{"id":170791,"date":"2025-05-15T10:00:23","date_gmt":"2025-05-15T14:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=170791"},"modified":"2025-05-14T10:18:22","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T14:18:22","slug":"a-night-and-a-day-and-a-night-and-a-day-and-a-night-and-a-day-in-the-dark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2025\/05\/15\/a-night-and-a-day-and-a-night-and-a-day-and-a-night-and-a-day-in-the-dark\/","title":{"rendered":"A Night and a Day and a Night and a Day and a Night and a Day in the Dark"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Photographs courtesy of Lisa Carver.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Day One<\/strong><\/p>\n

All around me are short, shiny young Romans groping each other. The old ones engage in the more solitary pleasures of hawking loogies and eating out of greasy paper bags. I\u2019m on my way to a dark retreat on a farm so high up in the mountains it requires five modes of transportation to get there\u2014plane, train, metro, bus, taxi\u2014each more confusing than the last. You buy your bus ticket at a particular newsstand nowhere near the bus. The only reason I knew this was because Antonello, the dark-retreat guide, had emailed me travel instructions \u2026 paragraphs of them \u2026 which I had memorized for dear life. Clutching my ticket, I tried to go through gate ten up the stairs to platform ten, as instructed, but the gate was locked. I tried gate eleven, but there was a sign saying not to cross the platform, which would have been the only way to get to ten. Vomit or diarrhea had been flung over the wall of the stairwell at regular intervals the whole way up<\/em>. How did anyone have so much stuff in their guts? And why would they keep going up the stairs? I would have laid down and called 911. These Italians are of hearty stock. The smell was amazing. The arrow indicating the way to the metro switched directions so many times it curled and pointed at the sky. I guess you just guess here. Don\u2019t even think about asking for help from the people in little cages like tollbooths scattered about. Signs in front of the booths warn in English: \u201cWe\u2019re Not Here to Give Information.\u201d<\/p>\n

At last I alighted in Sora, the town closest to the farm, population five thousand, and called the taxi driver, Giulia, but she only giggled and said her boyfriend took her car and she had no idea when he would be back. I walked the streets of Sora and noticed that all the clocks were off, but each told a different wrong time. Actually, now that I think of it: Other towns don\u2019t even have clocks anymore, do they? Everyone\u2019s looking at their phones.<\/p>\n

Which is one reason why people go on dark retreats. It\u2019s the only place you can escape your phone, with its light and sounds. When my husband Bruno\u2019s ex-wife Emilie asked why I would torture myself like that, I gave my usual answer: I don\u2019t do anything for why; I do everything for why not. But this is more than a whim. I used to be fine with how I am: never staying in one place or with one person. But lately something feels off, feels in need of fixing, and I don\u2019t know where the problem is. Could be I will find it in the dark. That\u2019s historically what dark retreats are for: to heal body and mind when more conventional methods fail. Often a mirror would be secured over the bed as a passageway for ancestors or spirits to give you whatever advice they\u2019ve been saving up. I\u2019ve had too much hubris to listen to anyone\u2019s wisdom, especially my ancestors\u2019, considering half the ones I know about were rapists or murderers. But if we learn the most from mistakes, it follows that the worse someone lived, the better their advice must be. Hold on, dead Carvers, I\u2019m coming!<\/p>\n

I was waiting as instructed at a fountain in the middle of town with a directional arrow pointing inexplicably straight down to the center of the earth when a woman in a bikini hanging out of a banged-up car with no taxi sign hooted at me.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou must be Giulia,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI must,\u201d she answered\u2014not sarcastically, but as a simple imperative\u2014and we were on our bumpy way.<\/p>\n

The farm is made up of lush hills that stretch empty all the way to the empty sky. So peaceful. Lethargy rolled through me in waves as Antonello showed me around, two chickens in tow. Antonello could have been thirty or sixty. He was open yet unreadable, joking yet serious, bony and taut yet gentle. He looked like he was born on this farm (he was) and would die here, just like his father and his father before him. I said I was hungry, and he yanked some grapes off a vine on the wall and handed them to me. I\u2019m glad I told him I was a vegetarian! He looked capable of grabbing one of the chickens, wringing its neck, plucking its feathers, throwing it on a fire, and handing that to me as easily as the grapes.<\/p>\n

At the end of the line lay my dark room. It\u2019s basically a cave, its stone walls carved into the mountainside and fitted with a bed, a dresser, a card table, a chair, and a doorless bathroom over to the side. No nightstand for the book I need to read in order to sleep or the notebook I need to keep in order to live. For the first time since my father taught me to read and write at two years old, I would be without both. I did bring a tape recorder with black electrical tape over the red \u201con\u201d light just in case I have some thoughts, but it\u2019s not the same. Writing has been my one constant. I was about to be truly alone. For a night and a day and a night and a day and a night and a day.<\/p>\n

Antonello asked what meditation method I\u2019d be using to manage anxiety or fear. I said none. He looked dubious. I said, \u201cWe\u2019re just animals. Animals crawl down into pitch-black holes all the time. I think it\u2019s normal.\u201d He said, \u201cSo your method is no method.\u201d I got irritated at that, because I will not be using the no-method method! That\u2019s a method! If you plan for something, that\u2019s what you\u2019ll get. I don\u2019t want to manage my fear\u2014I want to meet it. But first, dinner.<\/p>\n

We took Antonello\u2019s seventies van down to the regular part of the farm where British, Portuguese, Romanian, Dutch, French, and Italian guests gathered around two long tables pushed together. No one but me came for the dark room. The others are here for relaxation, nature, silent horseback riding \u2026 The next time I sit at this table, everyone here now will be gone, and a new pack will have arrived. I don\u2019t join in the conversation.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre you ready?\u201d Antonello asks when I put my fork down.<\/p>\n

Oh, yes.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Day Two<\/strong>
\n(transcription numbered with each time I turned the recorder on)<\/em><\/p>\n

1.<\/p>\n

I just had my once-daily human visit, as such. Antonello knocked on the door and wordlessly placed some food in the vestibule between the outer and the inner door. He had said my meal would arrive at one o\u2019clock each day, so I figure I\u2019ve been in here fifteen hours with nothing to say worth turning this recorder on for. If I hadn\u2019t just had that fractional interaction with the world to remind me there is<\/em> a world out there, who knows if anything at all would have occurred to me as worth preserving for later. In here it feels like there is no later.<\/p>\n

When I went to sleep last night, it felt normal. You sleep in darkness and silence. But when I opened my eyes in the morning and there was no light and no coffee and no bustle of stepchildren getting ready for school, I was instantly thrust into an altered state. I started hallucinating my surroundings. Furniture, walls. Not seeing it\u2014I was imagining it. And imagining was exactly<\/em> the same as seeing. It\u2019s making me wonder how much I imagine what I think I\u2019m seeing out there in real life too.<\/p>\n

Eating in here is nothing like the eating I\u2019m used to. Sometimes I get the fork to my mouth and there\u2019s nothing on it\u2014it must\u2019ve fallen off. And what even is it? Something that could have been eggs with nuts inside. A spongy breadlike thing\u2014mayhap a giant mushroom? And some really sour lettuce, possibly seaweed. I don\u2019t know this food and I don\u2019t know the man who brought it\u2014not really. You just have to trust. It must\u2019ve been like this in the womb: you didn\u2019t decide anything; stuff just came; you just ate it. I love when things get down to their simplest form. After a few bites, I was full. Everything is slowed down here, functions are going extinct. I pictured my digestion trying to outrun the slowness and then just shrugging and curling up for a nap. This constant game of intake and energy conversion and discharge and beginning again before you\u2019ve even finished one job \u2026 why didn\u2019t it ever occur to me I don\u2019t have to keep going and going? I could just \u2026 not eat.<\/p>\n

I hallucinated stepping out onto the balcony, which doesn\u2019t exist. I looked down the valley, which doesn\u2019t exist. I didn\u2019t exactly feel my body moving, going outside. I was just doing it. It was totally natural. It\u2019s so still here, I guess my brain knew I needed to see and move or I\u2019d go crazy, so it let me see and move in this other way that has always existed, I just never had cause to tap into it before.<\/p>\n

I also hallucinated two rectangles of light cast on the wall from two windows instead of shadows. Wait a minute. That\u2019s what windows do. Ha ha ha! But in my brain windows cast shadows, and this was opposite. I thought that for at least thirty seconds. And then just as it had drifted in, it drifted away: the hallucination, then the awareness that it was a hallucination, then the story I built about what it means to hallucinate.<\/p>\n

Nothing spectacular has shown itself\u2014nothing like the dragon that visited the Buddhist monk on his dark retreat that he talked about on a YouTube video. It\u2019s all mundane. I shouldn\u2019t say mundane because it\u2019s very beautiful. What I mean is it has become ordinary almost instantly\u2014the ways of the dark.<\/p>\n

I tried hallucinating on purpose just to see what I could see. I saw a snowy mountain dotted delicately with evergreens and a cabin. Then I remembered where I\u2019d seen this mountain before: in a large Japanese painting behind the sofa at Mrs. McCooey\u2019s, a woman paralyzed by polio who my mother would take me to visit. I\u2019d stare at that painting and fantasize about being there instead of where I was, with the boring adult conversation, which was always the same. Now I am one of those boring adults talking instead of escaping into a painting.<\/p>\n

When I was a kid, I thought art and songs and movies were real. Then I grew up and grew money and influence, and art became symbolic. Everything became symbolic. And complex, and distant. Now, in this room where I can\u2019t see and can\u2019t impress anyone, nothing is symbolic, everything is easy, and I can walk into paintings again.<\/p>\n

2.<\/p>\n

I feel like it\u2019s bedtime, though it could be anytime. I don\u2019t know how to behave here. There\u2019s no habit, no feedback, no punishment or reward to show me what is expected of me. The same way I can\u2019t inspect the food, can only eat it, I can\u2019t inspect the life I\u2019m leading right now, can only live it. Well, I\u2019m not leading<\/em> it. I\u2019m lying in it. In the light, you get to choose from a menu at a restaurant, and you choose from the menu of life\u2014what kind of friend will you be that day, what hobbies will you learn that year. There\u2019s only the one thing here. And it\u2019s eternal.<\/p>\n

I know this: I\u2019ve spent way too many of my first twenty-four hours being bitter about Bruno, filling this room with lists of all the ways he is chaotic and selfish. He\u2019s not even doing anything to me right now! I give so much energy to fighting with him when we are in the same room, how disappointing that I\u2019m continuing the fight when we aren\u2019t. Obsession is an invasive species of the mind. You can reimagine events so constantly it chokes out all the other little events that are trying to happen. I\u2019m ashamed. I\u2019m having to face that it is me choosing to live my life in struggle. I gotta stop telling myself it will be better \u201cwhen \u2026\u201d There is no \u201cwhen.\u201d There only is.<\/p>\n

Auuugh, gawd, listen to me holding forth and forth to my audience of none! I can\u2019t stand myself.<\/p>\n

3.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to tell sleeping from waking in here. But I do recognize what a nightmare is, and I just had one, so I must have been asleep. In it Bruno kept turning the light on and telling me about something happening\u2014animals replicating. I said, \u201cLeave me be. They\u2019re going to replicate whether I\u2019m there to see it or not, and right now I\u2019m on my dark retreat.\u201d But he wouldn\u2019t stop, so finally I went to see these animals replicating. I could hear something moving behind an old built-in bookcase, and I yanked desperately at it to free the creature, and pulled out chunks of what I realized was the original Bruno. The pieces were falling apart in my hands like rotted food, while the replicant Bruno yelled and gesticulated at me. It was so horrible it woke me up. It was horrible because it\u2019s true.<\/p>\n

We categorize nightmares as unreal because we, as a species, don\u2019t \u201cbelieve\u201d in sleep. I mean as a landscape, its own real place. Perhaps I should reverse it, stop paying attention to what people say when I\u2019m awake and instead believe what they say in my sleep.<\/p>\n

4.<\/p>\n

Harry Styles lyrics running through my mind: Stop your crying, have the time of your life, gotta get away from here, you\u2019re not really good, everything will be all right.<\/p>\n

5.<\/p>\n

Came here to report that I was walking in the snow in a black snowsuit. I saw an oval space in the snow and curled up in it. I pulled snow over me like a blanket and it kept me warm. I thought, Why didn\u2019t I ever realize we don\u2019t have to be cold?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know why I keep seeing snow when I know it\u2019s not winter out there. I guess because snow is white, and I\u2019m hungry for the opposite of blackness.<\/p>\n

6.<\/p>\n

I feel my separateness. I feel like a tiny piece of gravel cutting into the heel of the darkness. The darkness is whole and I am just an aberration. I don\u2019t matter. I have never had that thought before! How terrible it feels! How I wish I could talk to someone or look at homes on Zillow or walk the dog\u2014anything to tell me that it\u2019s the darkness that\u2019s insignificant and fleeting, not me. Oh God, it\u2019s awful in here! I can\u2019t even fantasize about the other activities on the farm that I might do when I get out of here, like paragliding, weather permitting, because it won\u2019t be me out there paragliding. It will be Lisa Light. Lisa In Motion. I don\u2019t know that person. Me Now is stuck in here forever. Without all of Lisa Light\u2019s scurrying about, I have come to the terrible realization that\u2014get ready for it: There is no God. Sigh.<\/p>\n

I thought God was everything and so that meant me, too. But now I see there is no \u201cone life\u201d that I\u2019m a part of. I am a minor character in someone else\u2019s plot. Someone else being this darkness, this stillness.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Day Three<\/strong><\/p>\n

1.<\/p>\n

When you chew, you hear yourself. I don\u2019t want to hear myself chewing! And there\u2019s nothing I can do about it! Chomp, chomp-chomp-chomp-chomp-chomp. I ate yesterday\u2019s unknown fruit for breakfast, and oh my goodness! The squishing and the chomping. I could hear the juice squirting! I don\u2019t want to know all the machinations of the human sausage factory. I can\u2019t handle it. This awareness of process. I want to live in a dream, flitting about. Just do your jobs, body, and don\u2019t tell me about it.<\/p>\n

2.<\/p>\n

I hallucinated a church bell. I think it really did ring a few times\u2014the only sound loud enough to penetrate these castle walls\u2014but then I heard it two hundred and fifty more times. I counted. I started experimenting with trying to stop and start it, and I could. So it probably wasn\u2019t real, but you never know with Italians and how much they love Jesus\u2014two hundred and fifty could be exactly the right amount of times to ring His bell.<\/p>\n

3.<\/p>\n

Okay, 113 church bell tollings from the opposite direction. Then twenty more from the first direction. It\u2019s getting irritating because I don\u2019t know which world I\u2019m in. I\u2019m also starting to hear something like the ticking of a clock or horse hooves on cobblestones in the distance. You know how when the radio\u2019s set at the lowest volume in your car, you can\u2019t quite hear music but you know it\u2019s there? You can sort of feel it? It drives me crazy. This sound is like that, only I can\u2019t adjust the volume. It could be what John Cage describes as the treble hum of our nervous system above the base thump of pumping blood.<\/p>\n

Maybe there\u2019s a whole lot of sounds all the time that we never hear. Maybe I\u2019m hearing a tree growing right outside my window.<\/p>\n

4.<\/p>\n

You hear about vicious killers in solitary confinement feeling tender toward a rat in their cell, or an insect. There\u2019s a fly or a bee or a mosquito in here with me \u2026 Pretty sure it\u2019s a fly, a big horsefly, and I feel tender toward it. It really breaks up the monotony. It\u2019s doing things, moving around, living. I feel united with it against the darkness. We\u2019re two of a kind!<\/p>\n

5.<\/p>\n

It feels much later than one o\u2019clock. I\u2019m so distressed. Antonello hasn\u2019t come with my food. I don\u2019t care about the food, but I care about the coming to my door.<\/p>\n

My insect is gone too. Maybe it died.<\/p>\n

6.<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s night, but I can\u2019t sleep because I\u2019m seeing so much light. Bright light above, below, within. Drive-in movie screens with bright white movies playing. Walls of graffiti, all the words white white white. And silver. If I close my eyes, it doesn\u2019t stop it because the light is coming from inside me. You guys, there is all this light inside my brain. I\u2019ve stayed in here too long.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Day Four<\/strong><\/p>\n

1.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the fourth day. I think. It feels like the fourth year. My muscles have atrophied. I get dizzy when I stand. It\u2019s weird to walk. The floorboards sort of \u2026 float up to meet my feet. I imagine they must actually move an infinitesimal amount each time we walk on them. Everything must, even stone. Every single thing is coated in membrane\u2014that is the nature of things. I simply haven\u2019t been sensitive enough to pick up on the motion of objects till now. But yes, everything is in motion. Each time my foot lands, I can feel the give, and the springing back, of the floorboards. It\u2019s disconcerting. I\u2019ve always thought of myself as walking on<\/em> a surface, not with<\/em> it. In fact, the floorboards are walking on me too.<\/p>\n

2.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t like to think of other people having been in this room or coming here in the future. We are not welcome, with our disruptive thoughts cutting the one cool Everything into pieces. At first I thought the darkness didn\u2019t care about me, but I was forgetting we care a lot about a splinter stuck in our finger. The darkness might try to tweeze me out! Or drive me mad with terror or boredom so that I self-eject. I have always been good at camouflaging myself, so thus far I have eluded detection. But if someone else came into the room\u2014even if I think<\/em> about somebody else here\u2014the darkness might sense their presence, even my made-up person\u2019s presence, because they wouldn\u2019t be coated in darkness camo like me. And then, after the darkness was done with my made-up person, it might scan for more intruders and find me! Oh ho, now I\u2019m all spooked out.<\/p>\n

3.<\/p>\n

I took a shower. It was nice. I took off my clothes and stood under the showerhead (I felt for it to figure out where to stand) and turned on the faucet, and what happens next is totally predictable when you perform those three operations \u2026 yet it surprised me as if it just happened on its own, as if I didn\u2019t do anything at all to create that wetness.<\/p>\n

Another surprise came when I got out of the shower. Earlier, I\u2019d felt around for the cool basin and left my towel in the sink. I thought I would be able to find it there easily. Turns out that wasn\u2019t the sink. Can you guess what it was?<\/p>\n

I was careful putting my clothes on, because it\u2019s dangerous to drop things in the dark. They move. I lost a sock in the night. I took both of them off and dropped them by the bed when I went to not-sleep. This morning only one remained. I was on my hands and knees everywhere feeling for its brother. Somehow it got to the middle of the room!<\/p>\n

Trying to find the right place to comb the part in my hair so that it doesn\u2019t dry with my cowlick gone haywire without looking in a mirror was precarious.<\/p>\n

Anything done tentatively is exquisite. When forced to move slowly, to grope for one\u2019s bearings, we become fragile, delicate. We come across small beauties that normally we rush past and trample. Feeling uncertain opens the possibility of surprise. Surprise is not enjoyment. It\u2019s awe. Humility. Surprise is being outsmarted by the universe, and we glory in our smallness because it allows us to be teased in a loving way by the ubiquitous.<\/p>\n

This feeling was perfectly captured by a travel guide who took a duchess to see the Grand Canyon: \u201cUpon standing on its rim and encountering its vastness for the first time, the duchess flung her arms open and screamed.\u201d<\/p>\n

4.<\/p>\n

Every time I feel my way along the soft stone wall, a nanoscopic layer falls off. How many feels, over thousands of years, before this stone wears clean away, and I can plunge my hand through the wall into the outside?<\/p>\n

5.<\/p>\n

The electricity bill for this cottage must be so low. Ah ha ha!<\/p>\n

6.<\/p>\n

Note to self: Look up the meaning of desultory<\/em>. I do believe this pillow is \u201cdesultory.\u201d It\u2019s a wet noodle pillow.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

And that was my last transmission from the dark. I tried to gauge when it was 10 P.M.<\/small>, so I would exit at the same hour I entered, but I miscalculated, because when I wobbled out of my room I was hit in the face with some hazy afternoon sunrays. All the better to witness the world with.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

7.<\/p>\n

Oh my God. All that is out here! Fruit trees, a mother cat with kittens, horses whinnying, stone houses with no doors in the doorframes, no windows in the window openings, no floor but dirt. These are probably those crumbling Italian countryside houses you hear about that you can buy for a dollar. Of course now I really want to buy one and stay here forever. Hey, I bet that\u2019s the father cat there. There\u2019s so much dimension<\/em> out here. I don\u2019t know why I ever went indoors! This world is glorious! I gotta take it while I can have it! Because\u2014you guys\u2014I\u2019ve gotten a glimpse of what\u2019s to come. Death is heavy, man. Literally. It hurt my chest lying on me. And the loss of God got me right in the mouth. I can feel with my tongue a bunch of canker sores inside my lips and one of my cheeks.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And that\u2019s where the recording stops, with a small scream from the first human being I came across, an old-fashioned, lots-of-layers dress despite the warmth of the day, woman. I\u2019d forgotten to look at myself before emerging. I must have been a sight. All pale, with my legs moving funny. Puffing my lower face out so the cankers didn\u2019t scrape against my teeth while I muttered into the recorder. I wore sunglasses even though by now it was twilight, and a later (shocking) glance in the mirror revealed that my cowlick pointed straight to the moon.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Day Five<\/strong><\/p>\n

I met the guests at dinner, and they were indeed all new people\u2014from Scotland, Spain, Australia, Ireland, Poland, and England. They were curious about what happened in the dark. After hearing what I went through, a couple of them wanted to try it out; the rest said over their dead body. When I got to the part about losing God in there, a vibrant gay handsome Australian actor\/content creator named Robbie cried, \u201cI found Him!\u201d<\/p>\n

He whipped out his phone and read what he had just written about the year since his mother died and he found out his Argentinian fianc\u00e9 was using him for a visa, so he ran away to Thailand and did ayahuasca and breath work and something with three initials that unblocked trauma quite traumatically, it seems, as evidenced in the video he showed me of himself in little black underwear shaking like someone being exorcised.<\/p>\n

He asked what I do and then he googled my name and was yelling SUCKDOG?!?! The name of my band from a million years ago. Seven faces stopped eating and they, too, demanded an explanation. I said, \u201cIt was the eighties.\u201d That seemed to satisfy everyone.<\/p>\n

Robbie was vegan and alcohol-free while he lived in Thailand, until he came to Italy and someone offered him a glass from a fifty-thousand-dollar bottle of wine. I asked if it tasted like $50K. He said no, it tasted like $5K: He only had one glass.<\/p>\n

It is so good<\/em> to hear other people\u2019s jokes and not just your own.<\/p>\n

Antonello explained how they make cheese on the farm the old-fashioned way. They slaughter a lamb and use its intestines (I think) to make the milk bubble (I think) as it\u2019s churned instead of the chemicals that Americans and now the rest of the world use instead. They make everything on this farm themselves with absolutely nothing from stores. Nothing modern whatsoever. Robbie said he learned from Antonello that agriculture is exactly the same as spirituality.<\/p>\n

Robbie and I spilled it all\u2014utterly indiscreet. What a relief it was to make sense to someone! Conversation with him is not the high wire act it is for me in France. Even after three years of living there, Parisians find me inexplicable, and it kind of hurts my feelings. Everything there is undertone and nuance that I just don\u2019t get. I don\u2019t want to get it! It feels like a game with rules written in invisible ink, where someone has to win and someone has to lose. I don\u2019t want to do either! I want to know and be known and laugh a lot at stupid stuff\u2014but not at how stupid other people are. Robbie\u2019s the same. We love juvenile movies like Airplane!<\/em>\u00a0Robbie just says anything, like I used to do. No context, no modesty, fast and loose with facts. He thinks I\u2019m normal. I am<\/em> normal!<\/p>\n

In my exuberance at being able to speak without effort, at not having to pay attention to another culture\u2019s manners, at not trying to predict and disarm my husband\u2019s next mood, I maybe went overboard: I accidentally ate an entire tureen of lentils that I thought were for me, but it turns out were for the whole table.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Day Six<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am so emotional since regaining the world of light and sound that comes from sources other than me. When Robbie didn\u2019t appear at breakfast or the afternoon activity, I was like an actress in a Mexican soap opera twice betrayed. When he showed up at dinner, I was so joyful I forgot I\u2019d ever been anything else until \u2026 this redhead came late and enthralled the table with tales of her past life when she was a Chinese woman who loved her husband and he didn\u2019t love her and she got hooked on opium because of it and died giving birth to their sixth child … Robbie joined in with one sentence only: \u201cA shaman told me my spirit animal is a turtle.\u201d \u201cTurtles are so wise,\u201d the redhead noted, and began giving a tutorial on the subject. \u201cTurtles are so cute,\u201d I interrupted, \u201cwith their little E.T. heads.\u201d \u201cLittle E.T. heads!?\u201d cried Robbie, and we both burst out laughing while the redhead remained stone-faced. Touchdown! There\u2019s not room enough in Robbie for two new best friends.<\/p>\n

The redhead shot back that my marriage was unsustainable. I said, \u201cWell it is or it isn\u2019t, I don\u2019t really care which.\u201d But inside I was thinking, I don\u2019t think you\u2019re one to decide about some else\u2019s marriage, after having six kids in a row on opium until you died.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Day Seven<\/strong><\/p>\n

To get to breakfast, activities, or dinner, I\u2019d walk to the common area from my little stone house (dark no more\u2014all you have to do is turn on the lights \u2026 and it shrinks! I can\u2019t believe how huge<\/em> my room got in the dark!) down a hilly, winding, lonesome road flanked by vineyards twenty minutes each way. Dogs would bark my coming as if passing a torch, alerting the next dog two minutes away of the demon who dared step foot on their land. When they\u2019d discover\u2014a hurtful surprise each time\u2014that they couldn\u2019t break through their fences and maul me, they did the next best thing and peed at me. A chorus of urine streams. I never shared the road with another human or vehicle \u2026 just me and the grapes and olives and figs and birds \u2026 until this morning, my last (maybe my last ever, I thought), when an escaped German shepherd trotted straight at me and I thought, Feel no fear, feel no fear, feel no fear. It worked: He let me pass. I feel more in sync with everything in this world since I found out what it\u2019s like to be just with myself. To meet even an attack dog is welcome in its not-me-ness.<\/p>\n

Enormous pink ribbons tied to the gates of two houses across from each other at the entrance to the farm proclaimed that each had been blessed with the birth of a daughter. Since no one ever leaves here, I imagined these two little girls growing up together and then growing old together. I\u2019d seen their grandmas a few times, with their plain clothes, plain faces, plain attitudes, bending over to yank weeds or do some other earth business; slow, placid, belonging. That will be these babies someday.<\/p>\n

For my last breakfast, I asked for cold water, and the staff acted like I was a zoo animal who broke out, hitchhiked to a diner, and demanded crickets. \u201cAntonello won\u2019t let us have cold water in the morning as it\u2019s not good for the health,\u201d a French guest explained. \u201c \u2018You don\u2019t wash dirty greasy dishes in cold water,\u2019 \u201d she quoted.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t wake up as a dirty greasy dish,\u201d I protested.<\/p>\n

An edict of Antonello\u2019s can be griped at, but it cannot be overturned. I drank my water tepid.<\/p>\n

Robbie was steadily sucking down coffee. \u201cI didn\u2019t sleep at all last night,\u201d he said. \u201cI was lying on the hammock under three blankets staring at the full moon and it came to me: You met Lisa for a reason.\u201d He decided that reason was to make me the scriptwriter for his TV dramedy about his mother coming back from the dead to give him gay dating advice. I fly to Thailand in January to begin shooting!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Lisa Carver published the nineties zine <\/em>Rollerderby. She lives in Pittsburgh and wants a divorce. <\/em>Her latest book is <\/em>Lover of Leaving, and her Patreon is called\u00a0Philosophy Hour<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIf I close my eyes, it doesn\u2019t stop it because the light is coming from inside me. You guys, there is all this light inside my brain. I\u2019ve stayed in here too long.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2407,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4393],"tags":[67827,68712,23251,23629],"class_list":["post-170791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-person","tag-featured","tag-lisa-carver","tag-meditation-retreat","tag-retreat"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nA Night and a Day and a Night and a Day and a Night and a Day in the Dark by Lisa Carver<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"May 15, 2025 \u2013 \u201cIf I close my eyes, it doesn\u2019t stop it because the light is coming from inside me. You guys, there is all this light inside my brain. 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