Hoot Hoot

Blogger reads: Draft autosaved at 12:12 AM. I sit on the living room floor, wedged between couch and coffee table listening to iTunes, the house and atmosphere finally cooling from yet another sizzling July day. I am reminded that I should get my behind in bed. But I want to check facebook, look at blogs one more time, maybe write something on my own.

I am an entirely nocturnal being, a night owl, if you will. My circadian rhythms sound like jazz. I peak in the late evening. The evening chronotype. And I've been this way since childhood.

It kills me during the school year. The students and I spend first period together pretending we're somewhere just shy of comatose. But in the summer my offbeat schedule works for me. There are some things I simply love about a late summer night. Most relate to the quiet the night offers...

Stars hanging in the dark sky above me.
                          The crickets' screaming legs.
          Lamplight-cast shadows.
            Nothing but the sound of an oscillating fan.
  Books you can't put down.
                         Long and winding conversations.
Meteor showers.
        Thunderstorms that strike into the middle of the night.
Trains shifting and clanking 

     in the gully near my childhood home.
The moon tracing its silver fingers over passing clouds.
             The occasional car's humming doppler effect 

                                                                                                as it passes.

All things calm come in the night.  Walt Whitman, good old Walt, celebrates the mood of night much better than I ever could:

A Clear Midnight

This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson
done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the
themes thou lovest best,
Night, sleep, death and the stars.

What time of day suits you best? What do you love so much about it?