Christopher Dewdney - Acquainted with the Night. A Celebration of the Dark Hours

"As you read these pages, your life will change, because the way you see half of it will change. The night we're all familiar with will emerge as a fresh thing, deeper, fuller, older, younger, more evocative, more intimate, larger, more spectacular and, yes, more magical, and much more thrilling."

Margaret Atwood,Globe and Mail(Toronto)

"An enjoyable and instructive read."Boston Globe

"Intriguing... a portrait of darkness in all its forms... The writer's poetic side is no barrier to his account of the various sciences of the night. Whether he is writing about circadian rhythms or the physics of sunsets it is done with a light hand, but an illuminating one... It makes for a perfect bedtime read.''Economist

"No better guide can be imagined. A poet as well as essayist, Dewdney laces his account with snatches of poetry and scientific observation, giving pleasure and instruction in equal measure. Take the book to bed. Better yet, take it out onto the porch or patio. Read it until the twilight fades and the first stars twinkle. Then lay it aside and enjoy the spectacle."DallasMorning News

"Lovely... Dewdney's restless intelligence comes at his subject from all directions... Heady stuff, and the Toronto-based Dewdney knits it all together with elegant language, reportorial excursions and personal anecdotes... Fascinating."Time Out New York

"Judging by his books, Dewdney would make a splendid dinner companion, capable of conversing on just about any topic with genuine interest, and with a warehouse of fascinating facts and observations at his command."The Onion

"Weaving history with mythology, cosmology, and biology, Dewdney has created a mosaic... of musings that will no doubt delight night owls as well as those who prefer to spend the dark hours snoring."Discover magazine

"A delightful compendium that charts the nocturnal phasesplanetary, human and animalof life... Tautly written in a highly condensed yet readable voice, this tour of the manifold nocturnal realm is a superbly meticulous feat."Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A magical tour of night's great landmarks... A eulogistic and very personal treatment of a world to itself, full of incident and lovely as a Whistler nocturne."Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

NONFICTION
The Immaculate Perception
The Secular Grail
Last Flesh

POETRY
Predators of the Adoration
Radiant Inventory
Demon Pond
Signal Fires
The Natural History

ACQUAINTED WITH THE NIGHT

Excursions Through the World After Dark

CHRISTOPHER DEWDNEY

First published in Great Britain 2011

Copyright Christopher Dewdney 2004

This electronic edition published 2010 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

The right of Christopher Dewdney to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 36 Soho Square, London W1D 3QY

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 4088 2040 7

www.bloomsbury.com/christopherdewdney

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CONTENTS

1
FIRST NIGHT

I have been one acquainted with the night
I have walked out in rain and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

ROBERT FROST

I LOVE NIGHT, SOME of my earliest memories are of magical summer evenings, the excitement I felt at night's arrival, its dark splendor. Later, when I was eleven, there were hot summer nights, especially if the moon was bright, when I felt irresistibly drawn outside. I'd wait until my parents were asleep and then sneak out of the house, avoiding the creaky parts of the wooden stairs and the oak floors in the hallway. After quietly shutting the back door behind me, I was free, deliciously alone in the warm night air. A bolt of pure electric joy would rush through me as I stepped into the bright stillness of the moonlit yard.

We lived at the edge of a forest, so I'd hop the rail fence and blend into the trees. Even without moonlight my night vision was good enough to avoid stepping on twigs and dry leaves. Imagining I was a puma or a leopard, I'd walk silently through the forest, a creature free in the North American night. Although I didn't know it at the time, by exercising my night vision I was proving Victor Hugo's maxim "Strange to say, the luminous world is the invisible world; the luminous world is that which we do not see. Our eyes of flesh see only night." I was one with the darkness, the forest and the animals of the night.

In a sense I still am. My fascination with night has continued unabated. I have published poems about night and I still enjoy long night walks, though they pass through city neighborhoods instead of forests. Of course I'm not the only one who is infatuated with night. Melissa, the seven-year-old daughter of a friend, told me (in confidence) that, on certain special nightsshe called them "wish nights"she goes outside and captures some of the twilight in a small wooden box her mother gave her. "That way," she said, "I can look inside the box during the day and see my magic night in there. I can only open the box just a little, though, otherwise all the dark will leak out." Her box reminded me of William Blake's "Crystal Cabinet": "And within it opens into a world / And a lovely little moony night." I don't expect everyone to love night as Melissa and I do, but we probably have all had at least one remarkable night, a night we'll always rememberthat first evening date with the love of our lives, a summer night camping under the stars, perhaps a memorable night at the movies as a child. But it seems that darkness is especially sweet for new lovers. For them the evening is never long enough. As Thomas Moore wrote:

Fly not yet; 't is just the hour
When pleasure, like the midnight flower
That scorns the eye of vulgar light,
Begins to bloom for sons of night
And maids who love the moon.

Deeply, intimately, we are shaped by night. It is part of us. The rhythms of our bodies, the ebb and flow of our moods, the very pulse of our minds, are vitally linked to the daily cycle of light and dark. For some, night may be a time of anxiety, of loneliness and apprehension; for others, it is a celebratory time of freedom from work, of sensual pleasures and entertainments. Night is when we can put the worries of the day behind, yet it is also a frontier in which we are blind, where unseen dangers lurk. We are creatures of the day, and night has historically been our adversary, an exception to the rule of light. But in the larger universe the reverse is true, night is the rule and light is the exception. Daylight is bracketed by darkness, and our sun floats within the immensity of an endless cosmic night. But this universal night is not barren: it is the fertile void from which all things, even light itself, are born.