I just got off work. It’s 5:30am* and I am on the west coast. California. Right now dawn is about to hit, but it is the darkest part of the night. I wish it would stay that way. It is just so peacfull and quite. The day seems like glaring headache to be avoided. Don’t you just love the night? Don’t you just love that weird electric energy that you get? Don’t you just love that sealed off feeling as if what you see is all that exists? Sometimes I don’t think that those Goth types are all that mad. THe night is really quite lovely. It is asi if responsibility belongs to the day but freedom is found in the night.
Yeah… the night is nice, but I love the twilight, in between the bright daylight and the pitch black of night. There’s just something very peaceful about the winding down of the day that I love, and I’m always my happiest then.
I’m with you on the twilight, it’s such a surreal time of the day/night. It’s bright enough to see, yet nothing casts a shadow. Something very magical about those few moments of the day. I can definitely feel it.
Also I love the dark. One of my few pet peeves is people who leave their exterior lights on all night every night. After much coaxing I convinced my next door neighbour to turn his off. It was an enormously bright light, two floodlights, on a timer so they came on at sunset and stayed on till dawn every night. And no one ever used the back yard where they shone - they were just on because they were there. It was like they were expecting the mother ship to be landing.
When he finally turned it off it was wonderful to sit out on my back patio in complete darkness, so very much nicer.
But often when I try to explain it to a day person I usually just get a blank look. I used to always drive at night when visiting family on a weekend. It was wonderful to be hurtling through the quiet darkness, not seeing all of the road ahead but knowing it was there just the same. Just me and the car around me lik a bubble moving through space. It was a great time to think.
I’m one of those weirdo day people that aren’t supposed to exist in college. Staying up much past midnight messes me up for several days, as does sleeping in past nine. It’s like I’m already old or something.
Laziness dictates that I will sleep in given half a chance, but when I have to work early mornings, I love seeing the sunrise, but even more I love the predawn. It’s realy cool driving to work on the freeway at this time. Eastbound. The trees and bushes are flat and black still, and above this there is a myriad of poles, also black against these incredible subtle colours that start appearing in the sky. And the streetlights are still on. Add to this the white lines rushing past ,and you get a cool sort of 80s music video effect. Time to blast The Joshua Tree at full volume and do racing gear changes.
I wish I lived in a more extreme latitude though. At 34 degrees South, sunrise and sunset don’t last as long as I would like.
I also like the very deepest part of the night when my wife and son are asleep, and it’s just me, my computer, my thoughts, and my cats. The occasional freight train rumbling by my house. At night, you can hear them approach for miles, and it takes forever for the sound to recede.
I am also a fellow lover of the night. My best friend and i used to lay on the little used highway next to his house for hours when we were younger and stare at the stars. And the cool air was nice too. He is in Iraq now, but whenever we get together nowadays we always lay on the road like old times. I love the night.