Calling It A Morning

Hm... It's beyond midnight and time becomes nondescript. Technically it's morning, but that definition couldn't be further from the truth. There's nothing fresh about this hour, no promise of more daylight to come - these are just the stale hours after night has fallen when time seems to slip away from the clock. 12:30, 1:30, 2:30 - they're just numbers until finally the sun shoots some light over the horizon, finally relieving the tension that precedes it - relieving the worry that it would never come.

Unless, of course, you're writing a paper, in which case you hope morning never comes and that each hour would stretch to be a little longer than the last. I actually am not in that situation at the moment, but I'm tired of staying awake simply because I can sleep in tomorrow (today?). The building on the other side of my window is mostly dark - most of its inhabitants have called it a night and are enjoying their sleep, whether or not they know it (they're asleep - they won't know they're enjoying it until they wake up and want it back). Usually I like the night because it's peaceful - everyone stops what they're doing to take a rest. That doesn't seem to happen to college students, however - we go and go and go so that the paper will be finished in the real morning, the one that comes after a couple hours of sleep that have to act as a substitute for a whole night's rest. Night is usually a great time to listen to music, because finally the ambient noise has died down - instead I still hear the occasional click of the lock on a door, of a voice calling down the hallway, of flip-flops pattering by.

It's just what I've noticed - night is no longer everyone's time to rest. In fact, some people have it all backwards - they sleep during the day and go all night. Why waste the daylight? To me, the daylight is for moving, talking, acting, and working. There's a transition - when night first falls, the activity is electrified as lights are switched on over pages of books, photographs and posters on walls, and sidewalks under the dark sky. Yet it slowly dies down, until you find yourself where you started out, back in bed, getting the sleep you wanted since you woke up the day before.

Now that I officially woke up yesterday, it's time for me to call it a morning and go to sleep today...