While you are sleeping.... (6)

Late at night, when no-one is posting here, when all the world's asleep....in the darkest dark and quietest quiet, there is another world, a secret, silent world. Scattered here and there are the unseen, the un-noticed, who, between them, are entrusted with the task of steering the great ship through the night.

They are a diverse bunch, though they rarely encounter one another. Ultimately, they share one thing....they cannot sleep at night, and even those who are afraid of it learn to embrace it, for it can be better to be with it and know what is happening rather than to sleep and to not know what it may be planning.

In the silence and the darkness, there can be illumination. Thoughts and emotions, while not always easy or beautiful, are ultra-present, they cannot be denied or diminished by the clatter and business of everyday life. These things loom larger than life itself and will not be ignored. They force people in the night to confront, accept, sometimes battle, sometimes surrender. Ultimately, they envelop, fully. But in dealing with these things, fear slowly turns to understanding or at least acceptance, and with that comes a form of peace. Time takes on a new dimension, and the quality of the moments is supreme, devoid of the myriad distractions of daylight life.

There is a greater clarity, serenity and sense of calm. The mind moves into another way of functioning altogether. There is, of course, a great loneliness. But the loneliness is revealed at it's greatest, and therefore the loneliness itself becomes vulnerable. In a way, it becomes one's constant comapnion. One makes a certain peace with it, and learns to understand it's mechanisms, and how these mechanisms play into the human soul.

At this time of year, it is like the calm before the storm. In the weeks to come, there will be many people killed on the roads, many people who have lost a friend or family member. The nights will be filled with newcomers and their dreadful grief.

Many nights spent walking the streets, looking at the houses wherein people sleep by night and spend the daylight hours trying to define themselves by their actions, households that will have their dynamics changed. Sometimes permanently. Most are gearing up for joyous times of some sort, some are wrenched by tension and need. All this and more can be seen and sensed more clearly at night than by daylight. These are the brief hours of some respite for the most, and the long hours of knowing for the few.

While you are sleeping, there are those entrusted with the soul of the night. You may never see them, but try standing somewhere remote and alone in the still of night, and stop everything you know for a moment.....you may just sense this other world.

It all happens.....while you are sleeping.

This world when most others sleep is where i have lived most of my life. I seem to belong more in it than the shiny and manic world under the blue sky. T'is bittersweet. T'is mostly all i know.