When I was a younger person, I had more time for inane conversations about favorite movies, great restaurants, and other personal preferences. I'd stay up on the phone, talking to a girl whose interest in me was already fading, trying to convince her that I was unassailably cool because I was a night owl. In my estimation at the time, that kind of preference was what could accurately predict personal compatibility.
To be sure, those likes and dislikes can tip the scales when one's mind is torn. They're not nearly so important as I once thought, though. I say all this because my daughters are both in that age range now. Technology has provided me with previously unimagined insight into their conversations, as their texts, tweets, and messages bounce around the cloud at home. Checking those communiques are part of my parenting regimen.
Just like when I was young, their conversations are sodden with feelings they're ill-equipped to articulate. Instead of being able to express genuine interest in another person, a complicated dance routine emerges in which superficial flirting or silly non sequiturs become required steps in an elaborate pairing ritual. Wearing the right clothes and knowing the right lingo isn't enough. One has to be fluent in an array of discourses to navigate the shallow, muddy waters of teenage relationships.
In that same effort, I had developed a series of monologues that staked the limits of my particular personality. One of my favorites was a conversation about one's favorite time of day. Like anything created by a human, the monologue was graceless and awkward in its early stages. Periodic refinement and adjustment led to sentences that were loaded with more pathos and innuendo. You probably think I'm crazy, but you're probably guilty of the same thing.
At the core of that shameless performance was a bit of truth. I do have a favorite time of day: It's night. When I was little, I'd lie in bed for hours, staring out my bedroom window at the street light on the corner of Waverly and State. I loved the soft glow of the light and the way that it streamed in through my curtains. I loved lying in bed and listening to the radio, drowning my brain in terrible late 80's pop music until I drifted off. The older I was, the more baroque my thoughts became.
I dreamt up scenarios where I'd win some poor girl's heart or where I'd outsmart some meathead bent on humiliating me. I concocted lushly detailed scenarios in which I was the protagonist in a gritty action film and only my determination and incorruptible sense of ethics would win the day. The more the years passed, the more visceral and vivid these moments became. Somewhere along the way, women and a misguided attempt at fiction writing became involved. Still later, low paying jobs at odd hours of the night forced me to enjoy the still, calm hours to an even greater degree.
Each night's ending has its own unyielding weight, forever flattening out the carelessly unfolded day. The effervescent, insistent demands of our electrical souls soften, resolving themselves to wait for a more opportune moment upon which to seize our attention. Even when awake and ostensibly working, the absence of the garish sun gives liberty to relax one's anxieties.
Light scattered faintly, around corners and through windows, illuminates only because no other lights outshine its subtle, momentary addition. Street lights are a wonderful example of this. In the daytime, they're virtually useless and unhelpful. Yet the sparing amber light guards against the veil of nothingness that makes nighttime mysterious and even terrifying. There's a certain reassuring safety in that cone of light, even if it cannot hold back the dark veil that has descended over everything else.
The moon is an even better example. It glides through the heavens, unnoticed in the day, while casting silver dust in concert with the veil of night. It's light causes what was once dark and uncertain to once again have a detectable form and shape. At the low-paying, overnight job, I spent hours sitting on a massive roof, in the open air, watching the moon slowly sail across the sky. On nights with a full moon, the sight was nothing short of hypnotic. An hour would pass between calls for my presence and in that hour, I'd intimately study the moon's face and be spellbound in awe of its ancient magnificence.
At this time of year, when the night air has a pleasant chill, the gloom of Halloween turns every unattributed footstep into a prelude to a grisly murder. Yet, it is the same night as what appears after sunset in April and its sweet embrace promises the death of one moment in exchange for the birth of another. It is a deal I'm compelled to make by the most irresistible natural forces. More than anything else, the best part of the night is the chance for our minds to discard the burdens of the day.
Of course, not all thoughts should be laid down and forgotten. Important engagements, tender instances of affection, and the collected grains of wisdom that might fall into our laps all need to be stored and retained. Those are the moments that collectively become a life and those are the thoughts that populate the undetectable space in our minds we call a consciousness.
I'm also thankful for the moments that wash away from my present awareness. Human brains absorb an impressive amount of information in a single day. Much of it is petty, instinctual, or ephemeral. If our minds couldn't lay some of it down, we'd careen into insanity in no time at all. I'm given to metaphorical flights of fancy and I'm tempted to think of these thoughts as footprints in the sand as a wave is rolling in, but I know those thoughts don't always disappear.
Deep in the recesses of our consciousness, there is a place to keep these thoughts. Though it isn't something we actively consider, our minds have a deep basement into which these thoughts and experiences are herded. An oubliette awaits, with a secret door and no means of escape, silently receiving the white noise of our already cacophonous days. It's a dungeon of sorts and a place of forgetting or letting go to never see again. It's morbid, dark, and absolutely effective.
I still have a series of personal preferences that differentiate me from all other people, but I no longer trot them out as evidence of my inherent value as a person. My daughters are forming their own monologues, which will be refined and improved until they're finally seen as inferior to the actual business of knowing someone. I still love the night and I'm still thankful for the ability to forget. I know one day I'll wish that wasn't the case. For now, it's a welcome reprieve.
Have a happy Halloween out there! Don't eat unwrapped candy and make time, at the end of the night, to appreciate your mind. Marvel at the fact that it ushers your consciousness into the next day by allowing it to forget, to move forward, and to prepare for another day of collecting thoughts and discarding them once again.
No comments:
Post a Comment