All is Illuminated

Pondering: "If you're happy in a dream, Ammu, does that count?" Estha asked.

I wonder what is more real: the night-time or the daylight hours? In the day, they behave just as friends. Acts of intimacy are embarrassing. Our upbringing demands a certain social protocol. We talk about who won the sports game last night or where we'll eat for lunch, we talk about the weather as if it's a daily item of interest when every day brings the same rain and spotty sunlight. At night, however, confidences are exchanged, we come naked to each other. In the physical and/or metaphorical sense, we are bare, open, vulnerable. Suddenly, it seems more okay to reveal skeletons in the closet or personal desires or the fears which grip us like invisible balls and chains in our waking hours. But while the night seems to free us, it also presses upon us more responsibility. There is excitement, tension, possibility. Unrestrained, we have to work harder to check the beast. In the night, the control is with us; get the balance right, and it can bring advances in the morning. Get it wrong, and the sun brings regret and desolation.

We join the night-life, we seek release from the cabin fever of constant decorum. But so much of that is fake too. Indeed those around us expect difference, expect excess. The night being the "correct" time and place for confessions or passion; it is a frontier between what is comfortable and known and what is (potentially) dangerous and unclear. If you wanted to barge into a bedroom or serenade a window or drunk dial or admit that you believe she is your soulmate, the night is a good excuse. When your action is well-received, then you say it was honesty. If your overture was rejected, you shrug and say it was the night speaking. Too much and you're burned. Like Icarus and the sun, or the sushi-lover's puffer fish. Numbed nerves good, but a lick too far, and game over.