Episode 262: Lullaby

February 19th, 2024

Kristen Zaza

[Eerie Theme Music.]

[Your Narrator:]

Life has been happening rather relentlessly these days, whatever that means.

It feels as though the world is blurring past me, like everything around me is being fast-forwarded, and yet always I seem to stay stuck in Now

This is, I can only guess, an illusion

Nothing is blurring by

Change is perpetual

Growth is eternal

Decay is inescapable

But if we put our trust in the law behind all that, we can surf the tide of Now, rather than stand still as a shipwreck stuck at the bottom of the sea beneath it.

And there is, somewhere, a version of me that fears running out of time before I am able to have everything I want. Which is silly, because there isn’t really a having, there is just experiencing, it will all go one day anyway, but there is somewhere, a version of me who grapples with the idea. With fear of time. And Time is caught up in Mortality. And while both affect our lives deeply, neither must necessarily be connected with truth or finitude.

But I feel shivers of fright, ripples of longing

Doubt, very much doubt

oh dear, want. Longing. Despairing, aching longing, for

[Static; sighs; something strange, like a glitch]

Forgive me, that was strange. Where was I?

Oh well. It’ll come back to me, I guess.

You know, Whenever I feel particularly rattled by Time, I visit someone who lives just outside of this castle. Through the dark library where a hungry librarian eats pages and pages of hateful words by the spoonful, across a dark and desolate snowy forest where eyes watch in the shadows and you must always be prepared at any moment to run, over to a quaint little wooden cottage lit from the inside with candlelight and a flickering orange fire.

Inside that cottage, there is an old woman who wears a blindfold to hide the wisdom of countless universes in her eyes

She received the Mantle of Notmother from a woman before her, and she bestowed the mantle to another young woman after her, but she is still currently it, too, you can’t shake the galaxies from your eyes.

Honestly, I don’t know which one she is. The first, the last, the maiden, the mother, the crone, it’s always changing at any given time for each of us and ultimately those roles don’t matter anyway, not when one deals in the world of non, of not, which isn’t a pushing away or a rejection, but rather an embracing, an expanding to include, a brave rebellion against being cornered into an identity

I am Not-Narrator, Not-Kristen, Not-Here, Not-There, see how freeing that is?

Anyway

She is the Notmother, and she waits within.

There is a woman sitting by the fire. A young woman in a warm sweater and messy braids in her hair. She has travelled long to come here. Her eyes are red from weeping.

The Notmother stands further away, pouring tea into cups from a pot, feeling for the spout and the rim of the cup before trusting her hands to know their way without her eyes. The tea is boiling hot, and she doesn’t spill a single drop.

They are having a coversation that we can hear from the crack in the door.

[A little muffled, perhaps coming in and out]

“I find myself thinking of it so often, Notmother. I want this so badly. But I know it’s not possible, it’s not right, it’s bad.”

“It is?”

“Well, a baby wouldn’t be bad. A baby would be pure and good. But it’s the wanting that’s bad.”

“It’s bad to want things?”

“No, it’s not bad to want things. It’s bad to…get caught up in them. Maybe it’s not bad to want things. It’s all right. It’s all right to feel a certain way about not having  things you want. That’s all right.”

“You’re allowed to be upset for that.”

“Even if I know it’s not the right choice"

“You came here because you wanted a baby.”

“Yes”

“Really?”

“Or the pain to stop.”

[The dialogue fades as our Narrator takes over again]

Oh yes, I know this story, this is one I’ve collected a few times now.

Once upon a time, there was a woman who wanted a child.

[Music; a gentle musicbox-like pattern, a sleepy guitar]

So many fairy tales begin this way; and while they may or may not have happy endings, they must begin with suffering, with want, with longing, with a person’s pain being driven to such depths that they must turn to magic -but if a thing must be got with magic, it may happen that it was never meant to be got in the first place. Think of every love spell you wish you could have cast in your youth. Is it a curse or a blessing that they were (as I’m assuming they were) unsuccessful?

But old witches know this, and it so happens that they are also the ones best equipped to perform such spells of wanting and getting. A desperate person’s best hope is that the witch at the outskirts of their village is a benevolent one and not a selfish one. As luck would have it, they most often are.

And so this woman who wanted a child went to see a witch in a cottage. She had heard miraculous things about her; her eyes cannot see the world around her but they can see the past, present and future, and all manner of things and souls and events within them. It is not that she is blind but it is that her eyes are busied with images of cosmos and the weaving of the Great Tapestry and the soul within souls among souls between souls surrounding souls. With such great power, what could a witch such as this not do?

The woman passed through a treacherous shadow-land full of mystery and confusion and a changing landscape

Towards a haunted castle, full of invisible ghosts and unusual monsters and rooms that were as alive as either of those

Through the dark library where a hungry librarian eats pages and pages of hateful words by the spoonful, across a dark and desolate snowy forest where eyes watch in the shadows and you must always be prepared at any moment to run, over to a quaint little wooden cottage lit from the inside with candlelight and a flickering orange fire.

She knocked on the door and was allowed in

Allowed the most comfortable seat by the fire

Allowed a cup of tea

And allowed the chance to talk freely with a good listener.

[The dialogue fades back in]

“It’s the unconditional love for something, from something. Something pure.”

“We’re all pure. And you can love anything unconditionally.”

“Yes, it’s hard but there are those who have loved everything unconditionally. Those people have existed and will continue to come through.”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

“Like you.”

“I’m not like that.”

“You are. You can be. You were. You will be. You are.”

“The Future Me is, maybe.”

“Not Future. No future.”

“Right. Not Future. The One Who Is. The One Who Knows.”

“That You can love unconditionally.”

“Yes, I suppose.”

“Does she want to?”

[Narrator cuts through once more]

The woman who came so far to visit the Notmother to ask for the most fairy-tale want of all wants, to ask for the blessing of a child, fell silent. And the Notmother sipped her tea, allowing the other woman a moment to think, before continuing on:

“Every person. Big or Small, Young or Old, Sinner or Saint. All Pure. All babies to love. All were once, and so are and will be. When do they stop being? When are you not that baby you were on the day you were born?”

“I still want a baby though.”

“I understand. There are reasons, there are forces, there are workings in your life that may or may not grant you this desire, my sweet.”

“The pain is great, Mother”

“Yes. The pain is always great.”

“My heart breaks for the world in its pain.If I could bring something as pure and good as a baby into it…it would bring some joy”

“For a time and to a few.”

“Yes.”

“You could bring to joy to many. You do bring joy to many. Just you, as you are.”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

“I still want it, Mother.”

[A record scratch, a portal of sound, something like that]

I wrote a whole second half to that dialogue. Then I closed my eyes to listen to the NotMother within me to try and answer my own questions, to wipe the woman in my mind’s tears away, but when I opened my eyes again, half of the dialogue was gone.

How did I lose the second half of this dialogue? Like it never even happened? I don’t recall deleting it. I can’t get it back by pressing the “redo” command. It’s gone.

It did a lot of trying to explain stuff.

Unexplainable things.

Maybe that’s why it up and deleted itself.

No use trying to explain the unexplainable when Faith is what’s needed.

I’m sorry. I’ve lost myself once more. Where were we?

Oh yes, looking in to the scene of the cottage, following a little dialogue between an old witch hiding the stars in her eyes with a blindfold, and a young woman with a most painful want.

We should head back soon., The eyes in the woods are growing closer. I can begin to hear the breath of the creatures bodies those eyes belong to. They are waiting, as they always are, biding their time to see who comes in and out of the cottage.

But let’s peer back in through the window just a little more. Just to see whether or not the woman will be given her heart’s desire.

There’s no one inside.

They’re both gone.

And the fire has gone out.

The forest is dark. Much too dark. The light of the moon obscured by shadow and falling snow. It’s so cold. Where did they go? And how will I find my way back to the castle in this darkness?

[Sniffling, maybe weeping?]

Someone’s out here with us

Maybe the beasts of the wood, waiting, closing in, made bold by the darkness.

Let’s turn around slowly. Maybe they won’t see us if we move so, so slowly.

[A lullabye is sang to the sleepy guitar and musicbox-ish sound from earlier]

It’s a child

A little child

Small, only a few years in their life

A little child with curls in her hair and large brown eyes full of tears

Nose running from weeping, she wipes at her nose and hugs a toy zebra tight to herself, shivering in the cold.

What are you doing out here, little one?

She is so familiar

The yellow eyes in the woods come closer and I can see the monsters’ teeth and the gold peeking out from between them. Their terrible grins widen and they drool as they see a vulnerable little thing to snap up.

Let’s get you out of here.

I run and the child extends her arms out to me and I sweep her up and hold her tight in mine, and we move fast, so fast, swift as the wind

She smells like fresh tomatoes from a long-ago garden, she feels like a body that used to be my body. I know that zebra, don’t I?

I hold her tight and I protect her from those things chasing us with coins in their mouth and avarice in their smiles

We run through the snow so quickly that we can’t feel our ears anymore

The hungry librarian holds open the door to the dark library, and her mouth is dripping with blood and I worry for a moment that the child will be afraid of her, but the librarian softens and wipes it quickly before she has a chance to see (she is a kind librarian and I will bow to her later in thanks).

Together, we run through the dungeons and I worry she’ll hear the cries of the monsters in there but they too remain silent at the presence of a child

Up the stairs, down dark hallways

There are torches in the walls that light themselves up because it is dark and frightening for a child and the castle, the intelligent and sensitive castle knows this and makes itself brighter and warmer

We go through a door, I’m not sure which door, but we go in and I set her down on a comfortable chair and I shut the door behind us

Then I turn to look at her in the firelight

We somehow made it back to the story room, I keep coming back here, story or no

I look into my own face as it once was, tiny and afraid and pure

For a moment, her teary eyes fill with a vast nighttime sky full of swirling stars

And mine do too

And we both jump a little, startled to see it

She is afraid again because of this, and begins to cry once more, even louder, the weeping that can only come in a safe and quiet place, a release, that kind of crying

And I wrap her up in my arms

I know this child

I was this child

I am this child

I finally found her

Shhh, little one, it’s all right. You’re safe now.

Little Sweetheart, my angel. It’s all right.

This is my child, my baby. The one I left behind when I grew up.

Holding tight to her little toy she doesn’t yet know isn’t real or can’t feel

The belief she has gives it life, gives it value, gives it feeling, and I hug that little zebra too, I remember it.

A little Witch in her own right, a little NotMother, breathing life into the inanimate, eh?

I will never be ashamed of loving her

This Little Me I forget sometimes.

Come have a cuddle by the fire.

What will make you feel better?

A little story, maybe?

Not now?

All right.

What about a lullabye?

[A little more of the song, but now just voice and guitar. Fades out to...]

[Eerie theme music]

(Host speaks as Kristen:)

Hello my friends. Welcome back to the castle. Thank you so much for listening and joining me. This is Kristen Zaza, your writer, narrator, host, Notmother, podcaster, composer, etcetera. This was Episode 262. And I hope you’re doing well. Maybe finding time to nurture and love your inner child. Or tell it ghost stories. Whatever it is that will make them feel better.

Sending warm thanks to everyone who is a part of my Patreon community and supports the show on a monthly basis - thank you for your kindness, my friends, I deeply appreciate it. On Patreon, everyone who pledges $1 US  or more a month gets access to my complete downloadable soundtrack, while everyone who pledges $5 US or more gets that, a monthly tarot reading video every full moon, and a weekly bonus “Quick Moment” meditation episode. You can learn more at patreon.com/darkcoldnight. The Quick Moment meditations are also available through a subscription to the Sonar+ apple podcasts channel; you can access that by searching On a Dark, Cold Night on iTunes, it costs 3.99 a month and you can also access other great bonus content from other Sonar Network shows. You can donate one-time only without any perks at ko-fi.com/darkcoldnight, or you can buy a t-shirt or hoodie at bonfire.com/on-a-dark-cold-night.

I would also love if you left a rating and a review on iTunes, Facebook, Spotify, or wherever else you like to rate and review podcasts. You can follow me on social media on Facebook or Youtube under On a Dark, Cold Night; on instagram at darkcoldnightpodcast, on Bluesky and Tiktok at kristenzaza, or on Twitter @ADarkColdNight.

In the way of a little more news, I’m going to be adding another volume of “Favourite Little SOngs from On a Dark, Cold Night” to Spotify and other music streamers within the next few weeks - you can catch the first album there already, and keep an eye out for the second one, coming…soon?

Thank you again for listening and joining me.

It is easy to love children unconditionally, in their innocence and in their purity and their innate goodness.

It is harder to see in grown-ups that same child they once were, and to see that they are, each an every one, still a child that deserves unconditional love.

It is even harder to see that child who deserves unconditional love in yourself.

I hope that, when you need it most, you will. And so will I.

Lots of love. Sweet dreams.

[Eerie theme music]

This podcast has been brought to you by the Sonar Network.