This is the latest addition to my owl collection - a birthday gift of a commissioned handcrafted rug from a dear friend.
My animal totem, given to me by a shaman many, many moon cycles ago is an owl. For wisdom, he said, and for night-loving and wooing. I don't think he was punning but I like to fancy he was. Either or. I've woo-hood back at any owls who flit around here and I would like to woo another night owl like myself if he ever presented himself.
I fight this night living thing all the time. It is late now, I look out over the mirror of the bay and see the lights reflected on the water and feel happiest. Day time is not my preferred time but as it's nearly everyone else's I have to suit up and show up when dawn appears.
A belief in former lives would say I must have been a courtesan or a night club dancer or at the very least a jazz singer in a smoky boite.
And of course any relationships I've had were mainly with day people with a few notable exceptions. With one, we would always make a point of having breakfast at Vesta's in Toronto at 4.00 a.m. As we both had to work, this was only accomplished on the weekends to our great glee. We often walked the boardwalk in the dead silence of the deep night, only the waves and the odd flutter of a sleepy bird underscoring our conversation.
With another we would drive off to, well, anywhere. Niagara Falls. Kingston. Sarnia. Only the midnight ribbon of highway beneath the car and some well loved music on the car stereo.
Now I savour the silence as I write this. How wonderful is the silence of an outport late at night. It comforts like a warm cloak.
Simon and Garfunkel were right. Darkness and the sound of silence. Truly my old friends.
I'm completely the opposite. I find darkness oppressive and tend to retreat into myself at night. I'm at my happiest and most productive in the daylight.
ReplyDeleteWhen the day becomes monochrome I shiver, so I like to draw the curtains, turn up the lights and look inward.
ReplyDeleteEarly morning is a nice time except in winter....experience talking.
ReplyDeleteNick:
ReplyDelete99.9% of the world would agree with you!
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GM:
ReplyDeleteAnd I like to go outside and embrace it, walk in it, taste it, savour it.
You see how isolated I feel in this attitude? LOL.
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GFB:
ReplyDeleteI often run into from the other end (night) of it. And yes it is beautiful watching the dawn come up and lighten the sky and then, well then, other noisy, blind people interfere with it...
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Me too, me too.
ReplyDeleteLiving in an ex- musician's household, the working day didn't end til midnight and then there is time needed to wind down.
Although we're both retired now we only come truly alive late in the evening. But we actually sleep late in the morning too.
I'm a night person too. It is nighttime while I write this. I do feel encapsulated by it. Nice and safe. Cozy like it should be.
ReplyDeleteAfter a day spent at #OccupyToronto #OccupyBayStreet I am wired. I am officially on the media team in smallish capacity.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I think the night owl thing might be genetic :)
xo
I've always puzzled over this circadian rhythm stuff – why most of the world seems to function on a daybreak to dusk cycle while every part of me would prefer a dusk to daybreak cycle. I remember living in Toronto and celebrating the fact that you could go to a grocery store, drug store or whatever at 2am and it seemed perfectly normal with all the others doing exactly the same thing. Even now, writing at 5:30am on a Sunday, I will return to bed shortly and sleep until 10 or 11. Wishing I could do that every day, but the necessities of work require that I march with the masses. Blessed retirement cannot come too soon so that I can begin living on my terms rather than life dictated by some master clock.
ReplyDeleteFriko:
ReplyDeleteLucky you to sleep so late, my phone starts going at around 9-ish. And the shock and awe around here when I sleep late has to be seen to be believed!
I wish I could phone them all, say around 1 in the morning and express the same that they're in bed.:-S
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Nora:
ReplyDeleteOh we could phone each other, couldn't we and reassure each other of our normality!
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Orla:
ReplyDeleteGoodonya.
And that genetic thing is certainly worth looking into!
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Veep:
ReplyDeleteAmen, brother. "Masterclock". Now what would we call the opposite. "Circadian Clock" or CC perhaps?
Or just no clock? I haven't worn a watch in 20 years so I'm all practised up....
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