ed note: conversation between Kyra and Von, on the porch of the cottage
Papa used to take me into the woods at night. We didn’t camp. Just a long walk to a clearing where we would sit in total darkness and I would see his face only by the light of stars. Sometimes we would talk and his voice, as too mine, sounded so very different wrapped in that darkness, where the voice was for you and only you, where the only thing happening was union, connection, of one person to another. In that cocoon of night, wrapped in the heavy cloak of hushed fir, there was no multi-tasking. No talking while performing some other task. No clock of a to-do list ticking away the words. No eyes looking over your shoulder to the door or upon the desk to paper. In that place, there was just him and me, a grandfather and a granddaughter, talking.
The voice is different in that environment. Sacred. The way voice is in the great cathedrals. On some nights, of cloud, there were no stars and when Papa turned out the light, you could not see your hand in front of your face. So we sat without sight, as if with the switching off of the lamp, we had switched off our eyes, becoming blind as bats. The voice then becomes everything. The darkness is absolute. And the feeling is of sea, adrift on the great ocean. And that voice, his voice, was my tether, my belay--the words, his words, washing over me like warm waves and I floated on his stories, his lessons, his ability to paint with the tongue. Those nights, just the two of us, of attention so purely devoted of one to the other, were, then and now, as fingers in the soul, gently caressing, nourishing, healing.
As you know, Papa was one to show, not tell. Yet, on those nights, from the outside looking in, with sight taken by utter night, one would think all he had was tell. (Long pause)
But all the talking wasn’t telling, was it? asked Von.
No. The talking had nothing to do with talking. The stories told on those nights have faded, some forgotten. The lesson wasn’t in the words. It was in the act. Using the darkness to connect not person to person or grandparent to grandchild, but heart to heart and soul to soul. The power of that connection, of pure unadulterated attention paid and given, was as communion solemn, of grace bestowed, of love flowing as love can only flow as if when we sat, our two energies begin to flow, circular, from opposite directions. And at some point in the night, the circle connected and where there were two energies before, now, only one. I think he knew this. I think he knew exactly what he was doing. And you know what?
What?
It didn’t have a damn thing to do with what was said.
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By way of backstory, this chapter finds its roots in my own childhood. My grandfather had a farm. From time to time, my father and I would go and stay for awhile. And every once in awhile, when he would walk the back pastures, into the woods, late at night, he would take me with him. The darkness was total. When we arrived at the clearing where we would spend some time just sitting (not much talking), and he would turn the flashlight off, the experience was unnerving, such a level of darkness so rarely experienced, knowing another person is just a few feet away, but you can't see them. Just total darkness.
Woven into this shard of my past is the tread of dislike I have for the modern concept of multi-tasking. What I mean in this context is not the necessity of multi-tasking as often demanded in our professional lives, but the carry over of this mentality into our personal lives and especially when it comes to dominate the very relationships we hold most dear.
So, as so many Papa/Kyra chapters, this is really a note to myself and a letter to my son, that perhaps one day when I am not near or perhaps someplace beyond his reach on this earth, he will have these missals, if I may use that word. My motivation, in part, having lost my father, and having no such record or writing but only fading memory, is to take a different path, to leave behind something for him that may only make sense in twenty or thirty years, but something that says: I love you son. This is for you.
For what it's worth, my writing tends to habit a lot of alliteration. I have never, not once, attempted with write with alliteration nor has the idea to do so ever entered my mind consciously. In other words, I apologize for where it seems a device. The writing "just is" as it flows from mind to finger to screen. As odd as it is to say, thinking is rather low on the list when I write. In its place is just a flowing from within to without.
This post had me tearing for several reasons part of which personal and the knowledge held already that there is always room for improvement in my relationships. Mostly for the communication, the heart within and the heart behind. What you create here upon these pages, my goodness, it is more than literature, it is more than art. It is love. Unlimited.
Sigh. All I can say is you make me re-read my own work and see if as if for the first time. Blessings to you for what you give to me. My eyes. I think that is it. You give me eyes to see what I have written for to write is to be blind to one's own words. I thank you for that.
The voice is different in that environment
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