Night Shift

By Ryan Schlauderaff
Contributing Writer

My whole life I’ve been a night person. I’ve always disliked getting up in the mornings as it seems my internal clock is set for a continent on the other side of the world. In my younger years it was more difficult to adapt to; any 8th grader is bound to have a difficult time explaining what they are doing drinking coffee and doing English homework at 3 a.m.  But as I’ve aged I’ve come to appreciate what it is to be a night person. I’ve learned to enjoy living my life on the night shift.

3 a.m., a car drives down an empty street under the unending nocturnal glow of street lamps. The cities lights shine brightest in the early morning chill. There is a hush over Broadway as I walk past The 400 and admire the lines of street lights stretching down to main.

No one else is out at this hour besides me, the cops, and the snowplows. Sometimes I take these late night (or more correctly early morning) walks to alleviate the boredom, sometimes I write, more often—at least in winter—I ice skate. The night sounds different in winter, more muffled, softer… the few sounds that can be heard hold a strangely ethereal, dream like quality to them. Nights in the winter feel like a faint forgotten song seeping through the white noise of the subconscious. They can be both elegant and beautiful or harsh and brutal.

By 3 a.m. even the party goers, the drinkers, the revelers, have called it quits. It is the witching hour some would say. At this time, in the not quite silent slumber of the world, the line between consciousness and dreaming becomes ever thinner. Like the surface of a bubble, churning and swirling but not quite bursting. Thoughts become spontaneous, yet strangely lucid.

It is a time to ponder, to express, a time of strange clarity as the day lights distractions have disappeared. A time for lucid dreams as one wanders the silent city. I adore wandering and thinking, pondering and walking, floating on a strange euphoria of having a whole city to myself. No one to watch me, no one to answer to, the eternal peace of solitude.

There grows, at least with me, a certain sort of possessiveness, at this time of night. A sense of entitlement perhaps, that seems to state “If no one else is awake to contradict me, then I am lord of all I survey.” For this moment, as I stand on the 12th Avenue bridge looking south and east over the town, this city is mine in all its twinkling beauty and dusky slumber.

I love the nights, the mournful sounds of the trains in the distance, the brushing winds through the trees, the occasional interruption of a passing car to remind me where reality still remains.

In spite of my earlier comments of solitude, it is still a time that is even better shared if one can find someone to share it with. It is a matter of finding the right someone to share it with, another night person perchance?

This eroding line between reality and dreams makes for brilliant conversations and unique perspectives. The darkest nights may make the foggiest ideas become crystal clear. There is a magic to the evenings. For me it is all about the nights.

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