So, I have no idea about this. I wrote this last night, first thing I've written in a long time. So I don't know if I like it yet at all... But I'm thinking if I do, that it could be part of a longer story about a person, just sort of her story, her life, her reflections. And this could be. Perhaps not the very beginning. But a section. Early on. I have something else I half wrote, that connects to this. Anyway, thoughts? Do I need more practice before I can churn out something decent again? Or is it passable? And what about the continuation of it? :)
Writing comes alive in the dead of the night. The words snake from the brain to the page without hesitation, impossible either to appreciate or ridicule til the following day, all firmed up in the sunshine. That's the thing about daylight, it makes everything so real, and what exists only in concepts and vapours, it bakes into solidity, brings into being. That has its use, of course. Those nights I start to fade away, I'm desperate for the day, to cement me once more into reality. Before it's too late, you understand.
What I'm saying though is that true writing cannot find its form while everything is solid. Furniture. It leaves no place for thoughts to go bumping themselves into words and sentences, then paragraphs and whatever else follows on.
No. True writing takes place in the night.
Not night, not the witching hour or the time for ghosts and spirits and goblins, not that. The night where if at least, not everyone is asleep, they may as well be. Asleep like a fairy tale, like Sleeping Beauty and her castle, longer perhaps. It is not a dead feeling. But the feeling of the world in hibernation... You alone left to watch.
The humans are asleep.
In every place where people usually trample over the silence, strangling it in our synthetic chaos, suddenly the emptiness is bursting through. The night cannot be stopped by asphalt roads and buildings and solitary streetlights, for it comes flooding in on the cool air. It penetrates cities and the walls of their buildings, through to this creaking house, where a lone electric light spills over the room, yellow as melted butter.
But while civilization's monuments still stand, while it futilely declares its presence in gaudy ornaments of light and glowing alarm clocks, it cannot now suppress the earth. The night presses down, and this world is left empty. Alone.
Liberating, the growing stillness sounds with a gong, vibrating through your head - your lungs, as it melts the thoughts frozen by the day.
And slowly, inexorably, the night draws them out, in words. Like a magician pulls scarves from a sleeve. Like children to pied piper. Like rats from a doomed ship.
Oh yes. The night is the time for writing.
