singindemonhq (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
singindemonhq) wrote2007-02-10 08:24 pm
singindemonhq) wrote2007-02-10 08:24 pm
Entry tags:
TM 165, Night.
Night – that’s a tricky concept. The time of the dark. The time when all the hidden things come drifting out of the corners, out of the cracks in the stones and out of the deep, dark cellars of the mind. The time when fragile, diurnal humans used to keep a bright fire at the mouth of their caves or hide away in their little boxes, sleeping and trying not dream - until the pale fingers of dawn start to stroke the skies and the birds start chorusing with relief, and the things of night creep away, to hide from the light (for a little while.)
The night can be a good time for songs. Dreams set to a beat, hopes set to, maybe, a pop hit, a thing of the moment (for hopes can be a fleeting thing, gone by the morning.) Fears set for a whisper-singer, a skittering jazz scat, unruly and fragmented. Loss set to the blues and the wail of the lonely saxophone. You need a tune that’ll last, to sing bereavement right.
The night’s a time for courting, too – swains courting lovers, hunters courting victims, slayers courting death …
The night’s a time when the deepest pits can open – and sometimes when they don’t death comes on creeping feet while the defenders sleep.
Did you ever wonder if night, deep, dark menacing night, is the reason that humans like cities? Humans seem to change when they mob up like that – they didn’t cower away from the dark in the Roman Empire. They just lit bright torches in the streets and went to the circuses, yelling for some poor clown to be fed to the lions or get stabbed by some guy he learned his trade with - while the barbarians they brought in to do the dirty jobs, the jobs no Roman citizens would consider doing for themselves, they watched, and they waited... (Cave or city, the pits open in the darkness, just the same.)
That wasn’t what finished the Empire though, so I’ve heard the archaeologists sing. In some ways old Rome was a great place to visit. They bathed all the time. The boss classes smelled good and even the urban poor could wash. They had clean, fresh drinking water piped into the cities, too – through lead pipes.
Now, my kind don’t do well with lead in their food, and neither do yours. It kinda piles up in the brain. No wonder the Romans brought in the Greeks to think for them. It was just as well the place burned – the emperors were wild mad, by then.
Humans are still the same. Now, they decide when to call it deep night and then, when they figure the children are asleep, they have their circuses. It’s piped into their houses now and they curl up safe and ignore the dark outside, and they watch. They watch the vampires and goblins, all easy to handle, all safe and small on their screens - and they don’t notice what they’re not being told. They cheer their armies and they try not to notice if their ruler’s kinda strange and they don’t look too close at what’s around them and how it hits their world…
They shut out the night and they turn on their lights - and they feed the dark inside. The part of the night that they have in their souls, or under them. The soul burns on like a pilot flame but the night just gets darker and darker.
words 592
The night can be a good time for songs. Dreams set to a beat, hopes set to, maybe, a pop hit, a thing of the moment (for hopes can be a fleeting thing, gone by the morning.) Fears set for a whisper-singer, a skittering jazz scat, unruly and fragmented. Loss set to the blues and the wail of the lonely saxophone. You need a tune that’ll last, to sing bereavement right.
The night’s a time for courting, too – swains courting lovers, hunters courting victims, slayers courting death …
The night’s a time when the deepest pits can open – and sometimes when they don’t death comes on creeping feet while the defenders sleep.
Did you ever wonder if night, deep, dark menacing night, is the reason that humans like cities? Humans seem to change when they mob up like that – they didn’t cower away from the dark in the Roman Empire. They just lit bright torches in the streets and went to the circuses, yelling for some poor clown to be fed to the lions or get stabbed by some guy he learned his trade with - while the barbarians they brought in to do the dirty jobs, the jobs no Roman citizens would consider doing for themselves, they watched, and they waited... (Cave or city, the pits open in the darkness, just the same.)
That wasn’t what finished the Empire though, so I’ve heard the archaeologists sing. In some ways old Rome was a great place to visit. They bathed all the time. The boss classes smelled good and even the urban poor could wash. They had clean, fresh drinking water piped into the cities, too – through lead pipes.
Now, my kind don’t do well with lead in their food, and neither do yours. It kinda piles up in the brain. No wonder the Romans brought in the Greeks to think for them. It was just as well the place burned – the emperors were wild mad, by then.
Humans are still the same. Now, they decide when to call it deep night and then, when they figure the children are asleep, they have their circuses. It’s piped into their houses now and they curl up safe and ignore the dark outside, and they watch. They watch the vampires and goblins, all easy to handle, all safe and small on their screens - and they don’t notice what they’re not being told. They cheer their armies and they try not to notice if their ruler’s kinda strange and they don’t look too close at what’s around them and how it hits their world…
They shut out the night and they turn on their lights - and they feed the dark inside. The part of the night that they have in their souls, or under them. The soul burns on like a pilot flame but the night just gets darker and darker.
words 592