nocturnal

"I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day." - Vincent Van Gogh

I am not a morning person. Nope, not by a long shot. Sure, I have to arise at the dreadful hour of 6:00 a.m. five days a week, but that only serves to reinforce the fact that I am not cut out for the world before noon.

I am a night owl. One of the reasons I often drag through the work days is not out of boredom (though that is sometimes the case), but because I stay up too late. I could be writing, reading, watching a movie - whatever. Usually, I am reading (and right now it is Lunar Park, the latest from Bret Easton Ellis). I become engrossed in the book, or the movie, or my writing, and the minutes seep away and suddenly I am looking at under five hours of sleep. The nighttime stimulates my imagination, resuscitates my mind, invigorates my spirit. Sleep is not a priority despite its necessity. I cope, however. I make it through the routine of the workday with the occasional longing to doze off across a stack of paperwork, but I make it. And when I exit the office at 5:30, I feel reanimated. I usually end up going home as my friends are stuck at work, and we also tread separate paths, so it is generally inconvenient or difficult to gather for post-work drinks and banter.

I once worked overnights at a tourist hotel on Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. It was me alone at the desk doing the audit from 11:00 until 7:00 - the graveyard shift. From my handwritten journal entry of August 28, 1995:

"It's funny when you work all night. You seem to get out of sync with the world. The light spreads across the city. Downtown is cloaked in fog. The traffic stirs. People rise, put on the coffee, open the newspaper. In the middle of it all I sit on the bus, a few other people on board, but alone with my thoughts and my fatigue. We night creatures retreat to shelter. These creatures are few now in the daylight, but I know them. Something in their eyes, what they wear. I accept them... Here I sit in retrospect on another night as minutes slip slowly by, as my life recedes. The creatures are out there in their many disguises. They shed their skin and eat their young."

Even during my formative teenage years I was partial to the night. I worked late at a commercial radio station. I did my volunteer college radio show at WEOS on Saturdays until 2:00 in the morning. Other nights I would be out with friends, partying at someone's house or, in the summer, carousing at the lake. Sometimes I would simply drive the small town highways and backroads by myself, contemplative and seeing the world in a different way.

Beneath street light. Swathed in neon. Displayed in headlights. Under the starless city sky.

I have lived in three different cities since I moved away from the parental unit. The world of neighborhood bars, favorite watering holes, and dark nightclubs opened up to me. My friends and I would spend hours at some tavern or club engaged in drunken persiflage and discourse. After enough alcohol had coursed into my bloodstream, and the right song was playing, I might even strike out on the dance floor and perform my unpolished drunk-dance. With enough booze as mental lubrication, the courage to make a slight spectacle of myself seemed unimportant. Then again, maybe I was actually dancing well - it could be that the cocktails I'd imbibed had served to loosen me up. Probably not, but... maybe. The dark little clubs with their eccentric (and sometimes macabre) attendees and the aggressive music always made me feel like I had found a comfortable little niche in the world for a while.

I will never be a "morning person." I will never be sprightly and alert when I wake up. I won't find the spark of life until the work day is half over, usually. But as the night falls, I come alive.