After my father passed away during winter, I have tried to find his inspiring presence in every crevice of my daily routine. He was
the original writer of the family, a title he never fully owned to himself as he saw his daily scribbles of poetry to his four daughters and wife as nothing more than a poor man's way of
expression. I grew up hearing humor-filled prison stories from the "Department of Corruptions" as he used to call it during his years as the Poet Prison Guard. I doubt any of his
family had any idea just how dark his underworld really was but we did suffer the consequences of his steady decline into the abyss of addiction and alcoholism. I became very
comfortable with the dark side of every day as muse for my writing. My father's re-telling of the "underworld characters" forced me to confront unspoken truths that were normally
burrowed in hardened nobodies. It is no wonder that when he, too, came face to face with the harshness of life, he reinforced to me the importance of not being afraid of it.
"It is only when you are bleeding Farrah Nayka that you can confirm you are still living."
It took many years of practice to get comfortable in the silence of
the darkness. Many years I have spent in worry or fear; what can occur during the night is the betrayal of daytime's illusions. Night time provides a cloak in which aching emotions can rest
uninterrupted. Most people find peace in their approach towards the night hour. For those souls who know better, there is no rest during the midnight eulogy. They know that the key to
unlocking their soul's deepest fear lies in their ability to meet it in the same burrowed location that it was born from: darkness.
When I need to curl up in the underbelly
of dark revelation, I head outside to a lone tree located in the center of a field at the cusp of night; I sit silent gazing at the emerging stories above me, wide in their secrets and
premonitions. When I leave my hands open, I can feel the entire world's fullness and depth. Some nights I have heard a baby crying, a couple arguing, a pitter patter of animals scurrying
around in the grasses; other times I have been still enough to feel my father's arms waving at me through the wispy tree branches in the wind. When I need to be reminded to not be afraid, the
clouds will come racing out to meet the sky half way, producing a gust-like wind in which the branches shake violently to demonstrate their point. The result will be that I will feel a chill
and become cold, which in turn reminds me that my blood is running wild with desire and that I should probably go back inside the house and record the daily celebrations and tribulations of
characters who dare to live outside the prison wall of their short existence here on Earth.
