Meditation: The Dark God

[Dionysus]

I don't remember anything, especially not the slow crawl of seconds parading through my brain. One day, another, who's to say? I looked through old poetry journals this morning and I did not see a life I recognized. My handwriting, and some of the poems were published with my name next to them, but the life I saw belonged to a young dark-haired girl I once knew. All those words formed a reflection of her reflecting that boy back to the page. I lost the muse when I gave her up for dead and quit killing myself with the bottle. No more reflections to fill the page. No sense of myself without the reflection. No words.

All these years later and I don't remember anything, especially how the slow crawl of seconds brought me to my knees, digging through old notebooks, one day, this day, any day, but no, it is today, right now, sitting with the ghosts of who I never was, arguing amongst ourselves. The ghosts laugh at my sense of being "grown up" now, so mature compared to that boy who thought he loved that girl. They argue that I am as lost as I have always been, only now, sometimes, I have the good sense to look for a map or simply to sit down, here in the desert, and hope someone finds me. Yet, no one else is looking. And only I can find me. But I am the one who is lost. Paradox sucks.

I was looking for something, but I can't remember anything, especially not how the slow crawl of seconds has split me into two separate people, really, identical twins it seems, but so different I am at a loss as to which is me. With clay and damp leaves and incense I breathed life into a self who is everything I value and want to be, an ideal self I struggle to live up to. All the while the other me, the exile, lurks in the shadows, plotting his return, planning my demise, occasionally revealing his presence. One is shadow to the other's light, but the split is more than that. The dark twin is angry and bitter, but he is also creative and passionate and can no longer be denied.

The dark twin seeks a life, but he doesn't remember anything, especially not why he was exiled by the slow crawl of seconds, by the last drop from the last bottle, by the surrender of his soul to the dark-haired girl he never really knew. It's as though Apollo banished Dionysus to the world of dream, and in doing so made barren all the lands of being. The center cannot hold against the ever widening gap, the beast and the angel must learn new steps to revive the dance. They must learn to find balance in each other's reflection and not in seeking their reflections in others. The center must be made to hold. Hidden in shadow is the still small voice of the dark god, waiting to be heard.

Tags: meditation, the dakr god, the dark twin, dionysus, apollo, time, memory