There has never been a world without tragedy and heartache and injustice. But there has also never before been a time when human beings have had constant access to the breadth of human suffering. Our technology bathes us in this information, and it can be a challenge to not dissolve into a mass of emotion, or just go numb. Julia Scott found herself facing this dilemma, and intuitively creating a ritual for herself, the seeds of which were planted decades earlier.
Malcolm Saunders is a fisherman in Cornwall, on the southern tip of the UK. While most of the old fishing ports have transformed into tourist attractions, there are still some working fishing boats, manned by seasoned weathered fisherman. They’re holding onto to an almost forgotten way of life – one that ties their livelihood to nature, with all of the thrill and hardship that goes along with it. Their lives are governed by tides, and weather, and time – A fisherman goes out where and when the fish are, day or night. There’s nothing else to it.
Hospitals are amazing places. They’re emblems of the modern medical technology that saves and improves our lives in countless ways every day. But if you’ve ever roamed the halls of a hospital in the middle of the night, with its shiny echoey surfaces, background hum of anxiety, and distant monitors chiming like beacons of peril, you’re in no rush to return. But if you must, you’ll want someone like Shoshana Ungerleider there keeping an eye on things, especially if there are zebras.
One of the things that changes instantly when you have a baby is your relationship to sleep. It usually becomes scarce and precious, and everyone has advice. Much less talked about is the continuing nighttime struggle between parents and their young kids. Because by the time your child is a year or two old, any competent parent has it under control, right? Kids go to sleep and parents get to have their night. Adam Mansbach drew back the curtain on this ridiculous fallacy.
Our relationship to the darkness can shift over time. One of the main ways that this happens is by walking into the dark, both literally and metaphorically. By walking toward the thing that scares us the most, or causes the most pain, we have the potential to almost magically transform it into something completely different.
There’s a funny thing about Christmas in New York: In a city where most of the living trees are clumped together in just a few areas, right around Thanksgiving new clumps of trees start popping up all over this mostly concrete and asphalt setting. The tree stands sprinkled throughout the city create a festive air, but there’s another dimension to the world of Christmas trees in New York City at night.
The built environment consists of structures that humans make – including spaces where people live, work and play. For the most part, these places are inhabited during the day. But at night, new aspects of the built environment are revealed. Some people are drawn to explore these spaces, not to vandalize or create mischief – just to see and to appreciate. But society has a name for that – it’s called trespassing.
The Sleepless project is two things: It’s a voicemail that people can call when they can’t sleep, so they can talk about what’s on their mind and hopefully get back to sleep. It’s also an art project where the creator of the project makes short videos to accompany the voice messages. She came to the project through her own sleepless nights.
On a beautiful day in April, Matthew Bryce went out to surf by himself off a remote beach in Scotland. Usually he goes out for 3 or 4 hours, and then goes about his life. This time was different.
In January I left my home for 6 months of wandering, and of course one of the main things I explored were the infinite shades of night in each new place. What I noticed more than ever is that every night is a finger print – each is unique, with no one the same as another. The sounds tell the stories.
Have you every woken up in the wee hours of the night to find that you’re gripped by fears and anxieties that just didn’t exist in the light of day?
You can lie there awake in bed, in your comfortable home, maybe even next to a loved one, and find your thoughts circling like persistent vultures. And then the morning rolls around, and it’s almost impossible to recreate the sense of foreboding that existed just a few hours earlier.
Lots of museums have regular evening hours or events, often lasting until 8 or 9pm. But I wonder – what do these worlds become in the wee hours, when the last visitor has heeded the call to leave, and the doors are locked? What transformations take place when no one is watching?
In that place where darkness and isolation meet, fear can take hold in a particularly visceral way. When you’re alone in the dark, every sense works overtime. It can feel like the darkness and the fear are interchangeable. One comes to represent the other. The darkness can paralyze you. Or you can walk straight into it.
In September 2015 the full moon crossed into the Earth’s shadow and turned redish gold. It was the first blood moon, or total lunar eclipse of a super moon, in over 30 years, and it wouldn’t happen again for almost twenty more. The moon was old and strange, and we were seeing it in a form that occurs only very rarely. It was something we had to show up for, because it wasn’t available on demand. We had to come out of our homes and out of our routines.Also, the moon that night made us look up, away from ourselves and our immediate concerns. It reminded us of the real scale of things, at least for a little while.
The night can be a desperate and lonely place. Fortunately, there’s a group of people who make it their mission to bring comfort and hope to people in the night.
The ethos of randonneuring emphasizes personal challenge and comraderie. Randonneurs share the goal of having everyone make it to the finish line. They take care of each other, because what they’re doing is kind of crazy and a little dangerous.
Picture it. You’re biking along a winding country road, 30 miles from the nearest town. The air is cool, there’s a slight wind, maybe a gentle mist. It’s three o’clock in the morning. You’ve been awake for 23 hours.
Some surveys suggest that up to a quarter of couples sleep in separate beds. Dave and Sue have both experienced the need to sleep alone, and while they miss things about sharing a bed all night, the arrangement seems tolerable to both of them. This is not the case for another couple I spoke to. Brooke and Bob have been struggling for years to find a solution to what seems like an insurmountable sleep impasse.
The night bus rolls through the city like a small enclosed world. You never know who you’ll meet or what you’ll see. One night, Helen Zaltzman’s bus ride home from the movies took a dark turn.
Jade Walker hates the daylight so much that most of her neighbors have rarely seen her. The sun is a personal affront to her. But she’s not disconnected from life. In fact, she sees it all. And because of her, so do we.