the dark is where the demons are...

It's nearly 3am and I have work 'tomorrow.'
I sit here on the couch in the darkness, thinking about nothing and everything; just a still, quiet meandering mind in the night.

It conjures up two memories, which revisit me not infrequently.

The first: a brief, fleeting image of being holed up years ago in a roadhouse motel alone by some interstate highway, listening to the trucks drone past as sleep escaped me. I stared into the moonlight and took dark 'artsy' photographs to pass the time, waiting for morning and the new workday, a sentence repeating over and over in my head - the answer to a question I hadn't bothered asking about why I could always sleep better in the daytime:
"The dark is where the demons are..."

The second memory is one from childhood.
I'm at a friend's birthday party. We're all perhaps about eight years old. Maybe younger. We've been playing in the backyard, and I've not been hugely interested in the games but joining in regardless.

Presently we're called inside: the party food is ready, probably cake too.

The other kids, maybe another 5 or 6 children, bustle through the back door to the kitchen and I linger at the back of the single file line. When I get to the door I let it shut in front of me and veer to a chair propped just alongside. I sit and I ponder without pondering - as I am right now - looking out over the now empty yard drenched in sun, and listening to the clamour of munching juveniles just within.

Someone notices I'm missing - the birthday girl, or perhaps her mother, and she opens the door to look for me. Seemingly startled to find me just outside, she asked "What are you doing??"

I reply, distracted "I'm just ...thinking".

Before she can respond her mother calls out to find out what's going on, and my friend relays over her shoulder: "She's thinking"
"Thinking!? What about?" the mother hollers, and my memory lets the rest of her words trail back into my mind and as the image fades to black I recall that I got up then and joined them, embarrassed.


Just being. Just seeing and feeling and thinking without thought. Numb, without the hopeless undertones, - though, she's still there somewhere.

Earlier this evening my partner and I had argued, and I suspect I am simply drained as always after such a challenging time. So I just sit. And am. My body claiming to want sleep, but my mind not surrendering to it, and my body only mildly convincing anyway.
I am not exhausted, I am just being. Just thinking.

A third commonly recounted memory surfaces:
I am in early highschool and the deputy principal has become a sort of mediator between another student and I in the midst of an emotional quarrel. She asks me what I do when I go home, after the conflict at school, and I reply that I do nothing: I do my homework and what tasks needs doing, but otherwise I just sit and think about things. Perhaps I include that I stare at the ceiling and think, I don't remember.
"Hmm" She nods slightly as she considers this. "That's dangerous."

I didn't reply at the time, and don't recall anything else as clearly from that conversation in her office.

"Is it?" my head still asks her today.

Are the quiet moments like this really dangerous? Do they really cause me as much harm as being emotionally heightened sprawled on the floor? Or kicking furniture and yelling?

Usually this type of quiet is the shell that's left when I'm tired and I've spent all the fight in me. I'm not depleted of anything but some energy, and lots of fight.
I'm submissive, passive, pliable.

If my partner is patient enough to wait for the objection to burn out of me in the form of tears and fists into floors, sometimes for hours... in this quiet time, even after the flares of shame and guilt if there's any to spare, I will do whatever it was I was rebelling against to begin with. Whatever tiny, insignificant last camel straw set my balanced brain on fire in the first place.
I become obedient, for the sheer reason that there's nothing left in me in this moment.

Dangerous?

Sometimes I agree with her. But this is not one of those times.
I think she means those times when the darkness is like a vacuum. When your head is not quiet, but full and noisy and repetitive. When the broken record tells you how hopeless and useless you are, and how selfish you are for feeling hopeless and useless. When the dark is where the demons are.

But this is not one of those times.

The demons are still here on nights like this, but they sit beside me. Not tormenting me, but not ignoring me either. We sit together and gaze out into the shadows like two strangers watching the same sunset on the same park bench, in polite silence.

Quietly appraising and respecting each other.

It's as though we have a truce this night: I don't try to stifle my demons, and they don't try to suffocate me.
This must be a sample of what living in peace with your inner demons must feel like.

I pause from finishing this post on that note as one last thought strikes me:
It's not as though I am scared of the dark, but quite the opposite. The night makes no demands. It is peaceful and quiet, and so, so many people are asleep. The day, however, brings harsh light to renewed worries. People and their demands awake. The world stirs.
It's easier to sleep past it all. With a bonus of a soul-lifting charge that only sleeping in sunlight can bring.

Perhaps I've had it wrong all these years, where my demons sleep.

Ye Olde Campy Weekend

This past weekend was pretty fun. It was a good time away from it all, doing something different, and good for everyone's soul and mental health.

The Medieval Fair was on in a town about 30-40mins away from the city and up in the hills, and a couple of friends invited us to join them. Regulars to the fair for several years now, they camp every year at a nearby park on a powered site near the river.

My partner had never camped out before meeting me, and on our first anniversary I took her to a Scout campgrounds (mostly I wanted to use the cool obstacle course equipment there as a bonus adventure, but on the weekend we went it was covered in Scouts doing their activities - naturally - and we had to miss out). It was hardly roughing it - there was an undercover shelter with barbeques and sinks and we were the only tent there, so we set up near this and the adjoining toilet/shower block.
Still, it was something to ease her into the experience and she enjoyed herself (despite learning the hard and confronting way what a koala sounds like grunting away into the night).

This weekend was still less hardcore than true camping, but it was a next step up, and we were due for another outdoor adventure since the first anniversary was about 18months ago.

I made the mistake of doing half the organising and assuming my list of written and verbal instructions for the other half would be followed correctly. Next time I think I'll just suck it up and do it all myself, hehe.
I guess I was asking a lot from someone who has never really needed these skills before, but some common sense would have saved us some bother (that's 'a-whole-nother' rant).
But still, nothing too drastic. We were dry, we were fed, we were (mostly) warm.

I'm running the risk of just writing a recount of the weekend when I don't really want to do that. I just want to sit and reflect about some things from the trip. I don't really have an ending to this post, either. So here is my list of things, in no particular order.

• Sitting by the open campfire, cooking delicious things in stages so that the evening was a string of good company and conversation - punctuated by many small courses of tasty campfire treats like baked potatoes, corn on the cob, cheese and crackers, banana boats, and of course toasted marshmallows.
• Drinking from my water bottle, crisp and cool and refreshing yet never once being in a fridge. The Autumn air was plenty to keep our drinks at the perfect temperature.
• Sitting in the clearing weather and taking in the natural beauty, especially the turning deciduous leaves. The hillside was awash with damp, shining yellows, oranges and reds.
• Even though we were on a powered site, I made sure to set up the tent so that we weren't right beside the outlet. While this did mean borrowing an extra extension cord because mine was jusssst too short to reach the tent for the air mattress pump, it meant that things like phones and too much artificial light (or other non-essentials) were used minimally. I hung a lantern from the top of the tent and phones took turns being charged in the weatherproof box that surrounded the power outlet. This mix of not-readily-available-charge plus not-overly-reliable-network-coverage meant that phones were only really used to take photos, or whilst at the Fair and we were arranging meeting places/times etc. Bottom line: vacant staring into the screen of a phone was drastically reduced.
• Laughing at something random with a friend, and neither of us remembering the next day what started it. All I remember is that something was said, we agreed and fistbumped on the matter, then giggled. What followed next was an avalanche of increasing laughter, until we were only laughing because we had been laughing. It was a good feeling, and my partner said the next morning that it was good to see me laugh like that; she hasn't seen/heard me laugh like that for a while. I paused and thought for a moment before answering "I haven't."
• All the wonderful costumes and setups at the Fair. I haven't properly been before (the brief visit with my brother when I was 16 at the end of the last day when folks were packing up, and I'm told it was a much smaller and less impressive affair, doesn't count). I also bumped in to a few people from my old job as some them were presenting on the battle field, so it was good to briefly exchange words and hugs.
• My last minute decision to purchase rainboots. They are pretty and bright and obnoxiously-coloured and they meant that I fearlessly strode over the mushy terrain at both the Fair and the campground after the rain in the days leading up. I got my partner a pair too and due to the limited choice (albeit bigger than I was expecting) at the local department store, we now have matching rainboots. Can't decide if that's cute or not.
• Purchases at the Fair: we were rather sensible and only really bought food/drink for our lunch and two affordable splurges/souvenirs. A beautiful medieval dress that my girl looks absolutely enchanting in, and a pewter brooch of two Scottish thistles that I now proudly wear on my coat.
• Seeing my partner having a good time despite the few hiccups we encountered, and just overcoming challenges in general. We made a few n00b mistakes in our camping prep (or lack thereof) but were thankfully not completely roughing it survivalist-mode so we could either find solutions by either inventing/adjusting something, borrowing something, or returning to town and buying something. Whilst challenging at the time, and my brain telling me that the more seasoned campers were probably chuckling "ha! rookie mistake!!" at us, I walked away feeling like I learned something. My prep list has already grown since being home.
  Also, successfully erecting a couple of tents, especially one you're unfamiliar with, when the sun has already set does give one a feeling of accomplishment. I also made a makeshift rainfly using a tarpaulin and bungee cords for my tent, so that was something else I'm proud of.
• Enjoying a warm homecooked meal when we emerged from the hills, thanks to our friend's family inviting us over at the journey's (almost) end. Whilst I can't say that we didn't eat well over the weekend (the Fair had wonderful spit roasts and cobs of corn and soup in bread rolls and meat pies and lamb shanks and even an evening feast for those who wanted to join - plus our own meals at the camps), that was the tastiest meal of the trip... simply due to the kindness of the invitation, the warmth of both the food and the people offering it, and the exhaustion that was slowly taking me over would mean preparing dinner when I got home was not an option.
• The stars. Only 30mins away from the urban lights and you already see so much more than in the suburbs. I love country stars. If I could camp in a clear roofed tent at times I would literally be a happy camper.

Our friends were happy to see that we had enjoyed ourselves so much and have invited us to join them on another trip. So I guess that means stay tuned for another camping ramble. Much like my bicycle posts, it may just be a shortlived appearance in my blogging habits, just to say 'hey I tried this new-ish thing, or new to me for the first time in many years, and here's what happened and here's how I got better'.

Yeah, like I said. I have no ending.
My hair smells like woodsmoke because I lit my backyard's firedrum this evening and I'm in a sleeping bag sitting on my couch. I think I just needed to finish processing my good weekend of camp times.

Etymology

I hate this generation's vocabulary because I can't use any of the following words/phrases without them first being mistaken for something else:

• twilight
• tumbler
• macaroon
• gangster
• that's so gay (though this has changed frequently through history)
• vintage
• pair of hipsters
• converse

...and the list goes on.

Fishy

Because my phone has an unfancy camera, you need to use your imagination.