘dead inside’, don’t we? What is it in these instances we are seeing or not seeing? Can it be dissected and analysed? Quantified?

These are the kind of conundrums that lead me to think there is so much more to life that science currently acknowledges. But with that, comes hope. After all, for every ‘dead inside’, we hear of someone ‘getting their spark back’, don’t we?

There is something about the revival of spirit that leans to fire, to physical warmth and light. Feelings are ‘rekindled’.

Candles, for me are a great way of remembering the bright blaze of the human soul. They can sit on a shelf for months, even years, their neutral pillars and stooped black wick doing nothing. Snuffed out.

Yet they can light again.

Light a candle and remember how only a few seconds ago it was but a cylinder of dull wax.

We are all candles. In order to spread light the world over, we must first reignite ourselves.

If the collective soul of the suffering earth is to heal from numb, it starts with believing we can rekindle our own fire. And then, by doing just that.

Stuck in my head

Stuck in my head

Here I must stay

Duty it weights me

From flying away

Wings made of lead

Leashed to a stone

Anchored by anguish

That I made alone

Daggers of dawn

Pierce silent nights

Beige obligation

An armour for fight.

Must change the tune

Old records play

Daydreams are sunbeams

To torment my grey

Iron to rust

Fears starved then fed

Stay here, I must

Stuck in my head

Present

“Present”

I say aloud

Addressing my school mistress mind who demands proof

Proof I’ve not died without knowing

Like in films

When the ghost thinks it’s still alive

Tries desperately to engage with the other characters

As they stare right through it

.

“Present”

Must be, because after the word forms in my brain

It leaves my mouth, plain bird of breath

If there was chill, it would scar the air with its brief marvel of grieved heat.

Like kettle steam

But it doesn’t.

.

“Present”

Logic scours the cavity

Hunting dog seeks signs of life

Must be something there

It begs

With pleading eyes

Circling, patrolling

Longing to warn or rejoice

Defend or attack

Searching. Searching.

But there is nothing

No enemy

No scent to run with, roll in

Pure void

.

“Present”

Bite my bottom lip

Confirm my physicality

Turn my square hands like flat windmill sails labouring solid air

Observe them blueing in hops and skips of bending sun

Thick skin thinning to sheer veil

Lumps of green vein bulging and shining

Shell fading like a video game avatar before my fogging eyes

One day there’ll be no clear form

Just an opal slop of twinkling components

Pinned taut by blunt rock and spartan moon

Exposed

Yet now, I am indeed alive

Conscious

So why am I unmoved?

Untouched?

I conclude that if I am, indeed present

Must be the world around me that died

Peas

All peas once shared a pod

Cheek to cheek with others

Raw and ripening

Sun law sweetly governing

Secured in sealed lips of fibrous green

Perfect spheres lay snug beside another

Hanging on a vine, taped smile

Ready to be rattled toothless

By unrelenting wind

Or maybe burst open, having outgrown a shape

Either way, how easily disrupted the bond

Shaken, broken

Laid bare

Capsized canoes

Contents scattered as smooth, cold marbles

To roll and sprawl cruel floors

Find new corners

So far apart

That any shared song of summer

Is scarcely remembered

All you have

Sometimes all you have is sunrise

To get you through the day

The rose that bowls new joy to soul

Before it slides away

.

Sometimes all you have is starshine

To take you through the night

The silver darts that pierce dark thought

Keep luke warm hope alight

.

Sometimes, there is nothing

Blanket cloud obscures it all

Just memories of certainties

And futures yet to fall

.

What do you do when you’re at sea

No life raft left to hold?

Resign yourself to misery?

Let daunting fates unfold?

.

Keep faith in better times ahead

In hours we don’t yet know

For flowers planted by mind’s seed

Are ours alone to sow