Episode 260: Bewilder

January 29th, 2024

Kristen Zaza

[Eerie Theme Music.]

[Your Narrator:]

Loneliness is such a beast of a thing, isn’t it?

It really has very little to do with the company we keep, I think. Because at its heart, it is a feeling that comes from within us…a feeling that says gently, “You are on your own. No one understands, no one thinks like this, you cannot trust anyone else with your thoughts or feelings. It is best instead to despair.”

But then, I think, the beautiful thing about loneliness is that, if you give in to it, if you let it bring you to the gate of despair, you begin to look at everything with new eyes

Empty roads seem haunted

Groups of trees seem sad

Birds overhead sing more loudly

And the contrasting quiet is so much emptier

The shadows are so much darker

Voices of others in one of your worlds grow softer, as they call out to you and offer whatever they are able to

But you are not lonely for them

You are lonely for whatever is out there

Beyond

Beyond the fog that is rolling in over the city, over the town, over the woods, over the lake

So thick that sharp electric light is softened to hazy colourful glows

And the thickness of the fog keeps the sound contained, the world is so quiet when the fog rolls over

The entire city looks new again, lonely again

Like when the streets fell silent for two years that time

Like when it’s 4am and I cross over into the world of waking to dreaming with my eyes still open

Like when I close my eyes and enter my castle only to find that the windows have been smashed in, and the vacuum of outer space is pouring in, little by little

But I open them again and I am somehow yet again staring at my phone, scrolling videos of nothing

But then I get distracted by someone calling my name in another room

But then I realize no one is in the other room, it’s coming from the fog

It snuck up on me one night when I was trying to meditate but magically my phone appeared in my hand and those videos were appearing, how did that happen?

Up my gaze went

There was the fog

And it was breathtakingly beautiful

And it made me feel so beautifully lonely

It’s a decadent feeling, that loneliness, the most pleasant kind of melancholy, do you know what I mean?

And in the distance, far, far away, deep within the fog

I somehow saw

Among the trees I can see through my bedroom window or from the southernmost window of the castle

[Music; distant; just a strumming, echoing guitar]

A figure

The shape of a person

Standing still, just watching.

I don’t want to look away, because I know they see me, even through the fog, I know they have come here just to see me, I know they see me

But an invisible hand grabs my skull, wrenches it down, pulls the bones in my arms and twists them around and around

And suddenly I’m looking at my phone again and another hour has gone by

And when I look up, the figure is gone

But the fog is not.

Castle window into outer space shows the devastation left in the wake of a black hole, the one that’s been pursuing me

Shreds of stars and planets torn apart in a time far from here

Feathers, bedding, little bits of mattress, drywall, window glass, a microphone, I think, wineglasses and piano keys and cat toys and stickers that say “Good Job” and spectacles and face creams and pillowcases

And the absolutely shredded to bits remains of a cellular phone

Its case has a cartoonish and false glow in the dark galaxy

Its adhesive handle contains the phases of the moon

I wanted it gone

The black hole spaghettified my cell phone

When?

Doesn’t matter

But

It didn’t happen, it’s not going to happen, it is happening now

It has to happen now

I dismissed it from my consciousness so I could keep telling you about the fog

[Slurp]

Destroyed, pulled into a black hole.

Thank God!!!!

Someone enters through the front door and I look up and back in the apartment, the view from my windows is so gloomy, I just adore it

The fog is a blanket covering the city, no cars are out, time is still again, time is still happening but if I am still and the world is still then it is still

It’s lovely having lovely people who love you, really and truly

But Lonely is a thing that lurks in the center of the chest, glued to the spine, and pulls you on a string fine as dental floss, pulls your spine forward by way of your heart

Lonely whispers, “What’s out there? What’s out there? What’s out there?”

And when I see the figure again, closer now, but walking above the trees on the surface of the fog, hands in his pockets, dancing a little on his way over to me, humming a song that surfs the wind slowly enough to allow me the opportunity to open the door to the balcony before it reaches

And it reaches my ears

And the feeling

Is so intense

This longing to be seen by something, someone light as air and aware of just how lonely we are able to make ourselves feel

It subsides in the being-seen that happens between me and this one

The string pulls my heart forward and my heart opens up to every act of love or destruction that ever happened, is happening, or has yet to happen

And it hurts so much, it delights so much, it’s all so much that my hand reaches desperately for my phone before my head can tell it not to

But it’s not there

I put it in the other room to charge for awhile so I wouldn’t be distracted from my writing, so I could enjoy the fog, so I could bask in this cloying loneliness

And it’s out of my mind entirely, it’s out of my awareness, [slurp] eaten up and shredded into the void

It’s gone

So I just have to experience this.

The figure watches me as I feel everything, as I rouse from my state of numbness

I close my eyes but that’s no different, in the castle I stare out the window to the trees beyond it but past that is outer space and debris floating by of another world’s destruction

But the fog rolls in here, too. Inside, not outside. The galaxy beyond the window is clear, yet here, within this room, oh no, what room is it now? Perhaps the ballroom, as The ceiling is high, the room is spacious, I think

The fog rolls in, I stand at the top of the stairs, yes this is the Great Hall

The fog rolls in, and on its velvet surface walks that figure once more. I wave but forget I don’t have a body here. He can see me anyway.

He walks closer and closer and closer

My hands reach for phones that are not here

Because it would be just like me to want to distract myself from the one thing that I actually want so badly and claim is all of our sacred duty

And that is to connect

To give our selves, our attention, our hearts, to each other as honestly and fully as possible

How else will we remember?

How else will we remember the truth?

I can almost see him, but I have to blink, and if I blink, I’m afraid that I’ll

[A portal of sound]

Oh no

I blinked

And I opened my eyes

Trapped in a cellar, white tiles, all alone

No windows even for fog to creep in

All alone, trapped

[Knock, knock, knock]

A knock at the door, but as I run to open it, the door won’t open, it’s locked from the outside -

[A portal of sound]

In the forest, I’m being chased by a horde of both hunters and beasts, but my leaves and branches that grow from my joints all over my body catch in the bushes, the snow, the damp grass

Running, chasing, fighting, all alone, no one joining me or running alongside me or

[A portal of sound]

From the inside of a black hole, it’s not the worst thing you can imagine, really, because time gets eaten up in there, pain gets eaten up in there, the tempoerary body is eaten up and the part that is eternal can scatter across every inch of its awareness, and being spaghettified is perhaps one of the hardest things we can go through, and if you can imagine that the hardest thing you can go through is already something you are enduring with curiosity and grace, that just the act of being in a body and accepting with joy that that body is impermanent, that we are artfully dying each day and are well into the rebirthing process too, and if I can somehow search my primal memory and feel that somehow, somewhere, is the truth that I am also the black hole itself

[Sung to the guitar from earlier]

Eating up the part of me that reaches for my phone

Picking bits of coin and flesh from my teeth

Look back on who I was and see I never fully knew

I wanted to know it with you.

Sinew pulls away from bone

Hands push away the phone

I wanted the power to up and fly

But I don’t think I can do it alone

Blink myself into another world

Where everything comes and goes

Blink myself home with no coming and goin’

And where I have no eyes left to close

A black hole has room for every little thing

You can dream or imagine or see

Imagine a thing that can turn every thing

Into nothing, that something is me

Eyelashes fall on my vanishing face

The fog rolls into this imagined place

I wanted the strength to be seen and known

But I don’t think I can feel it alone

Blink myself into another world

Where everything is and is not

Blink myself home where I no longer roam

And where I have no brain left for thought

Somewhere my cell phone is being spaghettified

And I’m not around to care

I’ll sing in your ears from a different plane

I’d find you any where.

I’d find you any where.

I’d find you any where.

Hmm.

Nothing to be afraid of, after all.

I guess if there’s one thing I’ve come to realize after two hundred and sixty conversations, it’s that. There’s nothing to be afraid of after all.

Courage is important

I’ve heard wise men say

The fog has made its way out

My company along with it

The figure that I was certain absolutely saw and knew me entirely

Called him a Him because the circumstances leading to my creative brain being what it is determined that I should call him that, but it is not right

That figure, that embodiment, that consciousness, is not visible

Not from my bedroom window, the one that is and isn’t being shredded to bits in a black hole currently

Not from my castle with its broken windows and celestial views from the towers, which is reparing itself as we speak, always

Not from cellar nor forest either

Wait, did I say tower?

If I go there

If I stand in the place that broke me the most

The loneliest place in the world

I still stand firmly

And smile at the incoming black hole

Because

I would know her

Anywhere.

[Eerie theme music]

(Host speaks as Kristen:)

Hello, my kind and lovely friends, and thank you so much for joining me for Episode 260 of On a Dark, Cold Night. I am your host, writer, narrator, black hole, composer, friend, Kristen Zaza. I hope you’re staying well. I hope your world is treating you kindly.

Sending warmest thank-yous always to my patrons who support the show on a monthly basis on patreon.com - it means so much to me, and I’m always grateful. Thank you. Through my patreon community, every supporter of $1 or more a month US can receive access to my complete soundtrack, while supporters of $5 or more a month US get that, a monthly tarot reading posted every full moon, and a weekly bonus meditation track. We actually just had a full moon last week, a lot of what I explored in that reading was inspiration for this episode, so if that’s something that interests you, Patreon is a great way to get a bit more of an in-depth look at where I’m coming from with this stuff. Learn more at patreon.com/darkcoldnight. The bonus “Quick Moment” meditations are also available through a subscription to the Apple podcasts channel, Sonar+, the Sonar Network’s channel, where for 3.99 a month you can get those bonus episodes and other great sonar network content. If you search for On a Dark, Cold Night or The Sonar Network on Apple podcasts, you can learn more. And if you’d like to donate to  On a Dark, Cold Night one-time only without any perks, you can buy me one or more metaphorical coffees at ko-fi.com/darkcoldnight, or by buying a t-shirt or hoodie at bonfire.com/on-a-dark-cold-night.

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Thank you very much for listening, my friends.

Thank you for being present with me, here.

I think we can challenge ourselves to keep doing that.

What else is life for, anyway?

Lots of love to you. Take care, friends.

[Eerie theme music]

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