5.18.07

i've become a strange nocturnal creature, as a result of having very little structure or schedule in my life these days. it will all change when my quarter-off comes to a close in june, but until then i am free : free to be as i will, and as i wish, for probably the last time in my life, at least to such a degree. that is, when again will i be able to be entirely nocturnal? shouldn't i jump at the opportunity now, for curiosity's sake if nothing else?

it's strange that, when given free reign to sleep and wake as i please, my body shows preference for this kind of cycle. it makes sense for me, because i like peace and quiet, and i like time alone to work on music, and i like getting a lot of undisrupted reading and writing done. i can't focus well around other people, and i get in the creative mindset needed for songwriting most frequently in the dead of night. there's nothing wrong with it, except for the fact that, if i do crave interaction, there are few people i can call; and if i get hungry, my only options are odwalla bars or trail mix or oreos, from the corner store a block away. i'm not complaining, really.

i think of daytime as a time for socializing, enjoying the sun, conversing, experimenting, taking-in, absorbing, and learning. i think of nighttime as a time to process that which has been absorbed, and to channel it into whatever project i undertake for the night: a song, or a bit of writing, or a book, or a thought process. nighttime is also the time during which i write papers and essays for class and during which i do the bulk of my reading. it's not the best way to be, because when i am up all night reading, i am generally tired in class and don't absorb the lecture as much as i might like to.

i think of temporary nocturnalism (which is really just an exaggerated version of my previous habits) as something halfway between blocked-out-meditation-time, a personal experiment, a test of will, a test of my own boundaries, and an observation of nature vs. nurture (with regard to the sleeping habits that are instilled in us, and whether they are actually intrinsic or learned/ taught). granted, human beings in general seem to naturally be diurnal, but what is MY natural sleep tendency? and what factors contribute to it? is it different now than it might have been when i was younger/ than it will be when i am older?

according to wikipedia, "'Night owl' is a term for a person who tends to stay up until late at night. Usually, night owls keep awake past midnight, with extreme night owls staying awake until 5:00 or 6:00 AM." it looks like i'm an extreme night owl. because i can be and naturally am inclined to be so? or because i want to be? perhaps both are essentially the same motivation.

famous night-owls (also according to wikipedia): bill clinton, winston churchill, j.r.r. tolkien, and glenn gould.

here's an article on coping tips for night-owls.

here's an article on lack of sleep as viewed as a disease or disorder.

this article attributes it to genetic mutation.

i read another article - a ridiculous and totally stupid article - on nocturnal individuals, on the internet this evening. it can be found here, if you have any desire to read something totally trivial and quite heavy on the oversimplification/ if you want to turn your brain to slush: the truth about nocturnal people

here's my favorite idiotic exerpt from it:

Things happen that are out of our control and some of them happen at night. Society needs nocturnals to work emergency jobs. Firemen, paramedics, doctors. In the winter, we need someone to remove the snow and ice from our streets.

Society also needs nocturnals for convenience. We've become accustomed to having 24-hour stores and fast food chains. We enjoy having fresh baked goods in the morning. Service men and women perform maintenance on the internet sites we frequent. They often do this in the middle of the night to create as little disruption as possible for the rest of the world.

The next time you meet a nocturnal, remember he is just like everyone else except he lives at night.

alright, so it's okay that i don't sleep at night because nature selected me to be a donut-baker or a burger-flipper or an ice-remover. i'm glad nature considered such things as donuts when it drafted its blueprints.

5.17.07

a few of the kinds of nights that i remember the best (and with fondness):

1) the night that is still, in every way in which a thing can ever be still. the air is still, and somehow time itself feels still. the people are, in vast regional majority, also still. and the pressures of daily tasks rest their heads, as only the urgent wanderings of the mind seem to take the wheel and sail for a while. in this stillness, movement itself is something more than it is during the day. because it seems to jump out from that which is immobile, as if it were life being borne out of nothing, it is so unexpected that it changes the essence of its surroundings although they do not visibly change, move, or show any kind of reaction to its motion. the contrast alone between motion and stillness is enough to make stillness change (and somehow appear more still); change being a kind of motion in and of itself.

2) the nights that are fierce with pounding rain. my mother used to put kettles on the floor in calculated places, in the house we lived in for a time. they would catch the rain, and the rain would make some kind of clatter on the roof and an entirely different kind of clatter - one that was somehow more invasive, albeit less audible - would be made as the water fell from the roof into the kettles. these nights were often coated in the kind of black that nature seems to usually reserve for things like coal and tar, due to felled power lines or similar such setbacks. my father, at his house, which was not the same house as that which was filled with kettles, would light candles all around the house, and i would take a hot shower by candlelight and, in doing so, wonder why i didn't do so more often.

3) the nights that did not end until daylight... first experienced as a child during sleepovers when conversation took priority over sleep; later experienced just in order to see if i could stay awake and fight the arms of tiredness. again, such nights were experienced as a teenager, when i roamed cemeteries at night or flung toilet paper rolls over the limbs of trees or drove with friends to random locations or rested on my back in fields with friends or with boys or with only my discman and a few CDs stuffed into a backpack. these were the kinds of nights experienced just in order to isolate them from the concept of day. these were nights that felt like stolen bits of freedom, shared with others or kept secret. these nights were later tainted by parties or booze or awareness of such things as car accidents or troubled friends. but sometimes the feeling tasted on such nights returns full-force and cannot be ignored in any way.

4) nights of a dark, looming, all-encompassing, supernatural breed of fear. nights that had to be shut out with sleep or hot tea or hugging arms. shadows out of which terrifying shapes could be imagined. nights in which things that were still were made to move by will of the mind or by sheer paranoia. nights that made daylight seem warmer than a womb when it graced the land with its presence and rested on her shores.

5.10.07

Depictions of extra-terrestrial sightings over time:

circa 1710:


woodcut of aerial UFO battle, circa 1561:


1350:


ancient cave-painting:


cave-painting of astronauts fighting:


3000 B.C.:


Nepal:


6000 B.C.:

5.9.07

5.9.07

when i was a kid, i used to go lie at the top of my driveway in Alta Sierra after dinner and stare at the night sky. sometimes i'd stay up there for half an hour; sometimes as long as three hours. i'd meditate on the vastness of things and think about where my life might take me. i'd force myself to stay there longer than was comfortable, so as to challenge my own spiritual will.

at my mother's house, i used to walk around in the snow while listening to music on my cd player, and i'd find the biggest field possible and sit right in the middle of it: as far away from things as i could possibly get. i was young - fifteen or sixteen - and sometimes i would cry, or sometimes i would feel myself filled with the most overwhelming sense of awe and beauty and wholeness, feelings inspired by the silent beauty around me and its stark contrast to the busy nature of my mind.

the amount of soul-searching that i scheduled for myself as a kid, in ways similar to this, is plentiful. i didn't reach many breakthrough conclusions, but i learned to be in awe of things even without understanding them, even when feeling subordinate to them. i learned to be familiar with a state of mind in which i could toss things around and counter them with the apparently-linear timeline of my days, and infuse them with whatever silent wisdom my surroundings had to offer me. there was a calming essence to such moments, and it was the act of escaping to nature, escaping to seclusion, and escaping to music that got me through a lot of tough childhood stuff.

i was talking to my dad the other day about a conversation i'd had with an old friend regarding the topic of childhood, particularly negative aspects of it. my dad said, "weird", and i asked what he meant by that. he said, "i don't know. it seems weird to rehash things like that." i think he's got a point. as essential a part of the self one's past might be, perhaps just as essential is a willingness to let things go. some things will always bear influence on the individual, whether the person realizes it or not, but some things can be tossed to the wind for later sense-making or for total disregard. maybe the point at which disregard of past baggage does not seem like the act of cutting off of a limb or a sad removal of something essential is the point at which it is necessary. i won't disregard memories like my walks in the snow, but i won't think about all of the same things that i used to ponder when i took such walks. growth is about taking on the new and not about dwelling on things that hurt in the past.

5.5.07

"Clenched Soul" by Pablo Neruda


We have lost even this twilight.
No one saw us this evening hand in hand
while the blue night dropped on the world.

I have seen from my window
the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops.

Sometimes a piece of sun
burned like a coin in my hand.

I remembered you with my soul clenched
in that sadness of mine that you know.

Where were you then?
Who else was there?
Saying what?
Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly
when I am sad and feel you are far away?

The book fell that always closed at twilight
and my blue sweater rolled like a hurt dog at my feet.

Always, always you recede through the evenings
toward the twilight erasing statues.