The Sleeping Time.

I know that the subject of twilights has become something of an idée fixe on this blog over the course of the year, but I have to mention something else that came to me this evening. Every twilight appears to have its own character, subtly different from all the other twilights, and I seem to be becoming more aware of the varying nuances.

The same doesn’t seem to be true of the days and nights. Every warm, sunny day in a given season is much like every other warm, sunny day. And the same can be said of dull, rainy days and dark, moonless nights. Twilight is the exception.

Tonight’s twilight was intriguing. It was darkening prematurely due to a heavy cloud cover drifting purposefully from the west on a light breeze, and yet it was unusually warm for late September. And then I felt the sense that something was missing. It was like the effect of a sudden silence when you’ve become accustomed to a regular hum. It reminded me of the night when I was keeping vigil by the bed in which my comatose mother had lain for a day and a half, and a nurse came into the room and told me her life was over. A sudden rent opened in the fabric of familiarity. In the case of today’s twilight, I supposed it was the earth energies – or growth imperative if you will – winding down to become near-torpid. I settled on that explanation in the absence of a better one.

So what is this sudden sensitivity I’ve developed to the nuances of twilights? Could it be simply a matter of ‘as the day, so the life’? That seems reasonable, too, so I’ll take it for the time being.