The light in the dark

Sometimes when I can't sleep I look into the black and see the substance of darkness. It's like the air is made up of sparkly gel with little light flashes of colour trapped in the darkness. I always wonder if everybody sees this or if it's just me. We used to call this acid air but when on acid it had much more to it than colour. My favourite was when it looked like tiny little muppets everywhere with an emphasis on Kermit, Miss Piggy and Animal.

One of the things I always loved about growing up in a small town was the ability to achieve (our idea of) perfect darkness. On a moonless night with little light pollution it was easy to find darkness in which to play. Sometimes we'd play with candles and fire. I took one of those restaurant candles in blue glass and attached a chain to it to swing and whirl around. It had a great medieval feel to it when no other light sources were in the room. We'd play with black lights and colour our yo-yo strings with yellow highlighter. That's how I learned to yo-yo.

We'd play with all things glow in the dark. My friend Adam had an empty bedroom in his house with mirrored closet doors. We'd all lay on the floor while one person would stand in the middle with glow sticks on strings and whip them around the room. Sometimes we'd even think enough to have that person wear glow in the dark nail polish. Glow stick fights with couch barricades were also quite fun. I remember a particular fight where a dead glow stick was in play. Ow.

But we'd also play in total darkness. I remember being in a dark laundry room with my friend, Gord, my boyfriend, Austin and friend, Tina. We were using the tiniest amount of starlight on a dark night coming through the small basement window to watch each other's faces change around our eyes. We really couldn't see our actual faces, just a glimpse of eyes but the imagined faces were spectacular. A mix of all things beautiful and horrific. Monsters and aliens that had Gord diving behind the furnace to proclaim he was quite comfortable there. Until he realized he was laying on a mattress of pink insulation.

After that game subsided and we were waxing philosophical we kept hearing Gord crunching beside us. After a while he asked who had brought the salt & vinegar chips because they were soooo good. No one did. There were no salt & vinegar chips. We flicked on the light to find Gord had devoured a bag of spitz with shells. He had a lovely Ace Ventura grin.

But my ultimate favourite light in the dark would be the Northern Lights. I used to lay on my front lawn and look up and daydream. I've never been farther North then my hometown so I've never seen them as awesome anywhere else and they are fucken amazing in my hometown. I miss them more than I miss snow. I miss snow a lot.

I love the darkness and I love the light that you can find in the dark.