Good morning, evening

For those whose writing is married to the night.

When the ink of night turns the sky into a moonlit silk-black sheet, starless beneath the thick smog that hangs over Sofia; when Ra descends to the west to face Apep, the snake that coils around the world and the city lights come on, casting their lonely sighs over empty streets, breaths never touching while the the many eyes of the concrete giants start to fade, you can look through a window and see a small white square and a shadow sitting in front of it. The shadow and the screen - this is the heart of writing. The essence of the process - casting your shadow over the sheet. And when night falls the whole worlds becomes a shadow.

I am a lucky person. When I stroll a few feet and face the four windows overlooking the city I can dive into the night in seconds, even if I quit spinning the whiskey-drenched tones of my personal jazz selection. Not much to the view, really, it shouldn't strike me at all - a mass of hazy green, red and let's-call-it yellow dots rising up to the silhouette of a medium-high mountain that dwarfs the ten-story silhouettes of concrete living blocks, the few glass office buildings and, closer to me, the single lamp shining over a street half-hidden by trees. The street rams into a bigger one and goes on, away into the night, while the other picks up the treeline and heads on its own way. Not impressive if you think about it. Nothing unique in it. Yet it makes me restless. I look upon it and it speaks to me. And it doesn't whisper "go to a mental institution", since it knows I'm speaking metaphorically when I say that it tells me to write. So I do and what I write I mostly like. We're in an affair, night and I. So I can't write in daytime. That would be cheating.

I can't write early in the evening too. I have to drill deep into the night, when the silence is so thick that when a car passes I can hear its engine for as long as it's within two blocks away. I can't tell you what time this happens. Time is irrelevant. But if you start to feel mellow and imagine that stress is dissipating from your head like smoke seeping out of a badly-stubbed cigarette, then you are there.

So I can only write at night (well, good stuff, anyway). What's the reason? I don't know. Maybe it's the solitude that night gives you - it's just you and the blank screen, so you either get something done or get lost, go to sleep like everybody else, wake up early and drink your coffee saying tomorrow's your day. Maybe it's the fact that when the dark falls you receive less input through the senses and your mind has more energy to devote to output. Maybe it's the same impulse that makes people tell stories at night instead of during the day.

Whatever it is, it is. The reason doesn't really matter. What matters is that some nights I can gaze out of my windows - yawning, maybe; red-eyed, probably - smile warmly, close my eyes and think to myself "Good morning, evening!"

Reviews

[Alan B.]

What a lovely description of the writing process at night. I like how you said it was a lover that you have an affair with. I too feel the same way about the night. Well done.