In Love With Night

I have always been in love with the night. The mystery, silence, and everpresent peace have beckoned me with its allure. I think all of us have been in love with the darkness at one time or another. The success of modern day society to brainwash us into thinking that daylight is the natural order of things is nothing short of criminal. Many of us have been cheated of our birthright, being told by psychologists, employers, and the church that night is the time to sleep; to avoid criminals; to hide in ones home quivering about what must be roaming the streets. All are baseless lies.
What brought me to writing this was all the deluded people out there that mark me as weird simply because I am by nature a night owl. I’ve been one all my life. As an infant, my father told me that he would come home at 2 am from working the railroad yards to find me sitting quietly in my crib. I was not playing or making a sound. He said that I’d just sit there and look around with fascination.
To appreciate that intrinsic beauty of the night all you have to do is go out one night for a walk. The first thing you notice is the utter silence. No birds or cars, only the wind sliding along your bare arms, caressing you like a lover would. The air is rich with the smell of earth and greenery, the streetlights offer little islands of light in an otherwise perfect setting. You take in that first clean, deep breath and are infected with the sudden desire to smile like an idiot. Suddenly you are again a child out after dark, into the forbidden zone and playing kick the can with your friends. Memories wash over you like something out of dreams long vanished into smoke.

You tilt your head back and see black skies filled with stars. How long has it been since you actually looked at them ? No bright orb to wash away the subtleties of what you percieve, no familiar blue sky and clouds, only the calming darkness. In that moment you realize that all your life, you’ve wanted to be up at night, but have been trapped into being a daytime person and now are a bit sad. There’s no need to be sad. You can reclaim your life if you really want to. Nobody forces you to be a day person. You simply went along with it because it’s easier, but it’s also very easy to become trapped by what others want. The easy way, by it’s very nature, is also the one lined with comfortable traps laid for the unwary. Society depends on the common, the banal, the easy path. And therein lies the danger.
The easiest way has always been the one that is insidious; full of little luxuries that you become dependent on. Before you’re aware of it, what you thought was a life full of wonders and other marvelous attractions becomes a cell. A comfortable cage and cell but still an area delineated and laid out by others for you. I’m convinced that this is what happens during the mid-life crises, but is not recognized for what it truly is. You desire something different, the path less traveled. Now you’re afraid it’s too late, but it isn’t. The only places that haven’t been fully explored are the ocean depths, space, and the night. Two of those are not likely open to you, but the night time is. The night is the New Frontier. Like first time explorers we venture out into the inky blackness. It is fraught with dangers, true, but so is the daytime world. I guarantee that it’s full of magic.
It is also the perfect time for those of us that are creative in our natures, for only at night can we think in silence without the blare of the world’s noise to blanket and mask what we may think deep in our souls. For we do think different at night when there is nobody around. As we walk down the sidewalk at 2 AM, we step on a twig and the snap is loud. You wonder if anyone heard, and if so, what they think. Somewhere a dog lifted it’s head and thought of you. A person in a nearby bedroom wonders if there’s an intruder lurking, or the sound incorporates into their dreams. The point being, is that now, only at this time, you become important in the world, you make a difference, you matter. Only nighttime makes this possible.
When there’s no one else around, it is as if you are the only person alive. Stories come out of this time, for it is magic. If you were the last person on Earth, what might you do or go ? What would the world be like ? These and many other strange questions surface in your newly awakened brain that is in tune with the Darkness. Children have imaginations that have not been stifled; why do you think they get such a thrill out of staying up late. It’s not because it’s forbidden. It is because the night reaches out to them and feeds them in ways the world doesn’t want them to. The world wants robots, not dreamers. Be truthful and ask yourself when was your favorite story time. Not being read to in the daylight, but in your bed at night or by a flashlight under the covers. The aura of mystery was there with you, and that is what we all crave in this time: that sense of mystery, of the uncommon. Lying there under the covers, the blanket over your head, your world shrank and became something else. Under that blanket you were in a tent. Perhaps you were reading “Dune” and imagined yourself in a stilltent waiting for the duststorm to abate so you could find the Fremen. Like I said...magic.
I think this is why many people watch television with all the lights out. In the dark nothing exists except what’s on that screen. You become one with the characters and tone of the movie. We love to step outside ourselves and discover other places, other worlds, and nightime facilitates that desire. It magnifies it on a grand scale. Night makes everything better. Ask yourself the attraction of carnivals, gatherings, candlelit dinners outside, conversations around a fire, and especially sex. It’s the lights, the other senses involved, the subtle change in the very air when the Sun goes away. We feel more free at that time, almost ready to burst with an energy just beneath the skin. You know the trueness of my words, as surely as you know that someday something wonderful will happen in your life; something so remarkable that you’ll feel intensely alive.
I implore you to take a walk in the dark. You will not be disappointed.

–Philip Leighton