Blinding

The New Year was welcomed in this desolate outpost with strange traditions. A braying camel race past lit torches, thousands of small rocks offensively placed to combat dust and sand served as the hardtop for racers and spectators alike. A numeric ton plus nine chemical lights shaped together as a ball, hoisted downwards at the conclusion of the past year. A three story fire burning bright for all to see, the tallest structure on this operating base greedily licking the sky, stretching out to some unseen entity, beckoning. It’s call unanswered, the flame grabbed at paper trails floating lazily nearby, clutching at them in the shadows, hoping to build itself higher off of their pastel streams.

For a moment after the chemical ball jerkily slid down the flag pole, in the distance an engine started, stuttered. Or an anti-mortar Gatling gun roared its approval for the festivities, the noise muffled by distance and darkness. Was it all a dream, that terrible prospect of assault; was it all a trick of the ear and eye? Or was it an answer from the world to the flame, crying out Here I am! As requested, given!

Minutes after the official changeover of 8 to 9, seconds away from returning to normality, the fires and chemicals and camels were put away, and darkness again returned. Darkness so black existing is blinding and if dreams were dark you would never know if this were simply a nightmare with no evil – just dark nothingness. Stumbling around the uneven gravel, it’s easy to trip over wires lined with sandbags and small bridges crossing mud streams. Easy to slip on slick wood boards and stomp through puddles. Easy to forget that light ever existed, to forget that a massive granite ceiling does not stretch overhead, moist in the twilight of sparkling crystals for miles and miles.

The dark stops your breath and slaps you in the face – it demands recognition of its superiority over everything. And in that second of defeat, when you acknowledge subservience to nothingness, a light blinds you further. A flash in the dark, bobbing and weaving like some drunken boxer. Pupils contract with the speed of mercury on a frying pan to adjust to the new lord and savior – light. Every night, blue and red and green and white lights are toted around by travelers in this place. Beams of recognition and help at times. Beams not designed to save others, but themselves. Beams to fight the dark which lies silently and suffocates here. Dark and light blinding in their own ways.