One of the most horrible things about becoming an adult is
the tendency to ignore our childish thrills. We don’t believe we can fly if we
try hard enough, we’re definitely never going to find that pot of gold, and
that monster in the closet suddenly stops existing at night.
Or does it?
As adults, our brains are constantly trying to rationalize
things and make us behave in rational ways. Our dreams and nightmares become
just those things that happen when we sleep. Once the sun peaks, the light
shines and we’re able to see the whole truth. And the truth, when you come to
think of it, is so bland.
However, in the dark of the night when we can’t see what
lurks in the shadows, the truth becomes the worst thing we can imagine. Whatever
it is our brains conjure are the things that wait for us in the places where
the streetlights don’t shine.
So, let me deviate from my Poe-etic rant and review our
little hamlet as it stands after dark. I’m rating the streets of St. George nine
out of 10 burned-out streetlamps for being too blasted bright. Here we are,
stuck in the middle of a desert where we could fully enjoy the wonders of the
night sky, and what do we do? We try our hardest to make certain each star has
to compete with our LDS temple.
Hopefully it’s somewhat clear how much I value the night.
It’s beautiful and it’s scary. You know, like me.
Darkness is the time when the adultisms that have been
beaten into us over a lifetime seem to recede a bit in favor of those
vampirical forces that rear their terrorific faces in the absence of light.
Yes, I made up three words for that run-on sentence. The adult in you sort of
hates it, right?
That’s where the night comes in handy. Who’s to say there
isn’t some demonic hell creature in your hallway closet that can only appear at
midnight? Can anyone say for certain that a coven of witches doesn’t gather
outside your dorm every new moon and cast spells? Is it absolute fact that a
dragon doesn’t appear and search our streets for gold when it’s impossible to
see? Can you show me documentation that a flock of fairies isn’t hiding in the
rubble of the Whitehead building just waiting for the sun to go down so they
can fly around and cause mischief?
I advise you to take some time at night and let your
imagination run free. Drive out to the middle of the desert, lay out on a
blanket, and look up to the heavens. Let your thoughts get carried away. Turn
out all the lights in your house, sit alone in the darkness, and see how long
it takes for your imagination to create some other-worldly being.
Or do what I do. Go on a midnight run down an abandoned
trail. It’s thrilling to imagine some zombie or cannibal or Leatherface just
waiting around the next corner to gouge out my eyeballs.
OK, I must deviate again to add a review. For those of you
who think you can actually go out running by yourselves in the middle of the
night, you need to reevaluate our society. Your review is to read five out of
five articles on rapes and muggings that happen at night. If you take my advice
and go nighttime adventuring, then do it with a buddy.
We have plenty of time to see things as they are when the
sun shines. It’s when our planet faces the void of space that we get to see
things as they might never be. Nighttime is when our child returns to us.
So I say, come out little child. Come play in the dark.
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