Nightshade.
I've used that name for nearly twenty years. It was as much a part of me as my own breath. Under that name I've made social kings of paupers, and paupers out of kings. I have hidden myself in the shadows and basked in the light of glory.
Nightshade.
The pen name my book is published under.
When I was at a funeral service, well more properly, a celebration of life, I sat there and a new name was whispered in my ear...
Midnite.
The time that hangs between the cresting moon and crowning sun. The equal and opposite to high noon.
Hanging forever in the twilight between dusk and dawn, darkness and light.
The comparison for what I'm going through and the character Papa Midnite from the 2005 movie Constantine is rather close. Riding that thin line between darkness and light, balanced on a knife's edge with arms stretched deeply into the worlds of both darkness and light, immersed in the duality of pain and pleasure, heaven and hell, healing and destroying.
I have struggled on both sides of that line all my life telling myself that there is no grey area and that it's all either good or bad, light or dark. However, even though I knew better from legend, lore, and experience, it was still something that I refused to understand.
I am nature. Nature is neither good nor evil, it is nature. Nature is the ultimate resident of the twilight state. Nature creates and destroys as nature needs to survive.
You see the wolf kill the rabbit, and the wolf is evil and the rabbit is good. However, if you see the rabbit and it's multitudes destroy a farmer's garden so the farmer and his family have no food, the rabbits are evil. Then the farmer kills and eats the rabbit, now the farmer is evil. No, it is nature and perspective.
Don't judge me if you have a lack of perspective.
I stand at the crossroads, a point in balance and equality, striving to maintain balance.
Tattooed on my chest is the crossroads, within my heart is the medicine wheel, yet another crossroads.
So as I now embark on this new adventure within, expect and accept changes. It's time for me to peel back the layers of the onion (or the parfait) and see what lies at the heart.
