From Life To Me

GIVE IN TO THE NIGHT

I’ve been staying up late for sometime now and funnily enough I kinda like it. Not that my bedtime was ever adhered to before. It’s just that it’s really cool at night and it’s dark. I like the dark. The darkness. The silence. And I hear better. Mom snoring, the dog scratching itself and the omnipresent nocturnal marauders which no Pest Exterminator really manages to exterminate. I feel strangely relaxed when it’s dark. The serenity strikes a chord. I mean look at it this way: there’s no one around, and it’s just me awake with a tube light on and an open book on my desk, ballpoint in hand. No interruptions or unwanted noise. Things sort of sync together seamlessly and I really have fun. Yesterday, I was doing a chapter dealing with Phenols and Ethers. Organic Chem and me DO NOT see eye to eye. Yet somehow, I think something got into my head yesterday coz this morning I was able to answer to some degree the questions at the back of the chapter.

Yet there is a flipside, which is showcased brilliantly in horror movies. Come on already you know what I mean. Fear of the dark!! It is scary at night, I cant deny it! I speak from experience. I had taken my dog out during a blackout and there was this sand heap with some leaves on it, lying on the road and call me melodramatic but I thought it was a disembodied hand sticking out instead of a leaf. I laughed loudest at myself but there it is. Things look different without the sun. Everyday objects like trees and lamp posts take on a fearsome aspect like things have gone all topsy turvy. Even the wind seems to have a voice of it’s own and maybe it’s fulfilling the request that Shelley made to it in his poem “Ode to The West Wind” I think the lines are

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:

What if my leaves are falling like its own!

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,

My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!

And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Be through my lips to unawakened Earth

(quoted from “Ode to the West Wind” by P.B. Shelley)

So, it’s got a mesmerising charm to it and it is a time when things sort of settle down. Night seduces you, soothes you and yet on the other hands it’s time for the shadows to come out and play. It‘s this duality that makes me wait each day for the onset of dusk. Speaking of dusk, have you read that story by Hector Hugh Munroe called “Dusk”? It sort of reflects what I want to say. Things are a little different when seen in obscurity or if you prefer it almost total absence of light.