Night

In the morning the sun wakes me. It matters little if it’s at eight, or at four, the light streaming through insufficient curtains brings me back to this humorous universe. It matters little if I went to sleep at twelve or at three; I’m awake when the sun hits the room. I have many relationships with the sun: The sun, strong provider for man, energising all we need to survive. The sun is an eradiating plague upon the naked and thirsting, merciless in its overbearing presence. The sun illuminates our lies, destroying the shadows we hide behind. The sun satisfies some need for comfort and warmth. There’s more, but I have no more desire to provide examples. What I really want to say is the sun is my enemy, because it causes my beloved night to abandon me…

The night is my friend! I don’t mean when it gets dark, I mean when all the people, or at least the world directly surrounding me, has gone to sleep, and it is a little like they do not exist; it is easy to pretend they do not exist; it is easy to forget… Have you walked through the streets in the middle of the night? Have you savoured the silence, the void?

Solitude… the night wraps you up in solitude and allows a moment when your anxieties are… manageable. Some fools have argued that waking alone in the night is the worst time for anxiety. Not only are there the ordinary fears running through mankind, primeval echoes of huddling fearful in the darkness, but whether a solitary figure or your partner sleeps beside you, you are alone, alone with all the worries of your days, both real and potential, and there is very little to distract you from their consummation. Foolishness, I cry… no, I whisper… as I creep as silent as a mouse through the blessed darkness, for those anxieties, however opaque or transparent, will not arrive while the night swallows the world.

The sun is the passing of time; for time immemorial we have counted the very hours with its passage, but the night stars glitter with frozen light. Only the moon, dark but for the illumination of that ghastly sun, gives away the coming of realities; oh, if I could halt that moon at whim…

There are occasions when the night becomes the horror we fear it to be; perhaps you are burgled, or mugged, perhaps the water pipe bursts and you spend those happy hours battling a flood, or perhaps some greater catastrophe… but if you examine the ticks and tocks of your life you will come to realise that true horror emanates from the day. There are natural calamities, but scrutinise your life closely, and tell me that the majority of upheavals and disasters have not come from man, and always in the day…

The day is when man is at his most devious, for he has so much material to work with, to work upon. The day is when man is at his most energetic, for he has so much to desire and envy. The day is when man hates and harms, for he is shown his reflection in the mirror of a million other souls and despises what he see, seeks to obliterate what he refuses to acknowledge.

The perfect night… moving with much slower preponderance… exhausts these fiends; these men. Why should they contemplate their own silence? There is no one to belittle, there is no one to enslave. There is no one to murder; no selves to murder and replace with sycophants. There is no one towards which they might direct their hate, and hate has to go somewhere…

Delight in the night, the silence of the night. Rejoice in the night, the abysmal night. Embrace the night, the solitude of the night, but beware… delight, rejoice and embrace with too much fervour and the night will slip from your happy grip…

Eager as a giddy child,

To escape a world so beguiled,

A world made foolish by the tricks,

Of men who harm with bite and kick.

The night begins to win the fray,

The mighty sun strives to belay,

But darkness wins, at least for now,

And peace rains down, I know not how.

The screaming, shouting, deathly hush,

The eerie, echoing, lack of rush,

Wrap a soul in blankets snug,

Insinuate like affection’s hug.

Long the night its ticking slowed,

Upon its waters stillness flowed,

Why would God create the day?

He might have ceased, had I a say…