Scroll if you're into tl;dr. ;)
I
have a great desire to get something done tonight. There’s lots to do.
So
first off, I’m strange. Just a little. A little different than “normal”, but
anyone I’ve met who’s got a lick of sense or iota of a clue will tell you that “normal”
means bupkis. “Normal” is some sort of abstraction of less weight and consistency
than air or better yet, aether, because who knows what the heck that stuff is?
Thankfully, I have had the great fortune to be surrounded by groups of people
who have sense and clues in spades. I am awash in a pool of intellectual giants
and have been swimming around (tadpole though I may be) for years.
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| (All honor and glory to the guy who made this on Graphjam) |
Instead
of telling people what I’m going to do, I need to get into the habit of getting
off my fat, American fanny and going do what I’ve been saying I’ll do. I had
been watching the new Looney Tunes on YouTube (Because with a high enough bandwidth
who needs cable anymore?). In it, Daffy Duck explains disparagingly “That’s the
problem with this country today. Nobody hustles anymore.” (Only it sounded more
like “That’sh the problem with thish country today…”. You get the picture…) I’m
not sure I want to hustle, as I’m sort of a slow individual at times. I am
however a fan of being productive. So tonight I’m up late, feeding my nagging
ambitions.
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| (Boat: "Eh hem!") (Me: "I HEAR YOU!") |
I’ve
got to push. I’ve got goals to accomplish this Summer before my bigger goal of academic
success arrives again this fall. Which leads my mind to the fact I have an advisement
meeting today and that I need to make sure I have enough sleep to get on top of
that. Which leads me away from my keyboard a notebook in which I scrawled
quickly and desperately “Meeting. CFA. 3:30 pm”.
It
is so difficult to be a night owl in a town that closes at 9pm because business
happens during the day. Not being part of the day crowd and their activities
can lead one to believe that the Night Owl in question is unproductive and
worse, lazy and uncommitted. I have deep admiration for Albuquerque. It has
been my home and it has been kind to me. It has a diverse group of people, a
people who came here at one point or another, or by one means or another and
said “Here’s good.” Most people are here by choice and have great love and
affection for it.
But
why does everything close at nine? Why does it feel like crews of people start
rolling up the sidewalks at eight so that by nine pm the lights are turned off
and the doors are locked city wide? I like to be up working late. I’m not sure
why, but there’s something special about the midnight oil. Something in its
chemical makeup. I’m talking in metaphor of course, but I really feel that the
night time opens things up that aren’t open in the day.
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| (Former Domicile in Question. Not a bad place all things considered.) |
On
top of that, the world is quiet. The house on Gutierrez is quiet. The city is
quiet. This is something that I never had at my previous residence at 124 Buena
Vista drive. At least the moments of quiet were not in any great quantity or
quality. It was busy, especially on weekends, until the wee hours of the
morning. Someone who lived in the neighborhood would pass almost like clockwork
at two or three with some undesirable song playing over his bass. His car, I
assume, was actually made out of bass speakers entirely. There were the talkers
too. The late night drunks wandering the streets chattering and cursing to
their buddies. The smashing of dropped bottles in the gutter. The fact that there
were other folks out doing things did not, as I would have hoped, increase my
productivity.
Now
I’m not complaining. The location of my former domicile was excellent in the
fact that when rolling out of bed forty-five minutes before class, as is my
habit, does not mean that one will be late for said class. It is amazing how
many cars will break for a student dashing across Central Avenue. I’m assuming that
the crossing is about a test of wills. I would rather die than fail my classes.
Few people are interested in risking vehicular homicide. To be fair, I never
tried to dash across like a mad man. But now and then, I would hustle quickly
though the gaps of cars rolling by at twenty five to thirty miles an hour (By
my best estimation). But I have never been struck or close to struck by a
motorist. Again, I must mention that this city has been kind to me.
Excluding
the poor woman who almost ran me over one evening as she was turning from Yale
onto Central. I had been attempting to curb my usual jaywalking habits (pardon
the unintended pun) by waiting for the green or white little man to cross the
intersection. (I like to think he’s green but he could be white. And honestly,
while thinking of it, he could just as well be a she.) The woman was engrossed
in what I would assume was a particularly intensive telephone conversation
because when she finally came to a stop she was so close I could practically read
her VIN number. Close. Very close. I did the only thing I could do. I shrugged,
smiled, then waved at her before walking off. I’m actually quite proud of myself
for being so cool under that sort of pressure. At first inclination, I might
have given her a greeting of a more hostile nature involving an infamous
finger.
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| (If you can read that, as a pedestrian, you're too close.) |
But
returning to a point, there’s something really great about writing at night.
Memories flow easily, as do my thoughts. Pieces of things get sorted in
wonderful and interesting ways. And it is very exciting. Because usually, when
I reread the things I’ve written at one or two in the morning in the cheery
light of day, I see more than my comma splices and a few confused words. I see something
worth reading. Which means that I can write. The logic there being that if one
can shoot a three pointer with a broken wrist and a cold, that same person
should be able to replicate the same action better if healthy on game day. The
quality still remains. Of course, I feel that this does not make me a special
case. I have a theory that writers are thinkers and a majority of people who I
know are thinkers. But it’s a toot of the horn all the same and it makes me
just the slightest bit pleased with myself.
But
that brings me back to my thoughts of writing at night versus writing in the
day. Writing at night brings a clarity of thought brought on no doubt by the
lack of stimuli found in the waking hours of the world. This of course being an
illusion of my location as there are many night owls out on a Monday morning at
1 am in the sleepy town of Albuquerque, and many are being twice as productive
as I am. The North East Heights, a neighborhood of families, retirees, and most
likely very successful drug dealers (but we don’t talk about them) is relatively
quiet. While people are friendly, the mostly keep to themselves and allow the
work of night owls to go on around their sleepy heads so long as they can rise
fresh for work or school in the morning.
The
point of this has been the realization that the clarity of thoughts brought on
by the quiet of night allowed by the illusion of sleep created by the nature of
the North East heights is connected to the nature of Albuquerque as a whole. Because
eventually, the whole city clears out of the streets, the bars, the Wal-Marts’
and McDonalds’ and turns in for a late night. A few get up for an early morning,
perhaps venturing for a red-eyed shift at a Wal-Greens. For the most part
though, the city is hushed. While there are peak times and lull times in every
major city across the country and even cities like Albuquerque and others of
its size, Albuquerque’s lull may be conducive to thinking. Long story short,
the six am (or whenever you daytimers get up) to nine pm rhythm of this city is
the same thing that has been able to give me the peace of mind to write this.
The thing I rail against is the thing that provides. I’m glad to see that I am
still a human; they’re the only animals that can possess that kind of contradictory
action.
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| (Found on teh interwebz. I can haz spell check?) |
However, I will still rail
against it. When roving the streets in my car or by foot in this town in the
wee hours of the morning, it would be nice to have a local hamburger counter or
coffee shop out somewhere amongst the strip malls of the North East Heights. The
area of UNM has the eerily wondrous Frontier (a place equally famous for its
food as for its late night ambulance visits) which is open until one or two in
the morning. But lost is any place in the North East Heights. A place to sit
and write (or sit and muse; a highly underrated pastime) that’s open from nine
pm to whenever the sun comes up. A place to make a makeshift desk purchased by
the cheeseburger or cup of caffeine. Until some enterprising entrepreneur comes
along to create it, the only things open are the various “Wal” prefixed establishments
and the Golden Arches. Neither of these are conducive to writing or thinking
much and to be honest (while I hold the “Big Mac” with fries and a root beer in
the highest regard) I would much rather toss my pesos away at a business owned
by a local Burqueño.
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| (Because If you haven't seen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IucBp1yrr7A) (All credit to Blackout Theater Company) |
Until then I will have to be
content to enjoy the moments I can have up here in the heights. In many ways it
is more satisfactory than a midnight hamburger hut as I can roll right of out
of my computer chair into my bed happy to have been productive. I didn’t just
say I was going to write; I wrote. I beat back my demons and clawed away at my
schedule to find just enough time to score a little victory. I cannot help but
know that the moment of blissful exhaustion and the gentle relaxation of my
eyes is because that there is no late night latte local (a “latteria”, if you
will) that has given me that push to stay up to see the dawn.
And if that happened, the
daytimers might catch me working. They might feel bad that their illusions of
my lazy slackerhood are wrong. And that just wouldn’t do.
tl;dr?: Still, score one late night
victory.
