Nightblindness

Recently the cold has been on my mind a lot and how it makes me feel and all the little emotions that come with it, this may be strange but it is amazing that if you stop for a moment and in complete silence contemplate something. I know it is hard if you live in a city or there is a constant stream of noise emanating from all sides, so maybe take a walk to a park at night, or get up at an odd time of the night, open the window and just soak it in. The silence. It is overpowering. Magnificent and it is amazing how much clearer everything is. My gym is above a docking station for rowing equipment, and right next to a giant lake, surrounded by trees and open fields on both sides. That is it is in total isolation, or so it feels like, but even more importantly that is what it sounds like. So as I walked home a few nights ago, after working out to some loud music on the iPod, I decided to silence my permanent companion. Then it hit me, complete and utter silence. The cold was slowly numbing my legs, I was wearing shorts in 0 degree weather, but it was also providing me with the most refreshing air, in which each breath felt more alive than the preceding one. The lights in the distance, from buildings and a new arena being constructed, and from a few lamps was illuminating the rowing track in the most wonderful way. My mind was at peace, and breathing the cold air allowed me to realize something: We see the night as darkness and uncertainty as the unknown, the fear, a time for monsters and danger to run free. However I saw it completely differently this time, I saw it as beautiful, it transformed a muddy ugly puddle into a magnificent collection of leaves on semi frozen water that was a reflective black color and was immeasurably more magnificent then the sun could ever make it. The surrounding buildings are of the drab variety, made of concrete in a gray shade with small windows that are usually covered and decaying façade’s it is a sight for sore eyes during the day. Yet they look beautiful at night, there is no sense of it being decaying, the lights from inside cause a wonderful glow to be cast around the area, and the building loses all sense of its boring coloring and becomes something of a shaded artistic drawing with differing lights making it appear as so much more. The night rubs out the small imperfections in us and all around us, it sets us free from those blemishes and less us bask in our own light, allows us to change and be something else, something more than before—a collection of reflections, shades and illuminations—something the sun can never grant us. So here I am with a new sense of appreciation for perfect silence, cold weather, and the night (with no life tacked onto the back of it), who would have ever thought. So next time that you walk down a poorly lit alley or street, look at the windows and the walls and admire how it looks and the way that it too gets to hide its imperfections just like we do.