Artwork by Abigail Dring
Where I am is a tight, 100 square foot home office with a small closet and cat toys scattered on the floor. It’s just off the left of my long, gray hallway, and I’ve ornamented it in soft yellows and pinks, photos of pastel cactus, and a large green hanging plant placed in a gold bowl. I try to mimic the outside. The fresh air, the bright trees. So I can feel some kind of heat on my shoulders, I place my ring light high above me, at an angle, to mimic the sun. But the air in this room is stagnant. I light an orange-scented candle to counteract the staleness.
Where I am is a curved white chair, velvet, and just wide enough for me to cross my legs between the arms. Most days I sit like a pretzel and wonder why my knees hurt. The chair is pushed against a solid desk. The desk has legs that move up and down in case I choose to stand that day. I rarely stand and instead reprimand myself for sitting. Still, I don’t get up.
Where I am is surrounded by books. Colorful, dark, all coordinated by style. Thrillers on the bottom left of the mid century bookcase. Romantic comedies on the shelf above that. I run my fingers along the spines of some first and early editions. They’re delicately displayed atop the hard-oak 1920s card-catalog-box I bought for my wedding. I love these books. It’s like being surrounded by old friends—old friends I can pick up and explore the world with. Seeking an adventure, my eyes slowly ping-pong across each book. I’ve grouped them by genre, and I notice the covers are in accidentally color-coordinating blocks. As I pause to make my choice, I tilt my head quizzically.
Romance and comedy have soft blue covers, sometimes pink, often white, with curled scripts and gentle font sizes.
Thrillers and horror are bound in black, their sharp white writing carved into the covers. The font is broken, I notice; scary, pronounced.
During a seminar related to unconscious bias in ethnicity, I learned that people are programmed to identify dark as something bad. The man teaching—tall, strong, messy hair and gentle eyes—explained that he made his children sit in pitch black rooms, alone, describing to him what made them happy. He’d turn off the lights, close the curtains and the doors, and ask them to sit cross-legged on the ground with their eyes closed.
My gut reaction was to think, poor children. Probably scared. He should’ve given them a nightlight.
But he’d expected that. How many of us are built to fear blackness? He asked. In a room of white faces, we kept our hands crossed and mouths clamped shut. How about nightmares? He offered. Dark allies? Black cats? Black ravens. Witches wear black, right? People commit “dark” deeds in the middle of “dark” nights.
Someone very brave or very stupid raised their hand and asked… So?
The man smiled gently. Isn’t it interesting that something as basic as language can program us to identify “dark” as something bad?
In that room, silently, I started listing things: Dark horse, dark days, it’s always darkest before the dawn. Blackout, black plague, black market, blacklist—all things that signify something terrible. That morning I’d baked a chocolate devil’s food cake. If I had made it vanilla, it would have been called angel.
Strange I’d never noticed that before.
Where I am is scrolling through my phone, tracing the origin stories of light and dark. Unsurprising, in Western culture, there’s a clear definition: light equals good; dark equals bad.
In Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, God—made of light—steers you away from the darkness.
Shakespeare used darkness in “Macbeth” to symbolize death.
Even the Big Bang, the creation of life, was an explosion of light in an otherwise nihility of blackness.
I seek out the etymology and find the word “black” has taken on several meanings. Evil, wicked. Sorrow, gloom. To burn. To disgrace. To dirty. At one point, it meant the absence of color.
I quietly observe this apprenticeship. The lessons were so subtle, I hadn’t quite realized what I’d been learning, but as I deconstruct even the most basic tenets of human influence, it’s hard to miss.
As a child, I remember my parents not letting me stay out past a certain time. It’s pretty standard, right? A curfew? But in the daylight, for hours, I’d ride my bike up and down the streets. I’d play in the park. I’d talk to strangers. Back then, I didn’t have a cell phone, but I never remember being grounded or reprimanded for not checking in. Come nightfall was a different story. If I was even a minute late, my mom would stand by the door with her arms crossed and a steely expression cemented to her face. “Bad things happen when it gets dark outside,” she’d told me. I hadn’t thought to question it. Darkness, afterall, was the time for nightmares. I had nightmares when the sun was out too. People just called them something softer: daydreams.
Where I am is back in that seminar with the man asking us to shift focus. How do we explain things that are good? He’d asked.
The group began listing things:
White light.
White witch.
When the bright light of the sun comes up, we’re safe.
Light in the dark means we’re protected.
I sit on the scratchy carpet. The sun is streaming in. The overhead lamp is harsh and bright. A lightbulb goes off above my head. Where I am is in that epiphany. That painful, wildly upsetting epiphany.
Greenlight, limelight, when I’m in a good mood, I feel light hearted. White knight, white wedding, when I raise the white flag, the war is over.
Even a lightbulb signifies positive change. Now, I try to remember the negative. What’s the opposite of a lightbulb going off above my head? Dim? Dim-witted? It means the less light there is—the less whiteness that exists—the worse we’re deemed to be.
Where I am now is staring at my books, noticing the pattern. Scary, difficult things in black; warm fuzzies fused together in white. How embedded human fear, hate, and rage is in a simple shift of a lens.
In Chinese philosophy, there’s a concept of dualism called yin-yang. Yin represents the feminine energy. It also represents the darkness. Yang is the masculine. It encompasses light. Neither is more or less meaningful than the other. They are harmonious. A constant chase for balance.
In Gnosticism, you’ll find darkness and light are merely cyclical. A continuation of our natural rhythm.
Even in animals, we find symmetry. There are some that are diurnal, others nocturnal. The latter thrive when the moon replaces the sun.
Language can unconsciously shape us. The oppression is so infiltrated, we don’t even realize the injustice dripping from our mouths. It’s all consuming and our responsibility is to acknowledge that. To learn to question, rather than accept.
Where I am is my gray and pastel office. Cracking the window to get the air circulating, I blow out the candle and close the curtains. Re-organizing my books, I stack them in blended and intricate patterns. Then I turn off the lights and sit in the dark, listing all the things that in this quiet, serene moment make me happy.