Acquainted with the Night

You see us almost everyday though you may not notice. There are many ways you can tell us from your regular Joe. Some of us, like myself tend to carry a lot of weight beneath our eyes. Huge black half moons below the eye. We move slower than you, during the day, and the light is piercing, even after long periods with in it.

No, I am not stating I am a vampire, I haven’t gone emo on you yet. I do however speak of a separate, closely related, rare albeit essential breed of Homo Sapien , better classified as Homo Nocturnus, or simply, the night worker. Overnights, Graveyard shifters, third crew, crazy bastards, and yes occasionally we have been called vampires.

I’ve been told it takes a special breed to work overnights. Despite my almost mythical prior paragraph, I am not sure that is true. Working the graveyard is just like working in the daytime just...darker. I’ve had plenty of people tell me that couldn’t do what I do. I’ve even fired a few. Its not easy staying awake all night long when you HAVE to do so. I’ll be heading into my seventh straight year of working nights. I love it, it defines me.

I started overnights at a small radio station in Maine. There is a certain peacefulness that comes with the night that I have a hard time putting into words, but what I loved most about my time is watching the sunrise. Sitting in that small radio booth, looking out onto the world and watching it wake was probably the defining factor in how the rest of my life up till now was going to shape up.

I spoke of peacefulness in the night. I feel I have to try to explain that, though I may not have the words. There is a silence that comes with night, in a small town at least, when traffic noise is minimal to nonexistent, that makes everything so much clearer. My thoughts seemed to scream, it wasn’t till I started working overnights that I truly understood what not being able to hear ones own thoughts actually meant.

Anyway, this silence it is almost holy for me. I used to take, and still frequently do take a couple of moments just to stand in it. No birds distract my thought, and the crickets seem to coax me deeper into my thoughts. Their song has always been more comforting to me then the shrill squawk or cry of a sparrow. That silence, that few minutes of quiet meditation, refreshes me more than any cup of coffee (though I slurp down bucket-loads of the stuff) more than a power nap (sleep is forbidden in my line of work) and more than any pill that claims to keep you awake. (Vivarin bad, very bad, stay away from the little yellow pill!).

The silence leads me inevitable to look up. This is where I find myself wondering how anyone can work with that big fiery ball of light blocking their view. On a clear night, staring at the stars, gazing into their endless mystery is almost a religious experience. I have yet to see anything as beautiful as the Milky Way, or anything as inspiring as Sirius at its brightest, and to see them all, together, Gods but it’s amazing. There have been nights, when the moon is wane, or nonexistent that its almost as if I can see everything. Gazing at such a huge assortment of light, watching as it slowly makes its way from one end of the sky to the other, brings me such peace that to try an describe it would be a crime.

Of course, not everything is wonderful in the night. I have yet to find anything out there to actually be afraid of, but on some deep level I believe man fears the dark. It probably boils down to our evolution. Back when there was no artificial light man, or some form of man was completely vulnerable. Being unable to see what is around you, what could attack you at any second was what ancient man must have felt. I think deep inside all of us, somewhere around that fight or flight instinct that fear lives on.

Having worked overnights so long, I have seen my fair share of people come and go. I can pretty much tell by talking to someone how long they are going to last in my world. Of course we have those who just can’t hack it, the folks that fall asleep on the job, but the more interesting cases are those that can’t cope with the changes the night brings.

I once worked with a guy, who after three nights realized that graveyard was not his cup of tea. He stated that he saw things, out of the corner of his eyes, things that moved quickly, almost fluidly and as soon as he turned to face them there was nothing there. If one takes the time to do some research you can find reams of articles on a phenomenon called “Shadow People”. Some theorize they are ghosts or spirits, other say they are travelers from another dimension. While I can’t officially, without a doubt, say these things aren’t true, I can say with some reasonable certainty that darkness, and the meager light we work with can create some pretty interesting shadows in our periphery vision that can look like almost anything.

I myself have had a few terrifying run ins with the Shadow People. Darkness and light can play some pretty convincing tricks on you. I once had myself convinced that there was something or someone following along beside me, as I walked from one building to the next. There was of course no one there, but the effect is quite real when it happens. But sooner or later, if you stick with it, these things become the norm, you realize there are no Shadow People, just your eyes trying to tell your brain what it is seeing in the absence of light. Makes for some fun stories to tell the new guys though.

Working at night, after you’ve done it for a while, a long becomes a way of life. I’ve been told I am crazy for sticking with it as long as I have. I’ve been asked why I don’t just take a day shift, but I can honestly say that at this point and time I wouldn’t have it any other way. Besides, the sun really does hurt my eyes now, even after spending a whole day in it.

There is a definite trade off here. Working while everyone else is asleep presents some pretty interesting problems. My girlfriend has somehow become accustomed to what I do, and knows to let me sleep during the day. Her life has become one of near constant silence. She has managed to find ways to do the dishes, talk on the phone, and clean house without waking me. Such a life is not for everybody, but she seems to be able to take it. When my days off come around, I sleep less, and force myself into a normalish schedule so I can spend more time with her.

There are other things as well. Risks. Overnight workers tend to get clinical depression, which is believe to be a direct result of disrupted circadian rhythm. I have yet to have something that terrible happen to me, but I do get my far share of insomnia. Working nights has also been linked to decreased immune system, greater chances of developing gastrointestinal problems, and by far the worst, an increased incidence of heart disease. I have experience none of these, thankfully and hope I never do.

The night is often thought of as a fearful dreadful place, it seems inbred into our psyche that the dark is a dangerous time. I’ve yet to see a horror movie where the killer runs around a well lit room, or charges around with his chainsaw at noon to hack his victims into little bits. There is nothing out there to fear. I am acquainted with the night, and I find it good.

The Point

Around March of this year, I got bored. I was writing, not a lot but I was working on what I foolishly thought would be a novel. I’d just gotten into the world building phase when something went wrong. Things go wrong in writing all the time, thats why there are drafts. This however was different, I was bored, bored by what I was writing, it didn’t take long to realize I was also bored with what I was reading. One of the nameless faceless many fantasy books floating around. It was confusing, I loved fantasy didn’t I? I thought I did, but as I looked at my bookshelf, I couldn’t find one title, new or old that I wanted to read, or reread. Somewhere along the line, fantasy had gotten boring. In the cobwebs of my mind, all the dragons were dead, magic sputtered its last spell, and the young protagonist with the unpronounceable name had finally died in shame.

I was bored and that was bad. If I was bored, what was the point of trying to build up a novel? My boredom would easily translate to the reader. You don’t sell anything that way. So I took a “break”. I figured something would fill the void. I’d find a new genre. Perhaps even a new way to write. I made the worst mistake a writer can, I stopped writing. I figured something would rush in and spark my creativity and all would be fine. Nope. Not even close, not writing is much easier than writing. Suddenly I was no longer a writer, and because I wasn’t writing I’d created a void in my mind and worse, in my imagination. I started frantically searching for what was missing. I spent a lot of money, games, movies, books, something, anything to satisfy what was missing. Nothing worked, I got a little satisfaction, by having something new. Eventually the novelty wore of and I felt dead again. I was a writer who wasn’t writing and I couldn’t see what was right in front of my damn face. I wasn’t writing so in the most easily definable way I was unhappy. It showed too, I got angrier easier, annoyed faster, work wasn’t bringing me the joy it used to, I was an asshole at home, an asshole at work. I even lost my ability to concentrate. Its amazing that my girlfriend is still around. I would have left, if I was presented with how I must have been these last six months.

The answer of course was right there in front of my face the whole time. For some reason I just couldn’t get to it. If I’d kept up with my old habits things may have been ok. I used to visit a site every single day when I was writing. It is called Forward Motion for Writers. Its a great community of writers who help each other along this bumpy road to publication. I would always be in the chat room, or reading the forums learning always learning. When I stopped writing I stopped going there as well. Nothing seemed to hold any real joy anymore. I thought I was depressed, hell maybe I was. If I had continued going to that site I may have been able to save myself some of the anguish of the last six months. I didn’t go to that site however for one very important reason. Someone would eventually ask me what I was writing and I would have to reply...nothing. I didn’t want that. Now that I think about it I may have had the answer all along and just refused to face it. Writing is hard after all. You’d be amazed what a person will do to avoid writing when it doesn’t flow. As I have mentioned before, I’ve done the dishes. THE DISHES!!!

So we’ve established something was missing, and you the reader know exactly what it is. At the time of course I had no idea. I was just stumbling along, trying to find something to take away this terrible feeling of dissatisfaction with, well with everything. This is sort of what it felt like, it’s rather hard to explain, but I will try. I was excited about something, not all the time, but I could feel something was missing and the need to find it, and the fact I might find it anywhere brought on this incredible feeling of expectation. To make this worse, nothing that I found seemed to fill that void, so I was almost always unsatisfied. I’m not saying that for the last six months I have been unhappy, far from it, but to know day after day that something is missing, thats just...frustrating. As I’ve mentioned earlier in the blog, a friend of mine, I named him Ralph loyal reader if you recall. He decided to start himself a blog. I mentioned that I had once had my own blog, but I stopped writing in it. He wondered why, and my answer...“Because it was a blog about my writing and I can’t write anymore” The feeling that came over me at that moment is near indescribable, happiness doesn’t even touch it, euphoria might be close. Writing was what was missing! To make everything make sense all I needed to do was write again!

So I got a new blog, a better, faster, smarter blog. I was actually quite worried about what would happen. I’ve had numerous false starts in my writing, I always start with good intentions, and then sort of fizzle out. Need an example? My blog before this, you wanna take a guess how many posts I made? Maybe ten? Nope. Five? No way...if you guessed one, you’d have it. The whole purpose of my last blog was to chronicle my attempt at writing a novel, and as you read earlier, that ended rather quickly, after all fantasy is dead in my world, it no longer meant anything to me. So this blog is much more general, sure I am talking a lot about writing, but thats because I just can’t explain how wonderful it feels to finally, FINALLY be writing again. Granted, I am no closer to writing a novel, or even a short story, but I have some ideas kicking around, and the characters are already coming to life. This time, I am going to stick with it. My goal for this year is to send in a short story, to a magazine. I don’t care if I get published. It’s the journey I care about. I want to go from idea to final draft. I expect to be rejected, that is a reality for every writer. I’m alright with rejection I think. I just want to write, not just write but create, it excites me more than anything I have ever felt, I can make a person, a world, I can make anything as long as I can imagine it, and that my friends is the point.

Lesson's we Teach Ourselves

There is a sad story in my world right now, and I might be part of the reason it is sad. Accepting that I might be part of the problem will not fix the problem, but it brings some interesting things about myself to light. More on that later.

The sadness of this story will be apparent to any writers who grace these pages, for everyone else, it will be pretty sad for you too. After all it involves something most of use take for granted...sight. The older gentlemen, the one who lives upstairs from me, the one I just mentioned in the last post, the writer...he very well may be going blind.

That is sad. But to be honest for me it is not the saddest part. The saddest part isn’t even that eventually this gentlemen may not be able to practice his craft. The saddest part is how I reacted to this news. I like most everyone else in the world, likes to consider himself a good person. I work at a non-profit, with children with behavior problems, learning disorders, and worse. I don’t steal from, try to kill, or do harm to my fellow humans, or even animals. I am appropriately saddened by news of death, disaster and war. But as I sit here writing this, I find myself having to admit, I am not that great of a guy right now.

When he first told me of his problem, and that it may be because of the medications they have him taking. I was sad for him. He has diabetes which was brought on by yet another medication, he also has mental health issues, which he also takes medication for. I don’t know how to help him deal with this, I doubt there is anyway anyone can truly help someone who is dealing with losing their eyesight, but that is not why I am having such a hard time dealing with all this, that in itself does not make this story so sad.

To explain this, I am going to have to go into some history, I met him a little over six years ago when I moved to this little coastal town. He rents the apartment above mine, and at first he was just the noisy guy upstairs who was up at all hours and stomps a lot. I don’t quite remember how we met, but I know the first time we spoke I was a little intimidated. This man is smart. An Etymologist who can give you the meaning of any word you give him, he can also give you the origin of that word, and why it means what it means today. As time went on I sat with him, on our stoops watching traffic pass, talking about a wide variety of subjects, about religion, history, the state of our government, mental health, to farther fetched things like UFOs and the afterlife. I grew to enjoy these sessions immensely. Sometimes we would talk long into the night.

You won’t see him much in winter. To cold up here in Maine. Our talks were glad things of spring, summer, and autumn. His mental health could be quite a hindrance for him, as the locals would do all they could to avoid him, so they wouldn’t have to listen to him talk. Local kids would come around to make fun of him. I’ve even chased a few off myself. People could be so cruel to him, but he never skipped a beat, he just went on living and writing, and learning. He has a joy of learning I have not seen matched. I wish I shared it with him.

Recently though, our talks have taken a darker turn. This thing with his sight has hit hard. When i see him he has nothing but anger, at losing his sight, at the medications that may be the cause of it, at the doctors who cannot decided what could be causing it. Speaking to him has become almost painful. It wasn’t long before I started to try to avoid him, and then as time passed did whatever I could to avoid him. I was sick of listening to him bitch about it. Sick of hearing the hurt in his voice, seeing it in his eyes. I had become just like everyone else.

It took me a while to realize what I was doing. But I think I finally grasp what has happened and why my view of him changed so drastically. Unfairly I built him into one of the most powerful men I had ever met. I set the bar high. After all for six years I have watched him fight his disability, ignore little asshole kids who berated him for being different. I’ve watched him learn, heard his excitement at meeting someone new. Answered his questions, and learned how to let things become less important because life goes on no matter how I feel about it. I’d made him more than a man, and in doing so did him great disservice.

I am ashamed of myself. I realize now that I built him up so high that seeing him break, not only broke my heart but made me sick. I’d made him into something he was not. I’d made him larger than life but the truth is, and this is important, the truth is he is just like any of us...only able to take so much. Losing his sight was the last straw in a long line of heavy burdens, he has been dealt a cruel hand and it finally got to him. Instead of helping him through it, instead of understanding I shunned him. I admit this freely now, I can be a bad person.

He stands to loose his independence, his ability to take care of himself, and his beloved ability to look up and record the meaning of words that are new to him. In the end that is terrible in itself, but as I just finally figured out, what scares him the most is loosing his ability to write. Now I can understand some of you scoffing at that last bit. Writing isn’t that important. Talking is how you pass on information, how you communicate, not being able to write shouldn’t be that bad. I will try to explain this as best I can...to a writer, writing is the voice. It is as important to us as our voices, more important really. Writing is our voice. If you still scoff I ask you to do this, think up a topic that is important to you, something you love or something you hate. Get yourself a tape recorder and talk about it for ten minutes. Don’t listen to the tape yet. Now, write about the same thing for ten minutes. Now you can go ahead and listen to the tape. I cannot presume to tell you how it sounds, but I dare-say that what you wrote, after you really got started not only flowed better, but that it gave more information about your chosen topic. Now read what you wrote again, then listen to what you spoke and find what is different. What is different is what you were afraid to say. Writing opens doors and breaks down walls, it allows us to say the things we fear saying out loud. Writing is freedom.

He is loosing his voice, and I am sitting by hiding from him. I realize now that I am not only hiding because he has broken the pedestal I have set him on, I am also avoiding him because what is happening to him could one day happen to me. What he speaks of now scares me more than I have ever been scared. Read that again: “What he speaks of now scares me more than I have ever been scared” That little sentence says a lot about me. As a fellow writer I should be helping him, supporting him, but I let my fear get the best of me. Things got hard and I cut and run. For today at least, I am a bad person. I am a work in progress though, and from today on I will do my best to support him all I can. I will listen, offer support, and talk about whatever he wishes to speak on.


Writing this was not easy. Self examination never is. This took me over a day to complete which is rare for me. I agonized over this when I was in bed last night, and it kept me up most of the night. I haven’t written for a long time and have just finally gotten myself back into the swing. I realized that to write this I might need some help, so to the bookshelf I went. I have this book, “Writing Down the Bones” its by Natalie Goldberg and it is a collection of essays about writing. Its not one of those cheesy step by step How to Write guides you see all over the place, it is a gentle encouragement to help a writer get over the bumps in the road that constantly seem to come up. I was a little sad to find that none of the essays could help me with this one. The words just didn’t seem to unlock the doors they normally do. I tossed the book to the side and turned back to the iBook to try to write again, and through fate or fake the wind from my fan caught the cover and lifted it up so that I could see a flash of red on the title page.

What it reveled was something I knew was there, but hadn’t thought about in a while. You see I have spoken to my friend about “Writing Down the Bones” thousands of times. I explained to him how the book was never far from me when I wrote and why it helped me so much. The wind from my fan was exposing something scrawled in red ink. I read it, and this is what it says:

Aug 10, 2005
Dave,
I had my ideals as a young man but all went away. But I never quit!
My goal in life was not to negate my fellow man but to elevate him.
You ARE a good writer.
Best of luck.
The Stoop Philosopher

He bought me a new copy of the book because mine was so ratty, and he could tell how much it not only helped me, but how much I loved it. In writing what he wrote on the cover, which is certainly not literary genius, he gave me the will to finish and publish this piece. So if you find yourself asking why I wrote this, there is your answer. I owe him. I’m outta here, I have to go start repaying a debt.

Somehow, Someway

Its interesting the way things work out. I used to love to write. Back when I was basically nothing. I didn’t have a big important job, I didn’t have much money, I didn’t really have anything but time. I used that time up writing and reading, reading and writing. I wrote about everything and everyone. I wrote everyday and every night and oh how I enjoyed it. I drank it up, I was even foolish enough to believe that it could be like this forever.

Far be it from me to say I was better off then. After all, I lived in a crappy apartment, didn’t have a computer, hadn’t found my life’s work yet, and I was about to get cheated on. No, life wasn’t better, but it sure as hell was more fulfilling. I was a creator, the builder and destroyer of worlds. Anything I wanted to make happen, happened. My imagination was free. It wasn’t bogged down with rent, or how horrible things at work have been. I had a voice.

Did I lose my voice? No. Not at all, but I did learn how to effectively ignore it. Things got to be more important than laying my thoughts out in a journal, or sitting to type out a few chapters for a novel. I fell in love. Found my muse, and ignored it. Its painful to think about how much better I could be at writing now if I had just had the foresight to stick with it. To sit down every night for an hour or so and plunk out some prose. But as we grow up we inevitably give up some of the things we love for other things that we love.

I have been rather lucky, though the point of this post is the ground I have lost in my writing, my writing is pretty much the only thing I have lost. I’m hoping writing is like riding a bike. Now that I have picked it back up again I hope I will soon be zooming down hills with the wind in my hair and the sun at my back. The imagination is a muscle that requires constant exercise and my imagination is a little round in the middle. The key is finding a way to balance all the things I want. I’ve seen it written and heard it said hundreds of times, “I am a writer, I write.” I need this. Here’s hoping life no longer gets in the way, heres hoping I can finally find that perfect balance.

There is a wonderful older gentlemen who lives in the apartment above mine. He has some challenges, and sometimes they get him down, but I have yet to see him give up. When he found out I was a writer, this is years ago now, when he found out I not only enjoyed philosophy but psychology, we he learned of my immense love of books and reading and learning, he became a companion, for he spent nearly ALL his time writing. We would sit, sometimes well into the night on our respective stoops and discuss whatever came to mind. He would always ask me If I was taking time to write. Sometimes I would reply “Yes, I write all the time” All the time was a relative statement of course, I had penned a few words but nothing substantial, but he would give me a knowing grin as if we were in some secret club, and ask me how it felt. I would mumble something along the lines of great and hope he left it at that. He always did, as if he knew.

Sometimes I would just say that no...I wasn’t writing, I would even admit that nothing would come out anymore. He would frown and think that over a moment, and then apologize, as if not writing was unimaginable to him, as if the very thought of it caused him physical hurt. It dawns on me now that, that is exactly what that thought does to him because he is there, “in the words”. He has very little without his writing, and as I sit here with my powerful little iBook looking around at years of accumulated “shit” I realize that until I start writing again, I have very little. I am successful, not rich by any means, but doing well, yet a part of me was dying, crucified upon my everyday life.

It’s time for my imagination to get down off that cross. I have to find a balance or lose a part of myself that I love forever....

“I AM a writer, and from now on, I write.”