My legs are fizzing again, my shoulders ache from being bunched, irritably, up to my neck. In the liquid dark reflection of my kitchen window, I can see the heavy red casserole pan, streaked black with baked-on midweek stew. I can see the long stretch of table with spilt cheese, empty jugs that held orange squash, sharp baguette bread crumbs that will catch in the grooves of the oak, and spike the elbows of the unwary. Away from the table I see the wicker basket with the line-stiff laundry, the bulbs unplanted, the sheaf of phone messages, unreturned.
I long for the cool of the night as if for a lover.
But I don’t go, because I’m afraid of the dark. I’ve just read John Lewis Stempel’s new book, Nightwalking, and it told me all about a world I loved but have forgotten. I never used to be afraid, of anything much, but now I drag around fears like some smelly weighted blanket, its stifling folds high on my back, chafing at my neck.
I do not want to feel this way, anymore. I am writing a new book. It’s to be called (Woman) Nightwalking, and in it I’m going to find women who nightwalk, and I’m going to learn their bravery, or their indifference. There will be twelve of them, and I’ll walk with them, see the dark world as they see it, fit my footsteps just behind theirs.
In his book, J L-S talks about the importance of bearing witness to the night-time world, in order to protect it. But I can’t bear witness, if I’m too afraid to walk without sunlight, and neither can any of the other women I know. I’m not the only one too scared to do this, there’s hundreds of us, thousands. Those fears might be well justified, well learned, but should we be paying the price for them that we are? Should those fears stop us going where we please? Stop us from pausing in the shadows, to watch a fox slink past. Or idle on a darkened path, to observe pale moths totter sugar-drunk on a honeysuckle? I don’t think so. I don’t want to pay that price, and miss such things.
Outside my kitchen window, our security light flicks on. It’s one of our hedgehog family, bustling its way to inspect the base of the bird feeder, in the dogs’ garden. I watch it pootling about until the security light fades, and then my reflection has returned in the silk black of the window. I look less square, my shoulders have dropped. The frustration, that maddening fizz, has almost gone. I feel resolved. Decided. Something within me has clicked into place. I might not be starting my journey – my nightwalking story – tonight, but I will be starting. And that’s enough. To stand at the start of it. Stand with me? Then walk beside me. There are secrets to see in this world, things we women need to know.
You can support this book by re-posting, re-tweeting, talking about it in the pub, the office, the street. Its message is important. Women must feel free to walk alone in the night. We cannot protect a world we do not know.
More info here.
Carlie Lee 