Why I like the night

I haven’t done much “original” writing on this blog in, well, ever.  When I started this blog, I would editorialize, synthesize, and satirize.  My output over the last year has been understandably limited, as I had no intention of turning this blog into a “pseudo-anonymous, slightly exhibitionist online psychiatrist’s couch”.  I’ve always viewed grief as a very private matter, and as I become older and more like my late father I talk less and less about such things.  In joking, I said that I was buttoned up tighter than a hipster’s jeans, but in reality I wasn’t kidding.

Why do I like the night?  Because the world is laid bare.  The rosy emotions of daytime give way to the maw of blackness.  Our visible world is swallowed by darkness, and the same trees that provide beauty and shade and green space during the day cast shadows and appear wraith-like in the night.  We stop moving for the day, and many sleep, and others feign sleep or give up on the idea entirely.  Our joints ache, reminding us of our physical exertions of the day, serving as a potent harbinger of our limited time on this earth.  The world moves at a slower, albeit steady, pace.  The bustle of dog walkers and strolling lovers and children at play is replaced by the garbage collector and the paperboy, more likely now a middle-aged paperman delivering the morning news from an aging and ill-maintained minivan.  A crest in the activity occurs when the bars close, disgorging their occupants into the streets, intoxicated and singing and stumbling towards their cars.

The fears, the insecurities, and all manner of dark thought come, not roaring, but slithering into the shadows created by the bulbs we employ to hold the night at bay.  We fret, and worry, and grind our teeth, wondering if we can make it through another day.  In the darkness hope is stripped away, and the human condition is laid bare.  The swirling morass reaches its crescendo….and then the sun rises, starting the cycle anew.