Minneapolis by Night

The daytime is occupied by a yawning silence. This is when history opens its great maw and swallows me up in its expanse. Pigeons land on nearby houses, preoccupied by their own flights and concerns. Cars drive by; people locked into their own chambers, their own agendas. There are people in houses, in businesses, on telephones, concerning themselves with things that at night will be forgotten. The world at this time is too big for me. I feel like a tremulous deer about to leave the safety of the forest canopy for an open field. I am afraid of the daylight and the world that emerges with it.

Evening, though, is a dark, intimate place. It is like entering a child’s fort where reality can be gently teased to the side and morsels of the imagination can finally be unpacked from a side pouch. I look to my company for that night and reach with pleasure to unpack my thoughts, to unwind them from the rags that have been protecting them. The rags, dirty and bloody from the day’s journey, are tossed to the side. Beneath them are shards of colored glass, streamers and ribbons, ancient teeth and scraps of corduroy. They catch in the light and forget how small the day had made them. They gleam and rustle in the closeness of dark. The world is small enough then to see the beauty of smallness. There is beauty in the sound of breath nearby, in the pattern of dirt on the floor, in the wall pressing up against one’s back.

I do not like to see people in the daylight. They are small then, and, against the open sky, disappoint me with their smallness. At night, their shadows are cast large across the wall. Their eyes glisten with alcohol or fatigue and they confess things they hadn’t meant to, hoping you will forget by morning. They dress in clothing that comforts them. They reflect on the past and on the vista of life as if one great rolling hill before them. At night, people have souls. In the morning, they get lost in paperwork.