Episode 256: Conversations with Forgotten Gods, Part 2gb80uijoa\]l;’/’;;;;;;;;

December 18th, 2023

Kristen Zaza

[Eerie Theme Music.]

[Your Narrator:]

A very strange thing

I was walking down the stone path that leads towards my castle

I am on my way back

I have been on my way back

For what feels like a lifetime now.

And yet it never feels as though it’s growing closer to me.

If anything, it is farther away, further down the path, unreachable, intangible

Maybe as it always has been, and I’ve just been lying this whole time

(It’s wholly possible)

On either side of the path, there are streetlamps. Elegant things made of brass and glass, with living flame inside of them, like the red/orange of a selfish god

I am walking, I have been walking, this path is mine and I have been walking it

And I pass streetlamp after streetlamp, yet counting them does no good, again, because the castle does not grow any closer no matter how long I walk

Fun thing about time

Fun thing about space

(Can you guess what the fun thing about time and space is?)

Snow is falling slowly, perhaps a little more slowly than it naturally would in your world, something to do with time and space and the way they’re just so fun here

It’s falling slowly but the ground is covered with it faster than I would imagine possible.

My feet move more heavily, they take laboured steps through the thick white stuff

They’re frozen, I can’t feel them

And as white snow fills my vision, densely, more and more slowly, the air so thick with it it’s like I’m swimming in it

It’s not falling anymore, it’s just staying, building, piling up

I can no longer feel my body or see it

Oh yes, that’s right, silly me. I keep forgetting.

All is white

And when everything you see is white

It might as well be all shadow

It’s just a little bit different, not too much,

And the sound of the snow breezing by my ears is a kind of shadow of sound, too

[The sound of snow breezing by your ears. Breath. A hum.]

This feels familiar.

I should be afraid.

Because there is, rather uncharacteristically, no snow in my body’s world

But in my castle’s world, it feels the rules do not apply.

The snow had to go somewhere, didn’t it?

It all went here.

Someone’s coming.

I can feel it.

Just like last time.

Only this time, behind my closed eyes, the snow has settled in there, too.

I was visited last time we spoke by a forgotten god; one bright as fire and temperamental as it, too

Who is visiting me, this time? On this snowy evening behind my eyes?

I am so lonesome, in this snow

I am just trying to get back inside, back to the castle, where there is a warm fire, a room with stories, a room with fiction, a room for crying, a room for praying, a room for creating, a room for everything

How are the flowers?

Are they cold?

I haven’t even thought of them

How are the creatures in the dungeon? Poor things

How is the hungry librarian? How is she?

I need to get back to the castle

I need to make sure that the critters from the pit aren’t taking it over

Things haven’t been the same since Halloween

Since I fell down

I don’t know if I came back up

I think I’m still falling

At least I’ll fall into soft snow.

[Music; snowy and menacing]

There’s music once more, always there will be that, unfailing, unwavering

It’s misty

Falling, too

Lilting

Like snowflakes gently settling and dropping and resting

Cold

Distant

Wait, it’s changing

Today I came back to writing this

I keep having trouble writing because I am stuck in this moment and it’s hard for me to even possibly imagine another moment from this one because this one is so perfect, in all its pain and ugliness and suffering, in all of it there are green things still insisting on growing, children still refusing to stop playing, people still persisting with falling in love, spirits still leaving bodies for brighter and stranger places, ghosts still haunting the places they think they’ll find their bodies, monsters I birthed into existence in the shadows of my castle, monsers I birthed into existence in the shadows of your night-time mind,

Wait they distracted me

In all of the difficult darkness of this world, there is still nothing in the entire cosmos as glorious

As being in this moment

I don’t think I’m able to leave it

I’m sorry

I can’t

This is where it all is

Don’t ask me to leave my Beloved

Don’t take me away from this

No no it’s all right

It’s all right, I can do it.

Once upon a - [awful gagging sound]

[in a gravelly, monstrous voice]

Once upon a - [monstrous roaring]

[her voice is different; as if possessed]

LOOK UP, CHILD

LITTLE ONE, LITTLE FINGERS TYPING, LITTLE LOW VOICE IN MICROPHONE

LOOK UP AND SEE MY GREAT AND TERRIBLE WORKS

THE CASTLE IS DESTROYED

CRUMBLING, STONE-BY-STONE

I TOLD YOU TO STOP BUILDING TOWERS

I HAVE TORN DOWN EVERY TOWER YOU HAVE BUILT

A TOWER, A CELLAR, A LIGHTHOUSE, A TREEHOUSE, APARTMENT, APARTMENT, APARTMENT, CASTLE

I HAVE TORN THEM DOWN TIME AFTER TIME AFTER TIME TO TRY AND SHOW YOU THE TRUTH

THERE IS NOWHERE TO GO, THERE IS NO FICTION TO RUN TO

THERE IS NO OTHER PLACE

BUT HERE

WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH IT, LITTLE ONE, LITTLE TYPING FINGERS, LITTLE LOW VOICE?

WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?

I am not here

All is white behind my eyes this time

I trust in the spirit that takes me from this place to the other

The spirit I call my own

I trust in it more than this vengeful god who tears down my fictional palaces

FINE, TEAR THEM DOWN

It’s fine

I shall just open my eyes in another place

A place that is quiet

With music, sacred usic

An open window with the sound of cars and rain behind it

A warm, climate-change December Rain

The trees beyond to the forest are there and I’m certain there are spirits watching me but I AM BUSY

I AM CREATING

THERE IS A GOD WHO SEEKS YOUR ATTENTION

THE GOD DEMANDING NOW

THE GOD OF DEMANDING NOW

THE GOD OF THE DEMANDING NOW

THE GOD WHO HATES ENTERTAINMENT, WHO CANNOT ABIDE DISTRACTION OR PERMIT ESCAPISM

BECAUSE THE MINUTE YOU ESCAPE, YOU ESCAPE THEM

There are those in this world who want you to sleep

There are appeasing fictions and arousing fictions. Enciting, enticing, fictions

But at the end of them they are finished and the characters are done and we all feel good

We feel great about that little world we made

God help me, I don’t find I’m able to create dreamworlds anymore, little fictions, oh god help me I can’t

Don’t make me go

Don’t make me leave this moment

This imperfect moment where you are

Oh god help me

Let me stay here

Le t me be more than letters typed on a screen, soundwaves floating up and down on audacity, fingers tapping on keys of a laptop or a piano

Let me be the pain that makes them move

Let me be the love that drives them to existence

Don’t let me slip away into sleep

This is a sleep podcast

Help me wake up

I am frozen,

When I was a child and then a teenager, I experienced sleep paralysis often

I have told you about it, haven’t I?

I would wake up in the middle of the night and the tv would be off - horror of horrors, because I always had to leave it on, because voices comforted me, silence terrified me, darkness was the worst of it all -

So I’d wake up to total darkness and silence and be absolutely horrified

I’d reach to try to switch on the lights but the lightswitch didn’t work - a common trait of dreams, but everything seemed so real, I could swear I thought my arm moved, yet it seems I can’t move at all, I must have imagined it

[Music again; just a plucking bass, sighing voice and eerie piano]

Just as I imagined those eyes watching me from under the nightstand, blue, bright, illuminating just a little of a crouched figure, watching me

Or another time, red eyes, tall and shrouded, stood tall, watching me from the foot of my bed

Or another time watching me through the door-frame, the figure of a woman who could be me or my mother or my long lost grandmother, just checking to make sure that in my paralysis I was still breathing

It was so frightening and yet I was never in danger

If I just gave into the stillness…what more could I have learned?

I am experiencing a similar feeling now

I move through life, through daily life, through creation, creativity, relationships, work, travel, etcetera etcetera etcetera etcetera etcetera

But a part of me is stuck - motionless - still - surrendering -

I can’t leave

I created this castle

You can tear it down

But I’m still here

What will I do when it’s gone?

I have stopped planning, I cannot plan, I cannot

It’s 2 am

Sunday

I’m trying

Listeners sometimes say, “It sounds like you’re tired, you can take a break”

I am tired but not of what you think.

I need us to talk to each other.

I need us to wake up.

I am tired of us sleeping and pretending

This is it

I AM THE GOD OF NOW

AM THE GOD OF 2AM

SUNDAY

10AM Monday WHEN YOU TRY TO WAKE UP AND KEEP DOING WHATEVER THIS IS

BEFORE YOU GO TO WORK

AND I DISAPPEAR FOR A LITTLE

BUT I’LL COME BACK

THE NEXT TIME YOU ALLOW IT TO BE QUIET

THE NEXT TIME YOU TURN OFF THE TV AND JUST SIT THERE STARING AT THE BLACK SCREEN

THE NEXT TIME YOU LIE IN BED AND WORRY THAT YOU DIDN’T DO ENOUGH TODAY

THE MOMENT YOU START THINKING THAT INSTEAD YOU WILL JUST LIE THERE AND LISTEN

THE MOMENT YOU THINK YOU MIGHT BE ASLEEP BUT YOU SEE EYES WATCHING YOU ACROSS THE ROOM

THE MOMENT YOU THINK YOU MGIHT TURN THE LIGHT ON BUT IT WOULD RUIN EVERYTHING

THAT’S ME

I AM TEARING DOWN YOUR CASTLE

YOU DON’T NEED IT

AND IF YOU DO

MAKE A NEW ONE

YOU FOOL

I AM THE GOD OF NOW

THE GOD OF 2:01 AM

THE GOD OF WHAT MUSIC GOES WITH THE SOUND OF SHEER TERROR

THE GOD OF WHY ARE WE NOT STOPPING AND HELPING

THE GOD OF THE QUIET OF THE TREES ACROSS THE WAY THROUGH YOUR OPEN WINDOW

THE GOD OF IS THAT A HAND REACHING AND BRUSHING YOUR HAIR ASIDE WHILE YOU TRY TO SLEEP?

SHUSH SHUSH LITTLE FINGERS ON THE KEYBOARD, LITTLE LOW VOICE IN THE MICROPHONE

LITTLE BODY IN THE BED

REST NOW

SLEEP LITTLE BODY IN THE BED

SLEEP

All right, I give up.

No story this week.

Just nonsense, stillness, nonsense, and a deep fear of the nothing in my imagination.

Just going to go to the window to look at the empty street.

It’s wet with rain

The rain that came instead of snow

I feel worry about that briefly but it is what it is

The trees across the street are still, there is no strong wind

The night is quiet

I know the city isn’t quiet everywhere, I know the world isn’t quiet everywhere, but it’s pretty quiet here

I’ve been writing whatever comes to mind

I have said before that I need to resort to stream of consciousness writing, it’s been six years, stories cannot always happen, it is what it is

It’s 2:15am

Sunday night

Said I’d have an episode

Is this an episode?

Oh it’s an episode all right

It’s 2:!6am

Sunday night, I guess morning

Is this horror?
I’m terrified, so it must be

It’s 2:17am

Monday morning

It’s not insomnia if I refuse to sleep

For over 30 years, at least for as long as I can remember, I have been trying to see through this world into another

Trying to jump into books quite literally

Trying to smell tomatoes so deeply I am absorbed into the soil

It’s 2:18am

Somewhere in the cosmos

That happens to be here

I once wrote a story about what I thought it would feel like to be absorbed into a black hole

I am not afraid-

It’s 2:19 am

Time moves too quickly here

My computer must be making that up as my fingers move on the keys

It’s 2:20 am

I can’t keep up with it

I am trying to keep up with everything, but it’s sliplping away as I stay still, sleep paralysis setting in, reaming eyes

It’s 2:21am

A person has appeared on the street below, outside of my window

Looking up at me

Smiling, expecting something,

The trees are fading into

It’s 2:22am

Stones

The trees have turned to stones lining the wall of a castle

A wooden door made of the trees appearing

But the carvings of dark angels, dryadic things, and bodiless spirits are gone

They are replaced with

It’s 2:23am

It’s 2:24am

It’s the holiday season

I love the story about the selfish man who is visited by 3 ghosts and changes his destiny because he falls in love with all the little people who live around them, the little fingers and voices and bodies that exist in his little circle, he

It’s 2:25am

Is enamoured with their goodness, he is able to be because the ghosts are enamoured with their goodness too. They’re not perfect but they are together

It’s 2:26am

Sorry

The door of the castle opens and I’m invited back in

I don’t know if I can go in

I don’t know if I ever left

A saint called it our interior castle, I learned about it after I decided on the idea for season 3

It’s 2:27am

But I think she said there are creatures lurking in the castle, and oh I realized this on my own

There are creatures in there

Sliding in and out of the rooms

THere is a horror in not knowing what lies behind your own eyes isn’t there?

So this podcast still counts

It’s 2:28am

I’ll stop at 2:30

The god of now will make me sleep

And I’ll wake up having forgotten all of this

I will be a little embarrassed when I look back at what I wrote but I will record

It’s 2:29am

It anyway because if you make it you have to finish it, that’s how I keep making these, it’s no trick of creativity

I just have to keep doing it

Now

Now
Now

It will be a different time soon, I’ll leave at 2:30 am

But I’ll meet you at a different time

None of it exists anyway, none of these times, so we’re already there together

It’s 2:30am

I have to go

But I will find you in the timeless place

Where we don’t have to keep building towers or castles

Good night

[Eerie theme music]

(Host speaks as Kristen:)

Hello everyone. This is Kristen Zaza, your writer, narrator, host, composer, pocaster, etcetera, behind On a Dark, Cold Night. Thank you so much for joining me. For staying with me. For being in this moment with me. I appreciate it. Sorry for my absence last week. I’m struggling with being present in the moment and writing about other moments. Here’s hoping that I’m working through it and not getting bogged down by it. How are you, my friends? Are you in the moment? Are you creating other moments? How do they co-exist? Let me know in the comments. Just kidding.

Thank you so much to everyone who supports the show on Patreon on a monthly basis - as always, I’m so grateful for my community of friends there. Thank you a thousand times. And thanks especially to my latest patron of the show - Nina Nin. Thanks so much for your kind generosity, Nina! Everyone who supports the show on Patreon for $1 a month US receives access to my complete soundtrack of all 3 seasons of the show, while supporters of $5 or more a month get that, a bonus weekly meditation episode, and a monthly tarot reading video uploaded every full moon. To learn more, visit patreon.com/darkcoldnight. If you’d prefer to donate one-time only without any perks, you can do so by visiting ko-fi.com/darkcoldnight. You can buy a t-shirt or hoodie at bonfire.com/on-a-dark-cold-night, or you can subscribe to the Sonar+ apple podcast channel where you can receive access to my weekly bonus meditations as well as lots of other great content from other Sonar Network shows for only $3.99 a month. Learn more by looking up ON a Dark, Cold NIght or The Sonar Network on iTunes.

You can follow me on social media - I’m on Twitter @ADarkColdNight, instagram at darkcoldnightpodcast, Facebook and YouTube under ON a Dark, Cold Night, and Bluesky and Tiktok at kristenzaza, all one word. This time of year things are always a little quiet in the podcast world, so if you had a moment and wanted to leave me a rating or a review on iTunes, Facebook, Spotify, or wherever else you can rate or review podcasts, I’d be very grateful for that.

Thank you as always for listening, my friends. I’m hoping to podcast over the holidays but I’m not sure when or how, so keep a gentle ear to the ground but also be gentle with me as I try to catch up a little on this present-moment-here-and-now stuff as much as I can.

Sending lots of love to for a warm and loving holiday season, whoever and wherever you are.

Take care, my friends, and sweet dreams.

[Eerie theme music]

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