on finding yourself ‘in the DARK’
In the DARK, the ARK holds resources you didn't know you had.
This email, and ‘wORd: the golden oracle is within’ deck I’m crafting, is a practice of playfully ‘unpacking’ words to delight in giving them new meaning and unveil gifts of expanded perception.
Hopefully these summons into the art of wORd contemplation will help you to delve into the ark of riches of your inner resources. Play with me, and share any comments!
While I am trying to distill the deck’s number of cards at the moment, this morning I was still thinking about adding a card - and placing ‘DARK’ in the ‘PLACE’ category. Read along and let me know your thoughts.
To be "in the dark" is to be in the ‘nothingness’ - without answers, without power, without any certainty you might have come to rely on.
While visibility is zero, it is in this very place in which we submit to, and are gifted with a deeper intimacy with our other senses.
The dark asks you to feel more than you've ever seen.
The dark invites another kind of sight.
After a heart-wrenching ending. After the unravelling of who you thought you were…
… the dark becomes a place for sacred undoing and becoming—a vessel from which to move into the next version of you - as you fumble for the keys.
The dark is the place you can:
park yourself and rest
mark out some needed boundaries
spark something unexpected
hark the arrival of light
embark on a new path
In the DARK, you discover your ARK—
In part a treasure chest of truths too tender to be seen under bright light,
but also what has always been meant for you, waiting and intact.
If the dark is the unknown,
the ark might be the place to get ‘resourced’
to carry on through it.
We see with our attention and intention.
With instinct. With memory. With sound.
With longing. With feeling.
I often remind the young photographers I’ve mentored that eyesight is only one way of seeing. Our other senses—touch, sound, scent, even the subtler senses like interoception, intuition, and extrasensory perception—play a vital role in how we interpret the world. And in the dark, these quieter ways of knowing are honed.
Quite literally my dear friend and photographer Laura Jane Petelko, who, after three years facing a prognosis of impending blindness, turned toward in-camera abstraction—not to obscure, but to reveal.
She began removing information, breaking free from photography's traditional relationship with detail and resolution, in order to capture the feeling an image was trying to imply.
Her work invites you beyond the visible and into the essential.
Spirit, how long from the Endless Gone series - Laura Jane Petelko
When asking Laura Jane if I could share this image with you here, she shared with me a song she associates with it called Melody Noir by Patrick Watson.
Esta melodia que es el abismo adentro de mi
This melody that is the abyss inside me
El abismo adentro de mi
The abyss inside me
write a passage
What dark melody are you being invited to befriend?
What becomes clearer when you stop trying to fix what needs letting go and you begin to adjust to the dark?
Is there something new that wants to emerge you could give a shot?
As we learn to navigate our own darkness with curiosity rather than fear, we naturally become more present to others who are fumbling for their own keys.
Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people. - Carl Jung
The intimacy we have developed with uncertainty becomes a gift we can offer. (By the way, for more on embracing uncertainty you will appreciate Gil Deacon’s substack and new podcast A love affair with the unknown.
I can’t help but leave you with Aretha’s Spirit in the Dark,
Are you getting the spirit?
Are you getting it in the dark?
Thanks for being here together in the ether,
Marina
