words words words words

i just got the first text. it's from julie, my friend in marseille. her word was, of course, night.  if you like her phraseology, you should check out her blog, the kitchen, updated with belligerent regularity and encompassing the ins and outs of daily life in the mind of a creative unemployed type.

after taking delivery of her word, julie duly obliged us with this gem, accompanied with a dusky triptych of views from her  marseille appartement (that's french).

 

Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Julie McCalden

Night

I used to think nothing worth happening happened till the sun went down. Now that I’m marginally less ignorant and my days are a bit more roast dinner than salad, that’s just embarrassing. 

Though clearly the night does bring with it many appealing contrasts to that of the day. 

It’s dark for a start. I love the dark. Daylight’s great as well, you’ve got to love daylight (except when you’re seeing it before you’ve been to bed and you can’t remember your name, or where you live. That’s not good.). But I love how the darkness and orange glow from the streetlights morph the familiar into the unrecognisable. Combined with our heightened senses, there is an eerie quality, peculiar to the night. Left to my own devices my imagination runs wild; the moving shadows, the footsteps in the distance, the amplified sounds, the feeling of being alone and the worry of not being as alone as I think I am. And this strangeness makes me feel more alive. If nothing else, the darkness provides an apt change of scenery for the other, less obvious contrasts to unfold. 

Apart from bank holidays, the night is the only time when the shops are closed. In the wee small hours when even the kebab places and burger vans are packed up and only the 24 hour supermarkets and petrol stations are open, we are as free as we will ever be from the relentless opportunity to shop. Of course, most of us are sleeping then, but we can sleep better knowing that free from commerce we remain. Unless of course you have the Internet, because that’s 24/7. But no one’s holding a gun to your head. You could just read the news or find out everything you ever wanted to know about feral children. Or shop, if you want, it’s up to you. It could save you a trip to the unforgiving and vastly more enticing, impulse-buy arena of the frenzied shopping centre, thus also happily reducing your carbon footprint as you would probably have taken your car, unless of course, your online purchase, which was made in china, is going to be delivered all the way from New Zealand.

Night is the time that we associate with pleasure. The day is reserved for work but come nightfall and the time belongs to us once more. You are free to do as you please. You can do something, or nothing, whatever takes your fancy. Your nothing might be somebody else’s something. It doesn’t really matter if it’s something or nothing that you’ll be doing, or if you’ll be doing it with someone else who thinks of it as nothing while you prefer to think of it as something or vice versa. Each to their own. Personally, I’d prefer to do be doing something, but if you want to think of it as nothing that’s your call, I’m not gonna get in your way.

I’m always ready for winter until the night starts casting its shadows at 4 IN THE AFTERNOON. That’s a real low point for me and I long for gin and tonics, the smells of cut grass and sun tan lotion, barbeques and that magnificent phenomenon that is the late summer evening. I couldn’t say the same the other way round. But we couldn’t have one without the other. Except if daylight savings was sorted out to be different. The point is, all said and done the night is tremendous. But it would be nothing without the day.