Night, sleep & the source of good & evil

Not everything has an explanation

I do not wish any day to end. I wonder why.

I can remember myself and I can recall my mother talking about it and laughing about it that I used to beg her to read me one more story or to answer one more question before I had to go to sleep at night. They are good memories, and make me smile, but I wonder today why I was that way. Was it just my nature? Was I born a "night owl?" Or, was there something about night and darkness and sleep that I feared? Is it a wish for the day to go on and on, or for the night never to arrive?

There are a few stories I could tell about fearing the night and sleep, but they are not why, to this day, I absolutely hate going to bed until I drop. Many people say the morning is the best part of the day. I do not disagree, but since I have discovered that I can see in the dark and most others cannot, I suppose it gives me an advantage in darkness which I appreciate while others cannot.

At some point in my journey between being a child and becoming an adult, the night has become a place in which I feel safe and secure. There is little difference to me between daylight and darkness, and night has become dominant. I actually have run wide open though dense woodlands on moonless nights and never had a misstep. That is inexplicable, is it not?

Gullies, fallen logs, loose soil, boulders, low-hanging branches do not slow me down .... you tell me. It is partially sensing, partially seeing, but mostly primitive, animal, intuitive instinct providing built-in radar of sorts. I cannot explain it. It simply is. It has come in handy a few times, but mostly it has been an odd phenomenon simply to enjoy and to laugh about.

To be honest, I like to think it is a million-year-old genetic memory which developed from necessity and which has resurfaced a number of millennia later to create a natural-born hunter descendant like me. We all carry ancient genes .... which, to me, explains things like survival of the fittest and good and evil.

I have no idea how many people ever encounter by accident or while on a search of self-discovery what unusual traits or talents they might possess. I began searching at an early age. Another characteristic which I have mentioned in past posts in addition to this "night vision" perception is that I have an uncanny (so it would seem) ability to hit just about whatever I shoot at with a handgun.

It is like the pistol becomes an extension of my arm and hand. (I should have lived in the times of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday ....) But, conversely, with a shotgun, I am a lousy shot, pure and simple, which is illogical because of the "scattergun" aspect of the shotgun.

Whatever, it is fun, I think, to look within the usual and see not only where you might be below average, but where you might have a skill or an ability which breaches the boundaries of the ordinary. It is more than fun; it is fascinating, even if you are such as me and discover that your particular talent came one hundred years or thereabouts too late for real purpose .... or whatever.

 

I still think we homo sapiens sapiens might be more different from one another than we are the same, and the game is to learn how to get along with our differences rather than attempt in socialistic fashion to treat everyone as a cloned lemming.

All right .... you have heard the story. Tell me, why do I not want the day to end? Why do I fight going to sleep at night? It might have been fear of the dark when I was a small child, but, most certainly, that is not the reason still today when the night has become my friend. So, why?

 

Not too many care about these words, these thoughts, these concepts. The point is that I do care. Let us leave it there .... but, believe me, I would have preferred to be good with a guitar than with a handgun .... hmmm .... on second thought, it might be a bit premature to make a definitive pronouncement in that regard .... after all, the future is not ours to see ....

I was asked about the "Bolin boys," Tommy at the left and Johnnie at the right, after my last post, so I will offer an introduction to Tommy and his time with Deep Purple by including this 1975 rendition the song "Burn" with this post. Tommy and Johnnie were from Sioux City, Iowa. Tommy is the magician with the rhythm guitar in the video. David Coverdale is the front man, Glenn Hughes is on bass and backup vocals. Jon Lord and Ian Paice are in their almost-always roles on the keyboards and the drums, respectively. It is a strange mixture, in a way, like a ghost of a ghost of a ghost of a phantom. I will leave it to the historians of rock 'n' roll to decipher that sentence -- if any historians actually exist other than in my imagination; most opinion purveyors are merely inept critics, like myself. "Burn," incidentally is one of my favorite rock anthems -- no matter which of the six or seven or whatever incarnations of Deep Purple is performing it. I am chair dancing to it right now. It is too bad neither the video nor the audio is of good quality. Tommy died of a drug overdose in 1976 at the age of twenty-five. Johnnie, today, is the drummer with Black Oak Arkansas, the band which opened for Deep Purple last week in Sioux City. Johnnie came back home to perform and, I suppose, to visit the grave of Tommy. Neat, hah? Rock history and personal memories meet and meld. By the way, if you are into great guitarists and their guitars, you can obtain one based on Tommy's favorite from Dean Guitars in Tampa, Florida. Since this post is not about the Bolins or Deep Purple, I will leave it at that for now .... but, this sure was an easy way to provide an illustration and a song to accompany my words !! Sliding sideways for a moment, love the hair, guys .... and, I really, really do feel sorry for kids growing up with today's mostly junk music and teeny-bop and/or trash performers. This sure is a discombobulated post, is it not ?? If not, what is it ??