Creature of the Night

A conversation between a normie and a nocturnal

What a beautiful day, scarcely a cloud in the sky!

To you, maybe. For me, ‘tis too bright to see anything!

The sun feels so nice on my skin!

It feels like death! I can feel my arms burning as we speak! I could cover them, but then I’d roast! Shade helps not, only when the sun ducks behind a cloud do I feel cooler, by about twenty degrees no less!

The sun is life! I’d love nothing more than to rip off my clothes and bathe in it all day -

No, no, we’ll have none of that! Make no invitation to guttered minds here!

Ah, night life. No need to constantly fiddle with hats, parasols, or awnings to keep the sun out of one’s eyes while working outside. The intensity of direct sunlight is quite serious, enough to activate and auto-darkening welding lens. Oddly specific, you say? Well, ask me how I know.

Okay, how do you know?

Seriously? You know what life is like round these parts (dear God I can hear my accent changing even though this is all in text), my bread and butter is repairing rusty old vehicles that none of the “professionals” will touch because they are too busy working on insurance jobs, which they of course prioritise because they know they’ll get paid. Lying on my back over the course of the morning, the sun comes round o’er the mountain and ends up directly in front of my face. I hate it! I can’t work if I can’t see! Come late afternoon, I have to either call it quits as the sun lowers itself in the sky, or go through the trouble of turning everything a hundred and eighty so that I’m not facing west.

So that’s why I always see these shots of people working on cars outside, at night, surrounded by artificial light. It’s a more controllable environment?

Perhaps, I told you, I’m an amateur, a tinkerer, jack of all trades, master only of drinking and knowing things. Also, I don’t really give a toss about cars, I never have. I yearn for the day when I don’t have to work on cars anymore. I yearn for a time when I don’t have to be awake at the same time as… well, you know what I think of diurnals.

I know, you hate cars.

Shall I rant about that now? I was saving that for next week!

No no, you like the night because sunlight interferes with your work. Have you considered that you devote too much of your energy to your work?

Am I to soliloquise on whether or not I work too much? Consider this the second attempt at changing the subject that I have thwarted! It’s not just the work, it’s the company.

The “cool kids?”

The children of the night, yes. Have you heard the vernal chorus of frogs or the autumnal solo of the barred owl? Beautiful, eerie, startling even, if you’ve never heard it before. It is one thing to watch videos of these creatures, it is quite another to have their company in person. At night, all manner of creatures come out of the woodwork to play. As the cloak of night descends, shine a torch into the wet grass, and as above, so below -

Okay trismegistus -

If I am thrice-exalted, then you’re Tat, and if you’d open your eyes instead of your mouth, you will see twinkling lights among the blades; those are the reflective eyes of spiders. Wolf spiders, to be specific. Other spiders will come out at dusk to weave their webs in the moonlight, but they also love artificial lights, as such are irresistible to flying insects. You sleep at night, but there is an entire world that wakes then.

Nursery web spider (either Pisaurina mira or P. brevipes) eating a crane fly

Furthermore, I can’t help but notice that nocturnal insects never dive into my wine… or birdhouse my ears… or get tangled in my hair… no, save for mosquitos, they never bother me.

I’ve never heard someone use “birdhouse” as a verb before, does it mean what I think it does? Who is flying into your ears as if they are shelters?

Guess. Moucha, moucha, pleteš si mě se stromem? Dipterids are dimwits, even by insect standards. One must wonder if bluebottles think that bold jumping spiders are their own kin, at least to the extent that flies think in the first place.

Whatever could flies have done to draw your insults of their intelligence?

Making nuisances of themselves while also being the most common vector of every other deadly disease on the planet, for a start. But enough of that, this is the third time you’ve attempted to change the subject, you insufferable little pest! Get me to prattle on about entomology, sneaky, sneaky, but the sun was not quite so hot today as to bake braid no worky.

A delightful way of saying “make brain no worky,” that’s a good one! You cannot simply just not think, can you?

I like to have my wits about me as much as possible, yes. Have I ever once seemed the type to simply hop and skip through life without a care in the world? I should hope not! While the rest of the world sleeps, I will seize the night. Nothing to distract me from my thoughts, nothing to pry me away from the real work that is to be done.

You bring it back to work yet again. What is so important that it cannot be done during the day?

By day, I attend to the material, by night, the intellectual. My material world is my farm, as the crops and animals must be tended to in daylight, but they wake when I sleep. Why else would I automate everything? All is timers and motors, to open doors, spray water, dispense food, everything except collect eggs.

And your intellectual world?

You’re in it right now. A library of occult works, an obsession with the classics, a mockery of new-age spooky woo, lessons from history, all the little bits and bobs of profundity adrift in a shallow ocean of vapidity. There are lots of spots that seem deep at first, but then comes disappointment when the bottom is reached all too soon. So much of what I’ve read started out quite engaging, only to milk one single literary hook over and over until it reached the point of sickening boredom. True depths are few and far between, but always rewarding to find, even if said depth is a chasm of stark raving madness.

What manner of stark raving madness have you dove into?

Metaphysics conspiracy theories. Plural. Religious fanatics are some of the most interesting writers, twisting little-known bits of literary and philosophical history to fit some strange mythology. I would honestly love it if some of these people went full Wiligut, and in the case of those who adhere to some twisted version of Christianity, there is plenty of material to work with. There is one in particular that I had dismissed off-hand as not worth my time, at least until I stumbled into an absolute gold mine of insane ramblings. I won’t spoil it for you.

Full Wiligut?

Karl Maria Wiligut, otherwise known as the German Tolkien. That’s a rabbit hole unto itself. Anyway, shall we continue with this some other night? Dobrou noc!