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Friday, February 25, 2011

Night Time

The nights are a symphony of sounds mixed with melodic negative space. I often awake suddenly in the night, to reflect upon a dream or envisage an idea or on occasion for no discernable reason and all, and I listen. It’s not as if I actively seek out the sounds of the night, but rather they are inescapable. I hear through the darkness the secret night life of the wind. Sometimes she throws small rocks and grit at my metal doors and threatens to rip my tin roof clean off of my house with such passion and power that I wonder the cause of her tantrums and can only conclude that she is acting out her rage from a lover’s row. Sometimes the wind is flirtatious, whispering through the cracks of my windows and through the space where my walls do not meet my roof. And sometimes, she sleeps, or at least appears to be sleeping because the air is silent and calm and I can tell by the voices of the chirping insects that they are happy in her absence to have been generously been granted the chance to reign the hum of the shadows. The insects show self-control and predictability and they have proven time and again that they can be counted on. The tone and urgency of their dialogues change occasionally to predict a coming storm, or to rejoice in the wake of a storm that they have made it to the other side unscathed. If the wind is cast as the moody lover, then the rain is perhaps her protagonist because there is no fury greater and no touch as tender as the rain. He vacations from December through May when he checks in only occasionally to let us know that he’s doing well with a sprinkling, to let us know that he’s thinking of us with a misty morning, and sometimes at night with a hurried rain that hits the tin roofs hard and ends as quickly as it has begun. He will reappear from afar in May, when the earth thinks that she can no longer handle the dryness and can no longer remember the taste of rain, and he will mercilessly drown her, proving again and again that there does exist too much of a good thing. Yes, it does certainly rain during the day in the wet season, because it rains constantly, but in the night, when one cannot rely on the sense of sight and therefore the sense of hearing becomes heightened, can we hear, really hear, what the rain is saying. He will attentively rock us to sleep with his fairy-tales and promises pattered softly and sweetly when we wake in the night like small children drenched in sweat from a nightmare. He will come in on the arm of Wind dancing and singing raucously, the both clearly enjoying the company of the other. He will storm in, unannounced, and demand angrily that all plans be cancelled on his behalf. And in true proof of his amorous relations with Wind, they will both come at the same time, and wage war, she tearing out trees, he ripping down bridges, until both of them have had their side of the argument voiced and neither of them have any life left to fight and they resolve to quietly leave together, to settle their battle or to mend their love in private.

And so, here in Nicaragua, where I have no electricity for weeks at a time, people often ask me if I get bored, and my reply for all of them - With drama like this, how could I?

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