For the past half a day or so* I've had Tori Amos' The Waitress in my head...no reason/idea why. {*I actually first started this post on 29th Sept 2009, FWIW}
So I want to kill this waitress
She's worked here a year longer than I
If I did it fast, you know that's an act of kindness
But I believe in peace
I believe in peace, Bitch
I believe in peace
I believe in peace
But I believe in peace
I believe in peace, Bitch
I believe in peace
I want to kill this waitress
I can't believe this violence in mind
And is her power all in her club sandwich
But I believe in peace
I believe in peace, Bitch
I believe in peace
I believe in peace
But I believe in peace
I believe in peace, Bitch
I believe in peace
I want to kill this killing wish
There're too many stars and not enough sky
Boys all think she's living kindness
Ask a fellow waitress
Ask a fellow waitress
It's just a plainly fun-dark little song, if you're in the mood for it. Well, I don't mean that I think it's particularly meant to be fun - but for those like me for whom it just kind of is, it is. (Did that make any sense?)
Of course I don't think Tori was without her usual sardonic humor when she placed that line in there about the club sandwich. >:} (Although *smiles at Tori* she could have also really believed it. Which is why I love her.)
What's funny for me is that though I know that, blah-blah-blah, 'we all have these feelings at one time or another,' -really, some of us truly, truly know we really mean it when it goes through us. And that's what scares, surprises, and amuses us. We know we mean it more than Joe Blow across the street and in the next cubicle, when he says he feels sentiments like that.
It often makes me want to stop the person and say, "No, you don't really think you mean it. You're not even anywhere close to thinking you mean it, are you? You're just claiming that. It feels more exciting that way. Gives a little lilt to your juices, and raises some eyebrows & excites some who are listening. And you get off on that. Come on - even just a little. True?"
I know the people who mean it and those who don't. I couldn't even tell you how it is that I do. But I remember distinctly the first time I heard another "live" person voicing out loud a dark threat/desire, and knowing, deep down to my bones, that it was true.
The funny thing was, we were in a setting that doesn't lend itself to such darkly truthful proclamations, aloud [a work lunchroom, surrounded by passers-by and randomly placed seated people, as well as a group of our friends]. And I knew she knew that, for that precise reason, everyone would take her words as her usual braggadocio and tough "don't mess with this woman" talk. We were all used to it from her before.
But for one, this time her threats were over a subject which I knew she was in no way messing around about; and two, I felt the difference.
Her words were the same - a lot of edge; very fearless, and tough; but I felt it in her tone and read it in her voice, and saw it in her eyes. She wasn't grandstanding, bragging, or boasting. She was serious.
Everyone else at our table laughed. One of my best friends, closer to me, laughed nervously...I noticed. She said "Yeah. You don't really mean that, S.* You're not serious," followed by more nervous giggling. [I'm pretty sure my friend was sensing what I was in her vibe, too, but would not consciously let herself admit it, fully.]
I gave a sidelong look at my friend. My face was dead serious. I let her (and S.) go on. There was more exchange of that nature: S. bragged and proclaimed her intentions, my friend kept eyeballing her, chuckling nervously, and denying that she'd ever follow through with it; that she didn't mean those kind of words.
I just stared back between S. and my friend. Finally, I gave S. a serious stare, met her eye to eye, and keeping my gaze at her, said sideways to my friend: "No. She's serious."
My friend did some more nervous chuckling and psychological denial [she's quite an Enneagram 6], while S. and I locked gazes and exchanged meaning, eye to eye. S. would look at me for a while, but wouldn't maintain solid eye contact after a minute, just going on (with more proclaiming).
Every time my Type 6 friend would try to deny S.'s serious intentions...well, for a few times, after that (maybe twice), I locked gazes with S. and just stated very seriously, again, "No. She means it."
S. would always lock gazes, back.
It was funny. But kind of tingling-excitement-feeling inducing in me, also. Because I knew by the stares and the looks we exchanged that S. really did mean what she was saying, and part of her "stare-but-not-too-long"-back routine was due to her surprise/shock/fascination/discomfort with the fact that I was right under her skin, and knew it [her real feelings/sentiments] for a fact. Without having to doubt, without having to ask.
And,
Staring at them unafraid.
I kind of bet she wondered, if I meant what I said, why it didn't bother me. Why it didn't appear to. I got the vague impression that that bothered her; or unsettled her, somehow. Not because she was grandstanding and it bothered her that I (mistakenly) took it seriously...and not because she wasn't getting the {shocked, scandalized} reaction that she wanted - even if she was serious...but simply because I saw her realness, and...wasn't rattled.
(It's funny how it rattles those who are on the edge, like that.)
It made her nervous to be seen, when she thought she usually could count on not being taken seriously. In fact, getting to know her over the course of a couple of years, I kind of think that it was part of her kind of maladapted social pattern, or way. I think that one of the few things that allowed S. to actually take some human solace in relating to other people, and express any of her true/inner self at all, was being able to really express and relate her feelings - out on the edge and frequently extreme as they were - due to counting on the habit people have of poo-pooh'ing that kind of extreme talk, especially when interlaced just right with humor and extreme braggadocio for the sake of shock-humor...as well as the occasional weaving/peppering of lies, with a sly grin, just to play with people.
*names/initials changed to protect anonymity & privacy
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Anyway: Me too.
That is, I'm familiar with what is serious and how it's serious - dark stuff like that - because I've experienced some of these things, internally.
Inner experiences are weird.
They can't exactly be shared or related in a way that translates to another. Not directly. But I think we relate to another's inner experience through peripherals. Through language. Word choice, when venturing through certain subject areas. Sentiment choice, in music, art, literature. Evocation. Things that evoke a certain similar tone, or feeling...patterns emerge there. Between people.
And the people who share similar kinds of inner experiences often discover each other through the shared peripherals.
[I know this is kind of a Big "Duh!" statement...so many stereotypes, to mine. Think of the categorizers 'emo,' 'goth,' military kid, PK (preacher's kid), war wives, veterans, soccer moms...lists of 'sets of people' that go on and on.]
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I know some of darkness. And it is part of me. I wonder, many days, if it was always meant to be. I feel strangely about it, about its presence in me, and my relationship to it. I can't really say "to," as it's embedded in me. Now, anyway.
(I'm going to dance around it, today, yes...more descriptive/concrete details...because it would get too long. But I'll say a bit more, still, here.)
I say "now, anyway" because at one time {and yet, still, now, also...there's a weird anomaly of the 'linear-in-time/space' earthly human life-status quo, for me, happening in this} I felt like one of the most "innocent," kind of unspoilt, pure souls in this world. -I don't mean naïve, or a rube. On the contrary: I felt wise. Well, knowledgeable. In a deep-soul sort of way that I couldn't understand or explain...and seeing with the great simplicity of wisdom the world's problems, and how silly and childish they were [promise you: nothing's changed; they still are, under all the apparent haze], and my heart really broke for adults, who couldn't seem to detect how clear and simple it all was. They'd really seemed to have lost their way.
(I still think/know this.)
I remember reading C.S. Lewis {The Chronicles of Narnia} when I was really young [single-digits] and then I had words for it all. Someone put words to everything I thought, and felt, and knew. Someone knew the words to what I understood. [I am forever in his debt. Well, or, God's. God brought those books to me, I really believe; or else I'm afraid I would have gone insane with the weight of a Knowing that no one else in the world seemed to acknowledge. I am in both their debt, for my life.]
I somehow, internally, knew what God was like, knew His heart and mind, when I was little. There is nobody who taught me the things that fell into place like pieces and made me suck in deep breaths of tear-laden "Finally!"'s when I read Lewis' work. No one had ever talked to me about anything deep, eternal, or that esoteric, religious, or spiritual. We didn't talk or live that kind of stuff, in my native family.
The only place I knew of the longings and thoughts within me was: within me...and in Lewis' books.
I just realized it's going to get harder and harder to explain where, and how, then, darkness came in, from this point, without an incredibly long autobiography-post. Aargghh....
If I do it [now] "the short way," I'm going to sound like a fruitflake.
How about for this time I just do one of those awkward "after the jump..." kind of dealies, state that - you know - and then just JUMP, and promise that what got jumped over will be back-filled at a later time and as another installment of the story?
Yup.
<<
The aftermath [ of having the experience of having been touched by "darkness" (for lack of a descriptor less cheesy but more accurate) ]:
I'm just...I'm a blended person. A dark side and a light side of a coin, that I both understand equally. Their dichotomy scares me. It scares me the way they are miles, worlds, personalities apart--such opposites; no ground between them, no space to share and nothing at which they would not war...and yet, they reside, both, within me.
I know one thing, from my experiences: I know which one I want to "win." I know which one I will ultimately cast my allegiance to--which one to which my allegiance already has been cast; and that it's that one that I want to, and will, support.
It is the one that already had my heart, before any knowledge of the other touched me, knew me, or began. It is the one that has my heart. My heart doesn't have any feelings involved with the other. Only when the one side (the darkness) threatens the other - then my heart cares. Nothing will be put under threat, that it loves & guards. [Those are like its words. They're a warning.]
As for the other - the one (side) that is just a part of me, but that I don't care if it lives or dies with my physical body, when I leave here - I guess my feelings about it are this:
I'm glad I understand it. More than that - (and this is crazy, rationally speaking - because in many ways it caused so much harm, and definitely much pain) - I'm glad that it touched me...close enough to stay & remain a part of me; to split off a new chunk of its own territory, which is just as "me" as the other, before. Because without being IN something you cannot understand it from a place that really matters.
There's an irony and a beauty in all of this.
Those who didn't know the light prior to meeting the darkness (and still haven't known the light), know only darkness. They may be like me, having some vague [or for some, better] inkling of some kind of hope, somewhere out there to be had, in humanity - and for some longer than others, it may be a lifelong search or vague pining feeling or hope, that they do or don't attempt to chase down or feed. But they definitely...and ever-increasingly, over the course of life...know the darkness and have ever more opportunity to see it, witness it, and meet it. And for it to leech in and grow in them, claiming and familiarizing chunks of them with itself. As this happens, they find something's kind of choked off hope. And bad things happen and deteriorate within a person when Hope starts to die.
Those who never knew the darkness in any real or full sense - from within - after first knowing the light, do not have the light fully. They hold in their hand a little lit match--unaware, in a pitch-black room hung with a thousand unlit candelabras. They can see their feet; they can see their palm in front of their nose; they can see their hands, to feed themselves...how is there anything else they need?
But those who knew the darkness before they knew the light - once they find the light or it finds them - suddenly have hope. A Different hope. This one doesn't go away or evaporate upon closer examination, or dissipate when the dark gets a little more forceful; it's of its own. It's a thing alive of its own. Over time they see it, more and more, as it grows within them lighting new spaces and acreage within them that they did not even know they had access to, or could have a part of. And the light becomes a thing beautiful beyond life, to them.
And those that started, knowing the light, but who find themselves pitched headlong, sometime in life, into the darkness so that they know it, too - know it as well as the deepest despair experienced by those who began life from there and only saw it get worse - they find themselves, inevitably, forced to the precipice of a decision. Was the light they saw, felt, and held a lie? They can decide that - and let go of their Hope. Perhaps there's another light source out there in the world...some knowledge, some wisdom... something...that's better than this lie(?) was. And off they meander. [But it doesn't get better.]
-Or-
They hold onto their little lit match...until the last dire second; until the pain of the flame that licks their fingers forces them to let it go. It falls to the ground, burning a few bright more seconds; then, blackens to embers. Their heart thumps hollow in their chest for second, after second, after second. The quiet's like Death. But then, they remember something they were told once, about the source -
And this is where what is called "faith" is made or broken.
Basically, the internal battle must be waged over whether they really have faith in the Source (from which light comes), or whether their knowledge of the light consisted only of what they could hold with their own hands. ...When it was out of their power (...then what)?
For those like this who have an experience of grace, or faith...or perhaps some of both (I think it takes that) - they receive back the gift of light - but this time, find they have it fully. Because they know what it means. They have tasted it, not just held it prettily between two fingers. They feel its beauty in a true and heartfelt way...because now they've felt the shaking absence, the questioning, the fear, of feeling alone and abandoned in darkness.
The irony in all of the above is that neither type of person, whether they start out life with knowledge of the light, or with its absence, is in an advantageous position relative to the other; and that neither truly knows or has the light. (Not in a way that will truly hold them or guide them, or keep them safe from darkness.)
Both require an experience of grace (to gain that).
The beauty is the correspondence of each having to go over to "the other's side" - to exchange places, with each other. The one knowing only absence of light and sitting in darkness must go the places he may have derided, before - to the paths and gathering-places of people he once certainly knew to be phony, or "faking it" when they spoke of having the light. And the one thinking he already "had" the light must go to the dark places without it, stripped and barren, and feel lost, & feel confusion, and abandonment - in order to see the truth that the 'light' that he was bearing was primarily a prop, of his own concoction, more than it was anything like the real light.
Both must cross over; both must experience the other's side in its true reality.
{ I find that...wonderful. With shivers and *all*.} :}
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"The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned."
"For unto us a child is born, to us a son is given...And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."
- Isaiah 9:2 & 9:6
"In the beginning was the Word*, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not overcome it."
- John 1:1-5
[*this is a name for Christ in the Bible]
"When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, 'I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.'"
- John 8:12
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