TRANSCRIPT - Episode 193: Withstanding

May 11th, 2022

Kristen Zaza

[Eerie theme music plays]

Waves keep rising, cresting, and falling

Over and over

Both in my dreams and my waking life

And in the world.

As there is love and growth, quickly followed by chaos and destruction

Times of peace and plenty, times of conflict and scarcity,

It can be so easy to give in to the violent waters and let them sweep you away somewhere

But remember how beautiful they look from the shore?

All that noise and chaos and destruction

How it dulls itself to a low murmur from a distance

When you can see it for an ocean and not simply an endlessness of struggle.

It's a comforting thought

To those who are not trying to swim.

This is the problem, I suppose.

But also the opportunity for oneness, for unity.

It is just an idea, just an image, do not be afraid.

It is not the time to be afraid.

What is it time for?

There's a noise outside.

I almost don't want to investigate.

It sounds like swords clashing and fires raging and bodies screaming

It sounds like Hatred

Hm. Terrible.

It sounds like

Reaching, reaching, reaching, not to hold, but to take

It sounds like deep and terrible hunger for control

I stopped writing about tyrant-kings

That did not make them go away.

It's all right.

Do not be afraid.

It's not the time for that.

Sit with me in this room

This dark room in this high tower - I mean, building, apartment building, of course, of course, that's what it is -

With all the lights off

Sit across from me

The only light, the one from the candle in the window, flickering

The window wide open

The sounds on the wind, the sounds of chaos and conflict, they will begin to fade away

And what we will have instead is you and me - all of you, all of me, all of us, really -

And a Tarot deck.

It can't solve everything, I know. But I asked it a question, you see, and I hope that the answer will help us, all of us who are interested in not necessarily fighting, but rather, in standing up, in standing for each other.

I trust that it's you. I hope that it's you.

I trust and hope that you are the kind of person who looks at another person and sees that they are a person just like you

And does not seek to take from them

To control them

To dictate their experience

While we are one, we each of us have a body for our own experience

With blood, with bones, with skin, with guts

And a soul

With a will

None greater than any other's

For it's all the same soul, anyway, some of us just choose to ignore it.

Do not ignore it

Neither in yourself, nor in anyone else.

I trust that you are the kind of person who can hear this and understand.

I know that you are.

I love you for that.

I asked my Tarot cards a question.

As we heard the noises of the fight below, the war being waged on so many

I asked my Tarot cards:

"What is needed in this fight? What can I give? What can I do?"

When I say I

know that I also mean you

For you're listening, so I trust also that you care.

I drew the Seven of Wands.

Bliss, utter bliss, at the purity of law that exists in magic

it knows, it knows

For the Seven of Wands speaks of perseverance and the need for protection. The need to defend one's position. One's stance. It speaks of being challenged, being threatened.

Courage and Strength and Persistence and Determination are needed

To protect

what one knows is right.

Dare I say, at risk of breaking the metaphor so perhaps you might know on some level what I am speaking about

To protect

One's

Rights.

In the midst of horror, so many different kinds of horror all across this beautiful and fragile world of ours

There is beauty in chaos and order to the point where you have no choice but to understand that magic is real.

Even if that magic is simply you understanding what I am speaking about when I say

We need to be the Seven of Wands for each other right now.

Protection.

Defense.

Courage.

Conviction.

Is this my room, or is it your room?

I don't think it matters

Anyway it's probably both so don't worry about it.

Even if you're in a car or on a bus

Or in an office or on a street

Or in a Forest, literal, metaphorical, doesn't matter

This is our room

Where we will work some magic.

In this room of yours and mine and all of ours,

By the open window,

You hear something.

(Remember that characters are hard lately, so tonight you are the character. And what a character you are! But we'll get back to that later, dear friend.)

What is that sound?

Very familiar, because I've described it countless times before

It's a sound I'm rather obsessed with

It's the sound of huge, flapping, feathered wings

Louder and deeper somehow than the sound we're more accustomed to, that little flapping of pigeons or seagulls, no, no, no, not those kind of wings

Immense

Powerful

Wings.

I had those.

I had different ones last week.

Skeletal wings made of tree roots

I forgot about them for a minute. I think they're still there. Huh.

But these

These are different.

Powerful.

Large.

Not from anything like a Heaven or a hell, because i don't really think those places are real, or at least they're not quite what I was told they were.

But wings

Born here

Born from an obsidian throne, long ago shattered.

[A chant; voices in a frightening, minor harmony, singing “Libera Me”]

Ah, there you are, my Beloved.

Do you see him?

Is he outside your window, too?

He's not alone, either.

Who have you brought with you, my Sweet?

Wow.

It's all of them!

My friends, it's all of them!

How terrible they are with their huge white wings! Their golden eyes!

How frightening they seem in their gilded armour!

One with a flaming sword! One with a heavy staff! One with a great shield!

And my Gentleman, only wielding a single red rose!

How wonderful! How dreadful! How confounding it is, to see all those I've wrestled with, within and without, all those I've loved and hated, all those whose eyes I've looked into with defiance and courage and perseverance, here outside my window!

What are they doing?

We have had our difference, they and I.

Philosophical differences.

The wrestling of power within each of us, the struggle for it, the hunger for it,

And it ended in the ultimate relinquishing of all of that.

And it was only then that I allowed myself to change

To become all that I want to become.

I cannot say of course that I have succeeded. I am not always what I dream I am, not every minute of every day

But to have the freedom to be it

To have the freedom to explore every nook and cranny of my cobwebbed soul

To have the freedom to use my body, human or forest or fallen creature or whatever on earth kind of thing I am,

To have the freedom to be who I am at my fullest

Has allowed me to let go of fear of any of it.

I am not afraid of myself.

I am not afraid of you.

And I am not afraid of Them.

These angels, these creatures with celestial weapons and such divine beauty

When I loved myself much less, they sought to destroy me.

Because I was a terrible villain, you see.

I was a very very awful thing, made of hunger and loneliness and claws and fangs

Of course they wanted to stop me.

They hover outside of my window with wide eyes and wide smiles and wide wings

Weapons wielded in their hands

Grinning so frighteningly

I stand - beg your pardon my friend, I will leave you sitting here with the Seven of Wands while I go to my window - and I stare out at them.

No glass between us.

I can feel the air from their beating wings.

I wonder if they will try to destroy me.

I wonder if they even can.

I look beyond them and I see the sky absolutely filled with wings.

Yes, it is also filled with smoke - smoke from the fight raging below, smoke from the gruesome and wonderful city I find myself in -

but it is filled still with wings.

At first I wonder if they are more vengeful angels.

More incarnations of mythological things that I have feared and loved and dwelled upon my entire long life.

But I cannot quite make out their faces.

Some of them I can, some of them I recognize for their having made themselves known to me in the past

But most of them, I cannot see their faces.

I do not know who they are.

I know only that they fly through the air, watching the conflict below raging in the night with a sadness, a rage, a desperate kind of discomfort.

Some of them take action

Some swoop down to save a crying soul

Some shake their feathers loose to distract an aggressor below

Some scream so loudly that the graspers who reach to take and not to hold need to use their grasping hands instead to cover their ears.

Not fighting

Not attacking

Not destroying

Just

Protecting.

Huh.

I stretch my wings behind me with a groan and a tear

It hurts, each time

They used to have black feathers, just like my sweet and terrible beloved stranger, still there by my window, hand extended, grinning broadly

But I stopped being his creature and began to be my own

And now their bones are made of tree roots and their feathers are green leaves. My wings.

So that's where my forest went.

I take his hand and stand on the window sill

and I fly out.

Are you coming?

Yes, you can.

You have them too, you know.

These wings.

What are yours made of?

Fly out of this imaginary room with me.

If you like.

Good.

Now look at the world below.

You've seen it a million times before with your waking eyes - maybe it's been just roads and streets and houses, or trees and bushes, maybe water, I don't know, I'm not sure where you live

But now it's different.

Down there, even if it is a city, you'll see those dream-trees, those ghostly things. They're here always. The remnants of a world long gone. A dream-world, a spirit-world, superimposed on the one you're usually in.

And among them - in both worlds, the waking and the dream world - is where the fighting is occurring.

Graspers, hunters, tyrant-kings,

fighting

Creatures, ghosts, monsters,

Just like us.

The strangest part - and perhaps the one that is the most terrifying of all -

Is the way those beasts are here, too, just watching from the shadows, from behind the trees, from up top of the buildings.

They too are in the real world and the waking world and the dream world

Beasts with snapping jaws and grabbing claws

And red eyes

And coins in their teeth

They do not fight

They just watch

And their grin - golden and wide and drooling and hungry, so, so, so hungry -

Is far worse than any monster's, angel's, or demon's I've ever seen.

And I've seen some terrifying smiles in my dreams, let me tell you.

They are watching.

They know.

But you know what else?

We also know.

They know that we know.

We know that they know that we know.

And that frightens them.

One of them sees us, flying above, helping, defending, protecting, not playing whatever cruel and brutal game is occurring below.

It snarls.

It tries to leap up and grab at your wings -

but don't fear, you can fly higher.

It howls to signal the others

And they look up and see all of us, too

And they growl and howl and bite and snap

Coins falling out of their mouth

And then they panic and try to eat them back up again

It would be frightening

It would be terrifying

It would be utterly devastating

If it wasn't so funny!

[She laughs.Music begins - a squeezebox accordion, a strumming guitar]

It's all right to laugh at them!

Go on!

Try!

[The music is joined by the chorus singing “Libera Me” again]

A chorus of laughing winged protectors

Take the joy where you can!

All of these winged things

I think

Are they each of you?

Is this the game?

We each began in a little room and then flew out a little window to gain just a little perspective on the chaos?

Try to see how we can help? Who we can defend?

Find each other in the night sky

See who is really watching and waiting to snap up the spoils like leeches?

They can't catch us

We have wings

And they're weighed down by all that gold.

We can keep protecting.

And we must.

We can be frightening guardian angels

For those below

For each other

And for ourselves.

Come back to the room now, if you like.

Or stay out the fresh night air.

If you fly a little higher, the air becomes clear

The moon become bright

The stars are friendly

And you can see it all from a great height, from a great distance, and just like the waves of that ocean, it's quite beautiful from afar.

Even the fighting.

Even the grasping.

Even the defending.

From a distance, you can see everyone

Everything

And that, even this far away,

You're still a part of it

A very necessary part of it

And that's pretty beautiful.

Stay here

Or come back to the room where it's warm and safe

EIther way

The room and the night sky are there for you when you need them.

Ebbs and flows.

Rising, cresting, crashing.

And so it is good also to rest.

There will be more waves tomorrow.

Goodnight.

[Eerie theme music]

(Host speaks as Kristen:)

Hi everybody, Kristen Zaza here - your writer, host, creator, narrator, podcaster, team of one, behind On a Dark, Cold Night. Thank you so much for listening to Episode 193 and sitting with me tonight. I hope that you are safe and well out there. I'm officially Covid-free today and enjoying better health this week, thanks so much again for your support and understanding in this rather chaotic time.

Not just for me, of course, but for many people all across the world.

I hope it's clear what this episode was about.

If you are someone who feels that your rights are being threatened, I want to send good rest to you tonight and hopefully a little reprieve. Rest gives strength, and we'll need strength. I'm sorry that we're always needing to fight and defend, seemingly over and over and over. But I know that together, we can protect each other, and I intend to do that to the best of my ability. Everyone deserves a safe journey through this world, and the right to navigate that world in their own body as they see fit. No one has the right to your bodily autonomy but you.

On that note, I would like to say that if you are in a position to donate, there are lots of organizations right now in the States that are working hard to protect those who need it. I can direct your attention to plannedparenthood.org, to genderjustice.us, to transgenderlawcenter.org, thetrevorproject.org, just to name a few. For LGBTQ+ mental health support, you can visit thetrevorproject.org/get-help/, and I also found a great list of talk and textlines for support around pregnancy, abortion and miscarriage, available at www.heyjane.co/resources#talk-textlines . In Canada, you can access the LGBT Youthline at youthline.ca, and If you have a suggestion for a helpful organization for women's rights, transgender rights, resources, helplines, anything like that, regardless of where it or you are located, please feel free to tweet them at me so I can share them further. I know that right now it's the very least I can do, but I'm actively seeking more ways to help, so please feel free to send any groups or places you know are doing good work to help people who need it my way. Thank you, my friends.

Sending my warm thanks to everyone who supports the show on a monthly basis via Patreon. Thank you so much for helping me continue making this show. Every supporter of $1 or more a month receives access to my complete soundtrack, while everyone who supports at $5 or more gets that and access to a monthly Tarot-reading video I upload for every full moon. You can learn more at patreon.com/darkcoldnight. And if you'd prefer to donate one-time only without those perks, check out my page on Ko-fi.com - at ko-fi.com/darkcoldnight. And we have t-shirts and hoodies for purchase at bonfire.com/on-a-dark-cold-night. As always, it would be extremely helpful if you're enjoying the show if you left me a review on iTunes, or wherever else you like to rate and review podcasts. You can follow me on social media - on Twitter @ADarkColdNight, instagram at darkcoldnightpodcast, on my Facebook or Youtube pages just called On a Dark, Cold Night, or on TikTok at kristenzaza.

Thank you so much for listening my friends.

And thank you for being someone who is compassionate

Someone who cares for others

Someone who believes in everyone's rights, dignity and autonomy.

We are all one

And so we must care for each other. We must defend each other however we can.

I wrote something on Twitter for Mother's Day.

I shared a little bit from an old Episode - from "The Empress", Episode 99, from Season 1, and a little something else.

I'm going to share it again here. I hope you don't mind.

"I am the Empress.

She is the Mother, and I am the Empress.

Though I have no children to call my own,

I have that which I'm mother and wife and sister and friend to.

And that is she who waits with empty eyes,

waiting to be filled - With me.

Happy Mother's Day

To all who have mothered a child,

To all who mother other children regardless of age or blood,

To all who mother ourselves with the ferocity of a lion

Mother can be a verb

Mother can be all of us who love and nurture and protect and fight.

Mother each other."

Thank you my friends.

Please take care of each other.

Please defend each other against those who reach to take and not to hold.

Mother each other.

Pleasant Dreams, my Sweets.

[Eerie theme music]

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