Light Inversion

Three Days Inside Practiced Darkness

Nov 04, 2025

For those who go into the dark

As I write, I want to close my eyes — as I did then, when there was nothing to see.

The little room was as usual: a bed (actually two), a desk and a well-worn armchair I’d pushed against the wall. When I could no longer sleep in bed or feel even a little comfortable, I sat in the chair, pulled my legs in and fumbled for the notebook on the desk. Of course I knocked something over. Probably the burnt-out candle. I told myself I had everything under control.

When I learned I could spend three days in total isolation from light, I trembled. The southern air smelled of late summer and pasture; a half‑collapsed fence ringed the fields, and an abandoned hut showed a black, empty square where its window once was. Imagining myself sitting in such a hut for days felt suddenly possible.

I had at least a month before I actually stood at the door of the specially prepared darkness room.

The dark waited.

It radiated a pull I could not ignore. On ordinary mornings I’d rush to the window; now I found myself wondering what life would be like if the light simply disappeared. The idea kept slipping on and off my mind while the sun continued to rise and set and I went along with it.

I was ready. The morning I was to go in, snow had fallen. The ground looked like a sheet of white paper, and I walked to the place on foot.

On the way I bought mineral water at the village shop and watched the shopkeeper and a few early customers with cheeks and hands reddened by the cold. It felt like saying goodbye to domestic scenes and small certainties that had always seemed self-evident. So real.

There were several darkness rooms in the northern countryside; each person had a separate chamber. I knew some of the other travelers, but voices trembled in the clipped goodbyes and I quivered too. Hesitation made everything sharper. We needed to finish these small farewells. I took off my boots and, with my feet as if for the last time, touched the cold earth. Okay, bye. See you Sunday.

It was Friday morning when I stepped into my darkness cell.

I closed the door. A small candle burned on the desk. The window behind the curtains was covered in something black. It could not be opened; there was no view and no promise of fresh air. Even the switches were taped, and I heard someone sealing doors from the outside. The exits were closed. I was afraid — always afraid of closed rooms, of not getting out, of running out of air. It began.

I hadn’t even blown the candle out.

I explored by touch: the toilet, the shower, the blankets. I fumbled for socks and giggled at the idea of mismatched pairs.

One exhale. A spiral of smoke rose, held for a moment, and the furniture slid into the dark as if in slow motion.

The darkness surprised me. It was soft: a flowing presence, like silk slipping from the hands. It could not be grasped, yet it was there, thickening, moving through the walls, sometimes acting like a cinema screen with colors and visions. The darkness felt alive. Or perhaps I had come alive.

Brushing my teeth became an adventure: toothpaste straight from the tube, because finding the brush was impossible.

The mind could not tell where anything began or ended. Gravity faltered and I floated, weightless.

I lay so long that all my edges ached.

I settled on the floor and put my travel bag under my head; instantly I felt back in nature. I exercised and stretched. I jumped on the beds — both of them — and, remarkably, never hit my head or stumbled. I showered, washed my hair, changed clothes: one layer for sleeping, another for being awake.

A kind of inner warrior had awakened in me.

She knew exactly which compartment of the bag held the things I needed. She sensed whenever something was taken from the bed. She noticed when anything disappeared. She sorted, cared and oriented in the room with such professional calm it felt as if she could see. It was an excellent feeling — to be alert.

“Even in silence you can feel a drawn spring ready to unfurl into action.” Not wind, not a flag. — Riga, 1991

I attended to my breath and my body. I did not want to lose the clarity I had gained. Then I understood that darkness does not free you from living. Life still had to be continued. This was now my life. So what if only for a few days? So what if night reigned within these walls? Neither I nor the world had disappeared.

Outside, someone shoveled snow. A guitar from another traveler’s room sounded light and careful. I put in earplugs; outside sounds receded like mist. Peace.

“Real life is not a place. It is an excuse. It is a justification for not trying. It has nothing to do with you.” — Rework, London, 2010

I wrote, of course. I imagined winter and the nearby lake, its surface capped with ice. In the dark I began to be carried by the potential of imagination and sensation — nuances, moods, subtleties — though I did not yet linger on them.

I wrote because I needed something to hold on to.

I folded pages so the texts would not overlap, touched words with my fingertips and even smelled them. The content did not matter. The written words were tremors of fear sent outward, and the darkness swallowed them. Later I did not try to read those pages; I threw some away or burned them, I no longer remember.

What remained was a barely perceptible lightness — a new, definite feeling I could not shake.

Suddenly it became clear: tidy the bag. Pack the things. Clean the room. Brush my teeth. Put my outdoor clothes ready by the door. I prepared myself to go, to leave this dark cave — an invisible reflection of myself. The darkness’s ether felt saturated with me, a little tiresome. How much of me was enough?

When my muttering subsided, a woman appeared on the darkness screen — black on white, conjured from nothing. She had a name, a style and an attitude.

Because of her, perhaps, the darkness had waited. She was and at the same time was not me. I decided then that the work in the darkness room had been honorably done.

Joy and silence.

Still darkness, and nothing suggested that somewhere a red EXIT sign might light like in a cinema. Was it day or night? How much time had passed? How much remained?

I was under the sway of the dark when a scratching sound began — probably at the door. At first I did not understand what was happening.

I pressed myself quietly against the door. I no longer believed anyone would open it. They did not. I felt the handle. Were the doors locked or left ajar? Was I allowed out? Should I open the door? The scratching continued and echoed. It sounded as though tape had been peeled from other darkness-room doors down the corridor. But was that truly so?

Then a line of light that had not been there before appeared. I pressed the handle and a dim corridor opened into view.

A few others had come out of their rooms into the corridor. They did not so much emerge as appear, drawn into the hallway’s perspective and taking shape.

People spoke little, as if reluctant. It seemed sound had been clipped from everything and everyone, and I kept listening to myself. Had I become more audible than the surrounding noise? How could one tell?

I wanted to run, to gulp air and outside emotions, but in that moment it was not necessary. I leaned against the corridor wall and sat on the floor. At the end of the corridor the sun was setting beyond the window.

But first I needed to get used to the light.

We all had to get used to this ability to be dazzled — only then could the world regain its dual nature.

Eyes open, closed, eyes open.

A mini workshop for after reading

for those who know that light begins in the dark

1. Dim the lights. Sit in a quiet space. Let your breath settle.

2. Take a blank page. Write down two truths you hold about yourself—one that feels like light, one that feels like shadow. No need to explain. Just name them.

3. Fold the page in half. Let the two truths face each other.

4. Say this line aloud: “I am not either. I am both.”

5. Leave the page somewhere quiet. Let it rest. Let it speak back when it’s ready.

Jasmine Monta (pen name) writes essayistic, poetic memoirs that weave ritual, visual thinking, and quiet attention.