'And in their blazing solitude
The stars sang in their sockets through the night:
"Blow bright, blow bright
The coal of this unquickened world."'
--- excerpt from Night Music, Philip Larkin

'Sat by the water for hours. Watched nothing but water,
how it was spelt out by light;
its mass like silk blown in slow-moving wind.'
--- excerpt from Dockside, Amna Ahmed

I have always been something of a night owl, nocturnal, even, quite easily staying up till unholy hours of the night without really noticing the time (and here, my friend who is currently in a country across the Atlantic is going to start lecturing me). There is something infinitely alluring about the night, with all its silent splendour. Of course, there have been a great number of nights where I have had to stay up to finish readings and essays - but even then, between attempting to bury myself in books and extracts, I have always been able to seek solace in the night, and in those equally nocturnal blackbirds that never stop chirping outside my window.

Admittedly, I am a person who deals more easily with quiet than noise - or perhaps, I should say, I have a marked preference for solitude and quiet, than hustle and bustle. Possibly that is why I have come to cherish little moments. small instances of shared warmth with people, over huge parties and extravagance, which always seem rather needless to me, anyway. Amidst the cymbals and trumpets of this world, this modern world, I find myself seeking out the little hidden corners of stillness, half-buried in the mud.

I stumbled upon a measure of this shared comfort and warmth a few nights ago, meeting up with a friend near the Thames river.

There is something incredibly soothing about being the only two people by the river, near almost-soundless flowing water, staring into the depths of something I cannot quite see, but knowing, with a concrete certainty, that it is there.

Similarly, there was something incredibly soothing in that night conversation, that eine kleine nachtmusik, near and by the banks of the heart of London city, under blue-rimmed trees dwarfed by the blue-rimmed London Eye, across a long white bridge glistening with promise, huge sharp arcs weaving into the darkness beyond -
getting to know laughing realising joking teasing gesticulating reading undercurrents shoving playfully leaning into earnestly exclaiming loudly chuckling smiling wryly bantering bouncing off wandering mutually discovering smiling widely learning sharing acknowledging swapping stories exchanging tales understanding
- our slow, unhurried, meandering way moving under and over pavements and bridges, our feet charting their own course, to come to stand at the edges of the night-turned-almost-morning, a space that cannot quite be seen.

But we know it is there, and we know we are there.

Let us go out then, you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky...let us go through certain half-deserted streets...let us go and make our visit.

last - next