As the shadows grow long on the ground...



I've always liked the night; fascinated and wary. I was Scared of the dark
when I was young and still occasionally prefer to sleep with the light on rather
than off. I love the all enveloping darkness that winter brings; collars up
against the cold, lights trailing in the darkness reflecting dream-like off the
wet pavements, making the eventual release from it's grip all the more
welcome. I like looking into darkness from the sanctuary of my warm room.
Staring into the swirling winter; skeletal trees bending to the will of the wind
as it howls across the park, unleashing showers of leaves as it goes. The rain
beating a tattoo against the window, more pleasant than any music, once again
re-inforces the comfort of the warmth. Safe inside my room.

Summer darkness is different; it fights so hard to overcome the light and
has such a short reign it hardly seems like darkness at all. Until the stillness
of the dark unsettles. Nothing; no wind, no sound. Perfect silence as the
darkness envelopes you in it's cloak like the warm waters of some exotic
river, coaxing you to succumb to the black depths. An intense darkness that
contrasts the light with it's density. The heady perfumed air of summer
nights seducing like a dark femme fatale who's beauty - though
unattainable - is no less craved. What seemed to take forever to arrive is
gone in the blink of an eye, but the sense of the summer night lingers. The
childhood memories of summer nights stay with us a lifetime - strange
considering we spent so little time in her embrace.

In the night we are born & in the night we find ourselves at one with the
primal part of our nature. Trolling the streets; nocturnal hunters on the
prowl; all our inhibitions are put aside in the darkness, to be scooped up
again only when the morning breaks and we assume the mantle of light.
The henious deeds executed under the cover of night, so shocking in the
light of day, seem part of night culture; a by-product of the darkness. The
need not to be seen - to hide from the world - lives within us all and at
sometime or another we will embrace the dark world of night as a friend.

let us hide from the light...