NIGHT

My favorite time in the 24 hour cycle is when the sky is deep matte blue, but still light enough to see dim cloud patterns, and the trees look like flat black silhouettes against it. Bonus points for a crystal-clear full moon beaming out a silver glow, and an array of assorted planets, stars, satellites, planes, and unknowns.

I am a night girl. It is so much more interesting than the daytime. Daytime represents all the dull tasks that must be done; nighttime has so many more possibilities of surprise and strangeness. The world, too plain and open and obvious during the sunlight hours, becomes dramatic at night. Even the gas station looks beautiful and shiny at night. Even the gas station attendant looks better.

You can get away with more stuff at night. Night is a good buddy, a confidant, always provides refuge and a knowing smile and a cloak. People really do look better at night, too. If you don’t look ravishing at an outdoor restaurant, lit only by candlelight, the moon, or maybe a little neon, you must be butt ugly.

It is my natural inclination to stay up all night, every night, and has been so forever or around that. But my alarm clock, aka CHILDREN, thwarts my body clock. They get up around 6AM whether or not they want to, have to, or need to. They are un-quiet. I may lie there in a stupor, but I am awake. Maybe I should just stay up all night and sleep all day! I am a rock star, with my ways. When the kids are all out of the house, or at least able to BE QUIET DAMMIT, then maybe I can let my inner Keith Richards out again. Sans all those pesky substance abuse issues, of course.

Night is cooooool. I do love the sun sun sun, but the moon is My Man. Shine on.

Long slender shadows pulsating in windows
While feathery curtains hide fountains of eyes from the light
A different disease in another translation
Though you don't understand a familiar sensation
But who needs to talk when you're caught in the flavour of night

And you, yeah you, with your ice cream hands
You, yeah you, are my friend

All that you want could be happening for you
Just like the road that unrolls there before you tonight
Eyes you don't trust the fingers have beckoned
How long you got left--well, how long do you reckon
But who goes to waste when they're tasting the flavour of night

--Robyn Hitchcock, “Flavour of Night”