When The Wolves Come Howling In The Shadows

Nostrodamus is closed and the room is dark with only the laptop light and the orange glow of the heater illuminating me as though I were cast in a devilish spotlight. In front of me the darkness is so black I cannot see the suitcase or the stack of papers or the wall that is usually there. For all I know that void goes on. Right now it’s just a shadow and in the shadow lurk the wolves. I know these beasts. They come around every time I am wrought with uncertainty of the unknown and though they only tend to linger, not live, when they are present their howls unleash the fear in me and the mind begins the magician turn of trick playing and devious deception.

The wolves represent my worries and fears which currently are directed at my return back to that ever so great and not so white North. I can keep such things at bay most of time with the positive or hopes or even in telling myself that the unknown is where I am most comfortable. This is why, says I, I am constantly in flux. This is why I cannot stay rooted and need to continuously devourer the new. Yet, true as this may be none of it is any good when a pack of hungry wolves come hunting for the negativity that sits waiting so that the positive can exist. And though my better judgement tells me otherwise the wolves have their way on nights like this, wet and freezing and alone.

The wolves howl out the worry of unemployment. There are no jobs, they cry. You’ve searched and you’ve found nothing that match your credentials. Best to look for something answering calls from the angry or showering calls onto the annoyed. Best to look at a spot behind a counter. Best to look for a place stocking shelves. Wolves aside, in recent conversations with a teacher who returned to The Company after finding no work in Canada, it looks like the situation is a bleak one and as ludicrous as it may sound one seems to be able to get better work outside of their home country then within it. The wolves remind me that I return to nothing as the bulk of it all was sold off or vacated. They howl out about the debt I return to. That crippling, choking debt that seems to have dictated the worst of me for the better part of a decade. They howl and howl and I shut out these thoughts of complete hopelessness, the fears of being unemployable, the creditors, the worries of finding a home and the uncertainties of where that home will be with music…with movies…with walks…with photography…with these writings…shut them out. Best to just turn everything off and dive into sleep.

But a light shines and the wolves scatter.

Within that light are friends.
Within that light are family members.
Within that light are the people I love.
Within that light is a redheaded angel.
Within that light is the truth and the strength and the endurance and as it beams the spirit rises where once it was wallowing and there is enough to keep the wolves outside until their inevitable return with hopes that when they do come back their cries are not as loud as the last time.