Darkness

I have been thinking a lot about darkness.

I’ve been thinking a lot about darkness because my Watson Year is full of it. Whenever I tell someone that I research suicide across cultures, five times out of ten they look at me and say something along the lines of: “Woah. That shit sounds dark.”

Or, when I interview people about my project, darkness almost always comes up –in one form or another, across ALL cultures. In the Netherlands and Belgium, General Practitioners and suicide prevention volunteers spoke of their role in helping people “ease” the darkness, or, to “help them out of the darkness.” In Lithuania, they remembered the Soviet Occupation as “dark times…” so dark that it has traveled faster than the light in that country, “we see that [the Soviet Occupation] darkness in the modern-day, in our suicide rate.” In Argentina, a woman who lost her leg in her suicide attempt said that as she stood in front of the train, about to take her life, she couldn’t see – couldn’t remember – anything else except her suicidality. The translator, a psychiatrist and close friend, Belen, described this as “darkness…” even though the word was never used. And, now, here, in Aotearoa, darkness comes up 24/7. In my interview with Mayor Phil Goff’s office, he spoke of being in “dark places” but never have gotten to the point of “darkness” that he would desire to kill himself. And, on Friday, I hopped into a taxicab to accompany the newly-appointed National Director of Suicide Prevention of New Zealand to the airport. She spoke of darkness as well. “Our youth don’t lack resilience. You try living in the darkness of colonialism and neoliberalism for as long as they have and see how you feel.”

I have been experiencing my own forms of darkness on this year.

My soul and I sit in darkness sometimes. This year has been far from easy and I blame no one but myself. I am too nostalgic for my own good. (See: Half-Way, A Different Death Wish, A Brief Inquiry into Nostalgia, and Vincent’s Tears, On Tacoma, and Goodbye SLC.)

My nostalgic state of being simultaneously pushes me into the past while also keeping me mindful – I want to remember each moment so I can remember them even better. It is this excruciating detail that breaks my heart all over again…months later.

Although I very much value my nostalgic self, I have realized as of late that sometimes it gets out of hand. Nostalgia is, in itself, is a negative affect. We are sad when we experience nostalgia. We long for what once was. And, I spend a lot of days aching for the past.

However, a few weeks back I stumbled across a book titled: A Primer for Forgetting, Getting Past the Past – I plucked it off the shelf and the first page convinced me to check it out from the Auckland Public Library.

“Many years ago, reading about the old oral cultures where wisdom and history lived not in books but on the tongue, I found my curiosity aroused by one brief remark. ‘Oral societies,’ I read, keep themselves ‘in equilibrium…by sloughing off memories which no longer have present relevance…letting go of the past proves to be at least as useful as preserving it.”

Hook. Line. & Sinker.  

This book has not only primed me for forgetting. But, it has given me the opportunity to praise forgetting – something I never thought I would allow my nostalgic self to do. But, the past few weeks I have been eagerly looking for memories that do more harm than good – whose content, in their current form, are damning to my present self – they are given headstones in my memory graveyard, so that I may visit them if I like…but I do not have to if I do not want to.

However, beyond its practical utility, this book has offered me one of the most incredible insights into my Watson Year. This book has given me the opportunity to finally begin to understand the darkness I cannot stop thinking about.

Or, that is, what we all mean when we use darkness as a metaphor for suicidality.

The book speaks to oblivion.

Oblivion here coming from late Middle English: via Old French from Latin oblivio(n- ), from oblivisci ‘forget.’

And, I’ve been thinking that maybe just maybe, “darkness” is a mental abyss of oblivion.

“Darkness,” when used as a metaphor, is our way of comprehending the absence of memory – i.e., a kind of oblivion. Our memories of goodness, of joy, of love, and their respective affects as they relate to us personally are forgotten, “lost” in the darkness if you will.

Is darkness is a kind of oblivion?

If we consider that these things are forgotten and lost – we then can understand how current suicide prevention paradigms fall short. If the person, in this abyss of oblivion and cannot recall the things we all name as necessary to a fulfilling life – how can we ask them to remember? Why do we beg them to find hope – how could they? Hope necessitates we grab on to something in the darkness, it necessitates an understanding of time (a necessary condition for memory). But, how can we ask them to remember when they are in a state of oblivion?

Perhaps, instead, we must find the kindling for light within the darkness – not ask them to create it within themselves – for all we know, it might be impossible to do – there are some places in this world that are devoid of all light.

Humans can be this way too, I imagine.

I have been this way.

…perhaps this is why I love fireflies and glow-worms so much. Natural sources of light within the darkness – nothing man-made – nothing artificial – but natural illumination.

(See above for a photo of the glow worms filled in Waipu Caves here in Aotearoa.)

I have a hunch as to some promising sources of natural light to illuminate our personal oblivions.

Namely, curiosity.

I won’t say anything more here – but, I will leave you with this excerpt from a newspaper written in 1839 – I was trying to understand a connection between the dark, light, and oblivion…this is what I found.

Not sure where I’m off to next – COVID-19 is fucking up a lot of things.

I swam in the Pacific last night and climbed through caves and said hello to glow-worms earlier that day. This country is incredible and I will miss it in a different way than I miss the others.

I finally added photos to my ‘Gallery.’ Go check it out.

There is intentionally no song for this post.

I’ll put my travel mantra here – as I am unsure when the next blog post will be written.

 Let my naivete once more get the best of me and may my radical soul sitting recommence with confidence, knowing that I have people who love me scattered across the globe.

Me outside the caves crying because I love the worms so much.

Wash your hands, you sick fucks.

xx

Sam