Light and Shadow

It is getting lighter a little later these days, so I am walking Cricket in the dark more.  Because I take a photo these days at some point when I’m exercising, this means that I’m taking a lot more pictures of dark things, reflective things, and the places between than I did before.

Changing my usual brings me to a different kind of thinking.  Or, more accurately, in this case, brings me to a familiar place from a new direction.

I am afraid of dark, reflective, between things.  I’m not literally afraid of the dark, but rather the metaphorical dark of the Depression Monster.  Oddly enough, one of the markers that indicate the Depression Monster’s approach is that I do notice literal reflections more.  My perception of how light works alters.  My eyes slide across the shiny surfaces of things, parse the patterns that light creates on curved shapes, suss out the way I have more than one shadow leading or following me as I walk between street lights.

I don’t mind the perceptive shift.  It feels creative, deepening.  It makes me hyperaware.

But even a familiar monster is still a monster.

Those reflections I see are reflections of the metaphorical knife, the Platonic knife that the Depression Monster suggests to me as the appropriate tool for ending my problems.  I need to walk along the edge of that blade if I want to keep the perception and the life both.

Eventually, August will give way to September and I will be better.