A Wrinkle In Time

If you pay close enough attention, even the dark can light your way.

Generation Ex explores every ‘ex’ in our lives - our expertise, our expectations and our experiences - and how they can be a catalyst for personal growth when your professional (or personal) journey suddenly shifts under your feet.

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I haven’t spoken much about the situational shift that took place a few months back when, through a chance stroke of lightning, I found myself infected with an long-avoided case of the full-times, once again.

I haven’t spoken about it on these pages at all, in fact, as the brain power required to settle into my new role has siphoned off much of my ability to think creatively outside of work hours. As the days turned to weeks and then to months, more than a few people wondered aloud whether or not I had given up the writing in the face of a true 9-5.

No doubt, from the outside, the whisperings of silence through these pages, could very easily make it appear that way. I’m pretty sure I was wondering the same, as I too heard whispers.

Many of the old ones. Close-up, weather-worn, and familiar.

I see you, Imposter.

But new ones as well. Ones that have begun to speak more loudly as this creative journey gains momentum and proof of an affinity for it has echoed in the feedback, and well-wishes, and encouragement of family, friends, and even strangers. A countervailing force to the self-doubt of the Imposter but no less debilitating in their quiet words…

‘There is nothing more to say.

You lit the sparkler and it dazzled for a time but now the last of the flash has been spent and you are left with nothing but the dying glow of a bent wire in your hand.’

… Words paralyzing enough that I turned my eyes to the grindstone of a new job and spun the wheel so as to at least watch sparks fly, sharpening a blade that wasn’t mine but hoping it might dazzle just the same.

It would be enough…

It is not.

Standing in the fresh darkness of the last burned sparkler, waiting for eyes to acclimate to the dark, there is nothing to see but the fading, purple echo of the vanished brightness filling your eyes . A fleeting visual memory of the radiance that had so brilliantly, but so briefly filled the world with light.

In its absence comes Black.

Shadow.

Unknown.

A dark in the ebbing of the light that seems utterly impenetrable, as the afterimage fades and you are left with nothing but empty, black space and the acrid smell of gunpowder.

So much possibility for new light but the crushing fear of it never coming again.

… and then you see the stars…

Isn’t it strange how the universe comes most into view on the darkest of nights?

My own stars have begun to flicker into view of late and I can’t explain how strange and wonderful it has been, even in their vast distances apart, to see them align in such a way that shows the path once again…

…We had decided on a road trip.

My son is entering his final year of high school. An unimaginable passage of time since our first great road trip, traversing the US over three months on our way from New York to Australia, but pass it has.

We had briefly entertained a Fijian beach flop but our proximity to more than a handful of the world’s most beautiful beaches outside our front door - not to mention the symmetry of a potentially final, grand vehicular escapade - meant the only real choice was touring as much as we could of New Zealand’s South Island in just two weeks… I had forgotten how much having a job sucks.

I am only one in a countless line of South Island visitors to have returned home and said these words, “it was epic”.

It truly was, even having seen only a fraction of what the island had to offer.

We kayaked Milford Sound, hiked and boated the glacial lakes of Aoraki-Mt Cook, and we slipped, and slogged, and slid through the canyon waters outside of Queenstown.

But the reasons I could spend the rest of my days camper-vanning the world are in the quiet of the downtime. The non-active activity around the van in the slow dying light of a late-setting, South Island, summer sun.

Cards, and cooking, and campsite combine to boil life down to its core essentials and a family suddenly has everything it needs and all you could ever wish for…

It is in these moments when I can swamp. It was in this moment that I did.

This has happened for as long as I can remember.

It’s hard to articulate what it is or where it comes from but as I told a friend - the first of the stars that flickered on for me in the recent darkness - its as though somewhere in the purist of life’s moments, I am completely subsumed with, well, everything.

It is as if I suddenly see all of the dots.

In a flash, all the choices, and all the turns, and all the failures, and all the successes, and every breath of moments that have led to this singular, perfect point in time burst into light.

But that isn’t all.

In the very same, overwhelming instant I see the multitude of pathways leading out from this moment. Each step forward along the path, far into the horizon, leading to a time when I am no longer here. No longer allowed participate, to share, to experience all there is to see, to smell, to feel, to love.

Then, as quickly and brilliantly as this great wave of existential energy arrives, it crashes down and is gone.

Dark.

The recovery is slow. Like a wizard over-extended well beyond their abilities, my emotional stores are spent and the purple echo of the light fades to black…

Isn’t it strange how the universe comes most into view on the darkest of nights?

I already mentioned the first star that came to light for me. She is a familiar visitor that I recognize and cherish when her orbit crosses my path at regular intervals. The second, though was like a meteor streaking across my sky bringing with it inspiration and wonder.

As the emotion and excitement of the trip was fading into memory and the mundane rhythm of daily life (and work) returned to the forefront, the spinning of the grindstone was weighing heavily on my brain. A guilt, not for you, as a reader, or me, as a writer, but for the light that can fill the dark for us both, if even for just a moment.

It was in this mental space that my phone dinged and an old friend, one whose path I cross much less frequently than I’d like, texted,

“Happy New year - Super random - DUDE! Don’t stop posting on Substack man…”

Sometimes there is nothing to do but stare at the sky in total and utter awe.

And so I sit again and write.

I write to feel.

I write to acknowledge.

But mostly, I write to draw lines between myself and that star, and that meteor, and this life.

It is in this moment that the last of the stars twinkle into being.

David Whyte has a new book out and, as one does, is doing the rounds. The thing about David Whyte ‘doing the rounds’ is that you don’t just get his lush baritone or his endless ability to recall stories from a life well-lived but with Mr Whyte come his words.

Like a constellation you’ve been able to recognize since childhood, if you’re looking, it is always there…

He reads his poem, “Time” as I close my eyes and listen to him in the darkness.

“… Presence… slows… time… down, and opens up possibilities of experiencing the timeless and the eternal …”

The light explodes in my mind and the sparks tumble down like rain.