Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;
I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.

Most of us have an atavistic fear of the dark. It makes sense, many animals hunt at night. While we may hunt by day, at night we are the prey. I have always loved the dark, though. During the day, the lake I grew up on would be busy with people fishing and waterskiing. I have had more than one daytime close call with a speed boat driven by reckless people who never think to look for swimmers. I loved to swim in lake at night when the boats were silenced and sleeping, put to bed for fear of being run aground in the narrow lanes between the islands. While there might be a few hundred people on the lake during the day, at night I was often the only one. Of course, it was never quiet. There were the frogs, crickets, owls, timber wolves and best of all, the loons, all competing for lead vocals in the nightly concert.

We were in the country so the moon and stars reflected and refracted in the waves. I would swim toward the ribbon of moonlight even knowing I could never catch it. I suppose it was my own brand of recklessness, swimming alone for hours among the stars, but it was magical, too. Sometimes I pulled out my canoe and paddled so i was lined up with the moon’s reflection and then jumped in, diving down to the touch the bottom of the lake which never got much deeper than forty feet. I liked the deep water where the lake bottom was made of marl rather than muck or clay. Something about swimming in utter blackness captivated me and I never felt afraid.

I miss living by the lake and going swimming. Lakes in Oregon are glacier fed and not really suitable for swimming. That has not stopped me, but in water that cold, you can’t laze about in the water and drift. You can’t lay back and let yourself sink into the inky water and pretend you are floating among the stars.

Of course, standing on Kalopsia’s broken floor is not exactly sinking into inky depths either, and I am standing, now swimming, but I am eagerly waiting for sun to set and for the evening chorus to begin. I am with cranes instead of loons and they are paper (from DDD for Collabor88), so they will be unaccountably quiet. If they could speak, however, they would rave about my adorable dress from ur.favorite.one (u.f.o.) that is at Collabor88 this month.
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