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  • Seeing in the Dark
  • Olympia Vernon (bio)

“However, I do know that I have a deep faith concerning our connectivity and the undeniable, but unforeseen energies that (en)circle us. That energy is real, it’s elemental, it is charged with matter we will never understand . . . . I think that sometimes in order to let the light in we have to be able to see in the dark . . . .We are given our burdens with consideration for the weight we can carry. Without (them), we’d probably both be unaware of the darkness we’re coming out of.”

Jason Calabro, personal letter to Olympia Vernon

There is the piano. The violin. And thus, there is the overcast of this afternoon which has come and perched itself upon my lap. As with all and every thing I have ever composed—we are composers, are we not? of some greater Force that lies within us—and given birth (to), there is the piano, the violin, as I have come here this afternoon and can hear it now bursting at its seams the lyrics: I’ve waited a hundred years; but, I’d wait a million more for you [The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, original motion picture soundtrack. Artist: Sleeping at Last. Song: “Turning Page”].

And bursting through the egg and sperm, the quivering yolk of the womb with Its tender fabric of rivers and flesh was Charles Rowell, coming through and into the Universe—such a brain possessed and capsuled in its head must have been birthed into the world with an eye that shifted through the space of the room and the things and people in it with the incredible precision of an Artist, of one who sees in the dark, of one who was, indeed, aware of the darkness he was coming out of—and look.

Look, now.

There is this.

There is Callaloo, birthed and needled from that same head, that brain, that eye—the microscopic lens of an experience that is, alas, Ours, and is captured and spun incredibly and with a brilliance that requires of its viewer, its reader, its writer, its artist, its photographer, its scholar, its poet those unforeseen energies that are real, elemental, and charged with matter we may never understand—in essence, We are required to put forth energies that are part of the tender fabric of river and flesh.

I saw that at the 2011 Callaloo Conference held at Texas A&M.

I have never been shy of the tender vulnerability of my own life: for I am well aware that one can, at any time, be thrown to the wind, tossed in the air like a cat, where both balance and wisdom are found. A life is to be shared with others. It is to be lived, albeit c but there is power in failure and we are all in translation, fragile [End Page 1006] clay, wet and unaware of our burdens, until what is required of Us is greater than the courage we deemed impossible to muster.

Charles Rowell extended an invitation (to me) on behalf of Callaloo. I can remember now just where I stood, the circumference of my shoulder, and can hear his voice even now—if you, dear reader, have heard the voice of Charles Rowell then you well know the beauty of its addictive hold—encouraging me to attend, as scholars needed creative writers as much as creative writers needed scholars.

It would be a blending of the two worlds, he suggested.

And it was.

What a dear reprieve it was at that particular time in my life, as my mother had suffered a brain aneurysm last July and I was overwhelmed with doctors, appointments, the separation of one pill from another, CAT scans, and the phase and thought(s) of mortality, as so much was happening quickly, and it was happening quickly, to me, in that cave of pregnant waves and disasters; of white walls, flashing red lights where the world of writing had become foreign to me.

So thus was Charles Rowell urging me to come out of the dark.

But he was unaware of the darkness I was coming out of.

I remember...

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