In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning

"Knowledge is night"

Attributed to Professor Abdullah Nightingale by Bluebear in his book "The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear"

On this blog, I have on several occations mentioned my relationship to the night. In many ways, I love the night. When darkness covers the land, and the roar of human life is reduced to a whisper, thoughts flow more easily. Some of my favourite texts, discussions and moments in general has taken place or been created in the domain of Nephthys (1).

The reason for this is probably in part due to the decrease in impressions: Darkness hides all those things the mind normally would have been processing. However, the brain does not slow down. Being used to work at full processing power (2) it just keeps going as before. In that it is not good at quickly responding to decrease in demand, ones brain is similar to a specialised assembly line production where the workers are stationary. But unlike manufacturing, your brain does not start downsizing and eventually moves the remaining processing to China. When there is nothing else to do, your brain starts going through your archives. All those impressions and thoughts that's already been catalogued and put away will be re-examined, compared against each other and used to create some new idea.

The increase in ideas that night brings have, in my case, not always been a blessing. As a kid, the mixture of vivid imagination and morbid ideas lead to many a night where I lay awake in fear of monsters, ghosts and other abominations (3) . I feel the need to point out that I was fully aware that none of these creatures existed, but if a fear is irrational, then logics needs to be backed by light, mum and dad. Fat good any of these did when I was too afraid to leave my bed to get help from them.

Years later, now in my early twenties, I have come to embrace darkness as a friend (4) . The feeling of calm is welcome in an otherwise stressful existence, and I enjoy those all too few moments of non-engineering creativity that follows (5) . The night-time calmness makes me feel more at ease and I get as close to a mystic state of mind as I ever get: I feels at peace with oneself and at one with the greater whole. A great friend the night is that grants me such gifts.

Now, of my friends and associates there are probably a few that will raise an eyebrow reading this. They may have seen me in other states at night, some of which differ and sometimes are direct opposites of the calm, quiet and philosophical Arthur I describe. To the people in question I want to make it clear, do not worry, neither you nor I have been hallucinating. To achieve my dark nirvana, several factors have to be in place. One, I need to be relatively sober. Two, I cannot be stressed about something. Three, there cannot be too many people present, as being social takes up great amounts brain processing power. Four, I need to be awake at my own free will. Remove one or more of these, and the night just isn't the same.

Which brings me to why I thought about writing this post. At 0:30 Thursday morning, I found myself lacking both factor two and four. When this happens, I am everything but peaceful and calm. Being hungry, tired or stressed makes me rather grumpy, and two out of three is a bad combo. I was awake because Shun and I were working on our design report, which was due in on Thursday morning. As Shun is the kind of person I would like to maintain on friendly terms with (6) , I was trying as best as I could to suppress the irritation that stress and deprivation of sleep was inducing. I felt as if I was failing. What one self believes one is expressing, does not necessarily correspond to the receiver's impression of what one is expressing. This means that feeling one is suppressing often shines trough even when one is trying to hide it. The result is this cliché dialogue:

"Are you angry?"

"No, I am not."

"Well, you sound angry."

"I said, I am not angry."

"You're definitely angry."

"KNOCK IT OFF, WILL YOU?! I SAID I AM NOT ANGRY!"

I am well aware of this, and as I could hear irritation in my voice, I was pretty sure Shun heard it too. Being aware of this is normally a good thing, but it does not need to be. In this situation, being aware meant I got annoyed over my failure to keep the anger inside, thereby making me more grumpy. It is like a small particle of dust floating through space: It's gravitational pull will pull in more particles, which in turn will produce a larger gravitational pull, and so it will go until it's a black hole that swallows all life in the galaxy.

Luckily, nights are measured in hours, not in millennia.

(1) I found that my allegory, though poetic, was rather obscure, and maybe not even entirely appropriate. Therefore the link .

(2) Whether or not my brain actually ever works at full processing power is, at best, debatable.

(3) Though the at the time I probably would have problems pronouncing the latter, let alone understand what it was.

(4) Not theologically, as I have kept my childhood faith. Certain irrational principles I have maintained even as I voluntarily let cynicism and realism taint my soul.

(5) I'm not with this implying that I have an unstoppable stream of engineering creativity, though luckily, I do have my moments for that too.

(6) He's just an awesome dude. Who wouldn't want to on friendly terms with him?