Sometimes a girl needs a friend.
And that friend is a book. That book is “A Writer’s Book of Days” by Judy Reeves. And in that book is the day’s writing prompt: Night.
The great carouser.
Invitations from Night to play to party to succumb to temporal pleasures delights deliciousness. Invitations to plumb forbidden pleasures in basement bars secreted hideaways and strip clubs with prancing buxom figures in hot-pink neon lights.
Night, the barker who beckons drunken men and bold ladies into exciting holes-in-the-wall brimming with booze and cigarette smoke that in a manner of Dr. Jekyll-and-Mr. Hyde are dreary, depressing, dead in daylight.
Night, who delivers the surreal the sensual and the suspect.
Night, who suggests and illuminates shadows only by skirting their peripherals, invoking mystery, arousing fears. “Come here, go there, if you dare. Your identity shall be concealed, your face unrevealed,” encourages Night. “Privacy I guarantee. Daytime reveals, night conceals. I tempt you to pull up the bedcovers up over your head or pull them down, as you please.”
Night is not always the Good Guy. Fear follows where Night traipses. Dangers real or imagined crouch behind dumpsters, inside cars parked at Lovers’ Lanes, in cheap motels and plush homes where illicit affairs and actions produce varied consequences.
Hearts are broken, people brought to their knees, property is stolen, homes invaded, homicides happen and prison sentences are promised eventually by Night’s presence.
Night does not distinguish between Right and Wrong. It offers a wide stage of theater ranging from solemn hours in solitude and prayer to upheavals and uprootings and ruination of lives.
Do you wish to weep in privacy? Night will be a friend at your side. Reminisce at the sea or on the park bench about loves lost, high school friends who like you are now elderly, contemplate problems, cultivate solutions, or simply breathe far from the stress of life and Night does listen.
And no words need even be spoken but inside your heart and mind.
Night gifts you with solitude when you most need it as much as it pierces a burning reminding thorn of loneliness into your side.
As delicate as Night is so is it harsh. From sweet kisses and tender caresses upon a lover’s hand in your bed a dying parent’s in a hospital bed to brutal violations of safety, personal space and living spaceS, Night allows.
Night bears not the Scales of Justice. Night’s purpose is not to weigh or judge but only to serve as the indefinable fulcrum between extreme pleasures and extreme sins.
Night , how I adore thee. You are my nature, my domain, my friend. Never have you betrayed me, wounded or abandoned me. Always certain to show up and certain to return after Daylight provides its performance.
What human being in my lifetime could ever claim such loyalty and trustworthiness?
Allelujah, Arizona! 