Table-Talk: Question # 13
What do you worry.....
As a very short recap of the previous question regarding the world of work …what can I say, it is not universal; it is different for every single one of us. And as patronising as it might sound, I can only suggest this to anyone who is interested: embrace flexibility, don’t be afraid to improvise, and learn to make something with your hands: it comes handy.
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Many years ago, when my daughter was about ten or eleven, we bought a book called My Name Is Mina by David Almond. Mina herself is about ten years old, sensitive, imaginative and very intelligent girl, who loves the night and also loves the words. Because she is not a good sleeper, she observes the night, writes down her thoughts, enjoys the moonlight and the shadows it creates in the darkness. I would recommend that book to every child, even if the child is not called Mina.
The book starts with the title sentence and continues::
….and I love the night. Anything seems possible at night when the rest of the world has gone to sleep. It’s dark and silent in the house, but if i listen close, I hear the beat beat beat of my heart. [….] There’s a full moon in the middle of the sky. It bathes the world in its silver light. […] it shines into the room onto me.
My name is Mina and I love the night, David Almond (2010)
For the record, like the little Mina from the book, I am and always have been a night owl, and I love the night. I know from experience that night owls are treated with a certain level of suspicion, while early birds are celebrated for their efficiency and their ever-fresh looks in the morning. For me, the middle of the night is my sacred space: a few protected and uninterrupted hours when everyone else is asleep, including my Cat, Lady Bertram1.
These few midnight hours are meant to be worry-free, unless, of course, my young-adult daughter is not back home from a night out. I enjoy these hours of solitude, peace and quiet, when I can shake off the day, enjoy my books, watch a random “whodunnit” on BritBox, or waste time on a recently developed interest: reading and writing bits and pieces here on Substack.
So, rather than answering the original question, I would prefer to paraphrase it as: “What keeps you awake in the middle of the night?”
People often assume that being awake in the middle of the night must mean that something is wrong. Of course, there are moments when I worry, but my nighttime worries are not unique. We all worry about health issues, loved ones, the grim state of the world, finances, burglars ... aliens. ;-) But I would rather not think on nightmares, wicked billionaires, or the terrors of the night.
Because the night has many faces.
In the middle of the night, the whole world becomes smaller and quieter. Everyday objects look different, almost enchanted, and the noise of the busy day is finally muted. There is a feeling of being untouchable and safe in the cocoon of my own thoughts and ideas, sometimes completely random and not always very useful. The night is a time to reread fairy tales, song lyrics, short, funny stories. I have three books that I call my “perpetual books”: One Thousand and One Nights, Mother, Brother, Lover: Selected Lyrics by Jarvis Cocker, and Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau. They are always near my bed, shabby and familiar but there for me to pick whenever I like and perhaps that is one reason why I love the night.
So it seems that the question has twisted itself once again into: “Why do you enjoy being awake in the middle of the night?”
Sometimes it is excitement that keeps me awake. Sometimes it is curiosity or anticipation. Sometimes it is simply the rain and the cosy feeling of being warm inside ... and sometimes it is the beat, beat, beat of my heart.
And sometimes there is no reason at all.
The night is a time to watch the moon and the stars, whenever you can catch a glimpse of them. In my mountain village in Bulgaria, the summer midnight sky is wonderful to watch. The nights are breezy and cool, the world is quiet, and the garden is full of shadows. Perfect scene for stargazing, and I thank the wonderful Melanie Meadors for giving useful advise to an amateur like me.
But I live in a part of the world where, at this time of year, the midnight summer sky is very different, because here, we are kept awake not by the silver moon but by the White Nights.
White Nights are both ordinary and magical. In the most literal sense, a White Night is not a white night at all; it is a night that never fully becomes night, if that makes any sense. It is twilight stretched like elastic through the night.
The first time I heard about the White Nights, I was ten or eleven years old. We had a new student at school, a girl whose mother was Russian and who lived for few years in St Petersburg (then known as Leningrad). My classmates and I had never met anyone remotely foreign, the poor girl was practically suffocated with attention, everyone wanted to be near her. She didn’t mind and made the best of it. ;-) She told us stories about her life in Leningrad: the White Nights, the opening bridges, and the Midnight Sun. To us, it all felt surreal, like something from an enchanted land we would never be able to see.
Many, many years later, I live in the North and have now experienced the White Nights for the seventeenth time. They still amaze me. The regular “rules” of day and night don’t apply, and time itself feels slightly distorted and somehow suspended. Perhaps that is why I love the Swedish summer and Midsummer…. It is a celebration of light, but also of shadows, folklore, and all the little mysteries that thrive when the night never quite arrives.
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
if you pardon, we will mend:
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to ‘scape the serpent’s tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call;
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.A Midsummer Night’s Dream, W. Shakespeare, (1594 to 1596)
Your turn now : -)
What do you worry in the middle of the night?
What keeps you awake in the middle of the night?
Why do you enjoy being awake in the middle of the night?
Lady Bertram is a fictional character in Jane Austen's 1814 novel, Mansfield Park. She is an idle, habitually lazy, self-indulgent and ignorant woman, who used to be the spoiled beauty of the family.
Even though I do worry about many things during the day, over the years I've trained myself on a useful trick to making sure I sleep at night without the worries.
Basically I find things that require a lot of thinking about, but are actually very mundane and low-risk. For example, I have no plans to travel to Europe, but I want to, so I may start to plan out what that itinerary might look like. There's a lot to think about! But it's very low stakes so it helps me to get to sleep. It might be about how I'll rearrange my bookshelf, other such things.
There was a time when I loved to awake in the middle of the night to have that precious me time. I would just watch the sky, or even catch up on my reading or watch a full movie .
Nowadays I can't seem to stay asleep through the night without some melatonin help.
I can't say I care the world's problems on my shoulders, so hormonal changes is the explanation for my deprived sleep :)