I don't even know where to start.  Tonight, for the first time in years, I pumped my legs towards the sky.  It gets darker here at night, but the natural night lights shine bright enough for even a novice like myself to discern multiple constellations. At nightfall this weather feels more like fall and between the light chills and the stars and the nature all around, I feel so...me.

I saw twelve deer, all at once, grazing between neighborhoods, frolicking together.  They were all fairly young, small and still without antlers.  I've never seen that many together at once.  Their smell was strong near the swing set, I almost suspected it had wafted over from the horses down the road, but maybe that's the effect of a small herd like that.  It is very familiar to the smell of being on a horse farm though.  Not quite the same pungent bomb of excrement baking in the sun, but strong like the smell of sweat still thick in their fur.

The neighborhood isn't finished being built yet, so the days are filled with construction noises - trucks, hammers, cement mixers, the upbeat swell of Spanish pop music.  Noise pollution isn't the only type they're filling the streets with.  Despite the massive dumpsters in the streets, they throw recyclable plastic and aluminum from roofs, across yards, and there is trash accumulating three lots away from any current construction.  I can't stand the idea of what damage can be done if those plastics are left to mingle in the still ever present nature.  I used to walk at night or on Sundays with Tess to clean up the streets.  Now it's just me.  I wish I could get more people motivated to prevent the pollution, but I also enjoy the time spent alone out here.  

Labels: night time, recycling, wilderness

"The nights were mainly made for saying things that you can't say tomorrow day." - Arctic Monkeys

There's something about their music that makes me feel like it is made for the night. The beats coupled with the lyrics, perhaps?  There's a way that it makes you feel like you're out in the cold, crisp night air that is enchanting. Listening to their music as I fall asleep makes me feel like I can appreciate the full breadth of the night.

There's this connection that writers have with the night, with this sudden outpouring of words that would dry up if you waited until morning to put them on paper. I've never thought of music coming out of artists the way words and sentences and scenes appear as writers drift to sleep.

I've been making playlists for different stories I have.  Songs that remind me of the time and place the story originated in me.  Songs that remind me of the characters and the mood of the stories.  Each character lives in my head, has a piece of me in them in such a way that I could never imagine them liking music that I don't.  Sometimes writers talk about hearing their characters talking in their heads.  They can hear those voices so clearly, but there are times when the voices go quiet and you have to craft a way to make them speak to you again. They come to you in the middle of the night, after you're exhausted from failing to fall asleep.  They start speaking and you forget why you wanted to sleep in the first place.  You feel crazy, but you love it.

“The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes.” - Andre Gide

Labels: Andre Gide, Arctic Monkeys, how many secrets can you keep, night time, quotes, writers, writing