NIGHTY NIGHT

What is it about the night that beckons thoughts, feelings, moments so different from those that exist during the day? Is it the darkness closing in around us, shrouding us from the transparency of the day? Is it the freedom from our daytime responsibilities? Or is it simply that by nightfall we've been up for so long that our brains and bodies don't know how to function in a "normal" capacity?

.

Ever since I was a wee-one, nights and nighttime endeavors have varied quite greatly from their daytime counterparts. Any unidentified noise that typically would be shrugged off during the day, at night, becomes someone with ill intentions lurking just outside my door. Projects that call for my undivided attention receive just the opposite while the sun is high in the sky, but once the moon replaces the sun suddenly my focus kicks in and my best work is done [this reality was the bane of my existence throughout my years of school]. Idealistic dreams seem attainable and keep me filled with hope in the waking hours, but when I should be sleeping my mind becomes clouded with over the top rationalizing that gives way to anxiety. And still, at other times the expansive night sky, dotted with stars, affords me peace, calm, and a sense of (yet another) fresh start that rarely comes from the daytime.

.

Vincent Van Gogh once said, "I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day." Perhaps he just may be right. Though the night may be riddled with some form of restlessness, or something of a similar flavor, whatever it holds, there's no denying that there's something bewitching about nighttime. . . and I often am under its spell.