A shot (of writing) in the dark by Mark David

It is late at night. Very dark is the night. Hardly a streetlight to shed any light on anything. The same things that are there in the light of day are there in the dark of night. But they seem very different, whether they even appear at all. Everything appears just that shade of dangerous, mysterious in the dark of the night. You have no clue what that movement you can identify during the light of day might be in the dark of the night. It is just a sound or a movement. It could be anything. Just like your thoughts. During the day they rarely amount to much of anything. At night, in the dark and quiet of the night, they can amount to anything. At night you can't see anything but you can see everything. See the things you miss during the day even though they are there all the time and right in front of you. You don't see them because you are looking elsewhere.
I like walking in the dark. The darkness. So much more peaceful. Less kids. Less dogs. Less people. More peace. I walk for the peace. Sure, I walk for the exercise, but I also walk for the peace, and to gather my thoughts into some sort of semblance of gather.
The darkness. Less distractions to distract me from my thoughts. I am easily distracted and so reflective that any semblance of light that sheds light on anything distracts me from gathering my thoughts into what I want and need them to be. The darker it gets, or seems, the clearer my thoughts seem to be. It seems that the dark night is my bright light.
It seems I can go all night. At some point I am so in the zone that I don't even remember where I am or that I am even walking. My feet and legs are moving fast in the right direction and my subconscious mind knows the way, but I have no conscious mind of where I am. I am totally lost in my thoughts. Like driving a car on a road and route I have driven a thousand times before, I just carry on without paying any attention to it. I only pay attention to my thoughts now. I am lost in those thoughts. I will find my way home because my mind always knows where home is. I will find my way back on the long dark walk because my muse knows where my inspiration needs to go to be fed its daily meal of survival.
I will arrive at home but I will have no recollection of the things along the way I would have noticed in the light of day. I am just a vessel moving in the space and time but no vision other than my creative mind, which is not paying any attention to the route I take. The only thing that matters, or that I remember, are the thoughts that have nothing to do with the walking.
There is no chance of distraction. Or not much of a chance anyway. The real world life doesn't exist on my walk from somewhere to nowhere and then back to somewhere. Somewhere I don't always want to be. I like being nowhere. Being no one. Being nothing but a sounding board for my own thoughts and ideas. Not being pulled back into the reality of life. I like existing on the outside of the reality of life. If even just for an hour out of my day. I am isolated within myself.
Isolation is togetherness and oneness for me. The more I isolate myself the more together I feel. It won't last and it cannot. I know that. I accept that. It must be brief and that is always the way it will be. I must cherish it for what it is. A brief respite from the grind. The mental grind of life that eats away at my creativity and vitality. Slowly dissipating and looking for replenishment. The long walk in the dark replenishes my dissipating vitality, only to begin dissipating again as soon as it is done. It is like oxygen to me. It has to always be replaced or I will die.
It is a shot in the dark. A shot of creative adrenaline in the dark. I can write, but I cannot write well if I don't replenish it in this way.
A shot of writing in the dark.
Now, the light is trying to creep in. I don't mind. I expect the light to try and creep in. It always does. Darkness is only appreciated when it is compared to the light. We need light to appreciate dark. We appreciate the light much more when we gain perspective in the dark. They are each others ying to each others yang.
I am walking in the dark, as the sun begins to rise and the light finds its way into the picture. I know I am almost home now. The darkness has ended and the light takes over. I have gained my thoughts. Gathered my thoughts. In the light of the day, I will form those thoughts into something that will carry me to the next night, when I will venture out again into the dark and try to see the light...in the dark.