Friday, January 1, 2021

Reflections of an Insomniac

 The difference between night and day is the difference between being by ourselves as opposed to ourselves with others. I am always fascinated by the natural disparity between the two acts.


While the day offers us a forum  and instinctive guidelines to move through it in a quasi mechanical way, the night banishes all rules, presenting us with a stage where everything is almost sacred and intimate...our sunlit hours claimed by others during the day, are avenged by the personal sense of eternity bestowed upon us in the darkness...the rigidness of shapes melts giving way to a malleable space...thoughts have nowhere to centre themselves around, since every fistful of that darkness presents a new centre.

The day shrouds us in a blanket of self-importance, smothering us with countless chores deliberately labelled as 'crucial'. But the nights expose us to ourselves as we are: in our rawest form, naked, alone, empty and vulnerable.  Yet, it is a transformative realisation...it gives us courage to be ourselves, unencumbered by the possibility of over-exposure. 

Dividing the space into shapes and colours, and light and shadows, the day purposefully busies itself in etching the horizon line between the earth and sky. Night on the other hand, dissolves every divisive space into one stretchable conglomerate, packs every possibility into one enormous box and rattles it violently, letting it hurtle across infinite vistas of rolling darkness. While the activities of the day ensure  seperation from ourselves, night endeavours to unite us to the forgotten depths of our being.  

If days equate to an 'Open Sesame'  of Ali Baba fame, leading  us to to the cave of earthly temptations, nights set us free with the eternal magic of Abracadabra.

8 comments:

  1. Superb writing!! Very engaging!!

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  2. Amazing!! You bring about rare thoughts which sometimes didn't cross our minds. Thanks again for enlightening us!:)

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  3. So nice Seema, beautiful. Since David suffers from insomnia it put a name on it in a sense.

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  4. I agree that we dance to the sun and dream with the moon except when it is full like the other night when I awoke and couldn't go back to sleep because it was so bright out. Happy 2021!

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  5. This was magical. It suddenly threw open the door of the night and made me see it as a kind being, whose only goal was to awaken me to myself. Bravo!

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  6. You harness your insomnia wisely! The last line put quite a flourish to it all.

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