The Colors and Sight of Darkness

Picture a meadow. A green meadow surrounded by tall trees and blue skies that are littered with soft clouds. Do you see it? I never could. It was a fleeting impression that so desperately wanted to become reality. I have spent hours trying to force images to appear behind my eyelids. I fought with my head, but all that I saw was Darkness. This frustrated me for years.

I didn't understand how visualization worked. I could recall what a dog looked like but I felt like I didn't have the visual image. How did I remember what the world looked like? Why do we close our eyes to imagine things?

I'm an artist, and I've a special talent for "visualizing" my art before my media touches the canvas. My mental plan didn't feel like an image. It felt like a suppressed memory. Other moments my plans were almost like a ghost. The art was already there, I just had to reveal it. Either way, my art turned out close to how I imagined it.

Last year I suffered from insomnia for a few weeks. I spent many nights seeing Darkness. It was during those nights that I discovered something.

I want you to try and close your eyes again. Look. What is it? It's your eyelids. If there is any light seeping through your skin, cover your eyes with your hands. If there's any light, you might not see it. Do you see Darkness? It's not the black that everyone describes it as. There's actually phantom reds, greens, and blues. Every time I see Darkness, he likes to show me his art. His favorite style is abstract and it's always moving. Sometimes the phantom colors will swirl slowly, a soothing dance that helps me sleep. He draws lines and shapeds that play and tangle together. For most of my life, Darkness dispalyed only abstract art to me. Maybe he did this because I never appreciated his work until I was stuck late every night gazing at his amazing motion art.

There's a reason that we close our eyes to visualize. Darkness gives us a blank canvas. Before my insomnia, I thought it was only my imagination that caused the phantom colors to dance, but I officially met Darkness. He isn't nearly as scary as people say he is. Some even mistake him to be the absence of Light. It's partially true, he doesn't like her. He told me she's too boring. She's all facts. I just think he's lonely, but it was last summer tha he made his first best friend in a century. That was me.

His last best friend was Emeline Cigrand. It was a short friendship before she joined Death. Darkness was there to comfort her as she waited for Death to collect her. She sat with Darkness as she leaned against the vault door, slowly inhaling the limited supply of her life. Now she waited for the murdering graud to release her; she had written the wedding announcements as she had asked. But he would never come, while alive that is. Instead, Darkness calmed her during her last moments. Darkness showed her his paintings before giving her over to Death. She was grateful for the glimpses and appriated his work.

Now, over a 100 years later, he found me and Darkness is happy Death doesn't have his eye on me just yet.

Darkness warmed up to me fast. He was ecstatic to have good company again. Most people were afraid of him or they lift him for Death. I liked him. Darkness was fun and seemed to really like me. Eventually his art became more than just abstract phantom colors.

One night as I laid in bed, Darkness proudly showed to me for the first time a sketch. They were a pair of eyes, and beautiful. I sat up in amazement, opening my eyes. Light greeted me and I scowled before closing my eyes again. Darkness didn't show me another sketch for awhile. When Darkness finally was confident enough to show me more of his work, he would share images with me often. I loved them. They looked like Light's pictures, but there was something different about them, something special. He gave me a glimpse of a detailed man in a trench coat who was holding a gun. Another time there was a young curly haired girl riding a city bus. He loved eyes. He would show me a new pair every other every night. One time I knew that they were mine.

Each night I would wait patiently for Darkness to complete his sketch. He would allow me to see his abstract art while I laid in his presence. When he was finally done, I could feel his joy as he presented it to me. Ans as I feel asleep, he would run his fingers through my hair or draw a sketch of me. I found it so fascinating. I used to believe vision was possible because of rays but it was more than that. Light and Darkness made vision possible. Vision was images and colors, not the waves like I was taught in school. It was beautiful to understand vision and it was Darkness who taught me to see in the dark.