Night Owl

so it's late at night. I always seem to find my muse late at night. The dark hours, when everyone is sleeping and I can hear the clocks ticking. There's something magical about night that I would never trade for anything, not an early morning fog or an early evening twilight. I'm what some would call a Night Owl. I prefer not to think of myself as a glaring-eyed mouse-bones-regurgitating avian fellow, but rather something less substantial. Like a shadow, or the flickering dream-tendril just before you truly fall asleep. Something that craves the night time, because that is when it is most alive, most free to do what it wishes. The darkness hides me, envelops me, takes me up into it's chilly arms and whisks me away to places I know I'll never be again.

If you are more of an Early Bird, you probably think of me as silly. Nighttime is for sleeping, you dingbat, you keep whispering but I can't hear you. I'm swallowed up in crisp autumn night, traipsing like a fairy across the falling leaves. The leaves which burst into flames seemingly overnight, and then you wake up the next morning and everything is red, gold, orange, yellow, simply astounding. You see? Magical things happen at night. Even if you can't see them.

I've been told that trees have souls. I don't think I've agreed with such a statement more whole-heartedly than I did with that one. Probably not poison ivy or the crab grass that my dad hates, but definitely trees. There is nothing more majestic, more worthy of a soul, than a tree. How tall they stand, how straight and erect, their beautiful emerald leaves stretching towards the sun. They never ask anything of us, just a little bit of our exhales, of our CO2, not our oxygen or nitrogen, but the stuff that we can't use. Then they change it into something that we can use, into the most precious thing that has been given to us since the moment we were born. Life. The trees ask for nothing, will never ask for anything. They will never beg and plead for us to stop cutting them down, never shower our heads with acorns and squirrels when we bite into their bark with our axes and our saws. They do not cry out in pain as they are ripped literally limb from limb, chopped into sections and shipped to the Home Depot so that we can make floors and cabinets and burn them for a showy little fire that lets in more chill than heat.

These trees, to whom we owe the very air we breathe, are silent, sentries on the horizon, chopped down one by one, each tree a home, shade on a hot day, a sorce of food, somewhere to hide. And, like everything that we can make a profit on, we are exploiting them, bulldozing rainforests so that a few wealthy homes can have exotic wooden floors and cabinets.

Every blog seems to turn into a lecture. I just have so much to yell at humanity for. We are getting so many things wrong. But make no mistake, we're doing things the right way sometimes, too.

I'm craving chapstick. My lips are burning, frazzled by the lack of moisture that I've been torturing them with. It's getting to the point of pain.

I don't know why I'm still going. Honestly, it's 1:42 AM. Tomorrow is a Monday. No school, of course, but it's still 1:42 AM. And I wonder why Physics makes me sleepy. I need to start taking care of my body. Quit stuffing it full of fruit snacks and pretzels and sitting around my house licking my lips until they burn and listening to the clocks ticking. They get louder when I concentrate.

So I'll go now, and we'll meet again another time, maybe when the sun is gharishly bright and we have to squint to see the computer screen. Listen to the music of the night sometime. and The Music of the Night. Listen to both at the same time. Then listen to them alternatively until you're lulled to sleep. Then wake up and comment on my blog and shower me with virtual love.