There’s magic in the dark solitude and quiet stillness after midnight

By David McElroy · February 25, 2021

I should be asleep now. It’s 1 a.m. and I’m exhausted. I slept only about four hours last night. Wednesday was a long and exhausting day, made longer by my lack of sleep.

But I’m sitting in the silent darkness of my front yard, watching clouds move across the night sky, creating endless patterns above the dark tree branches above me. One moment the sky is clear and the full moon is bright. The next moment, the clouds mute the light and diffuse its brightness like a giant sheet in the sky.

This is my favorite time of day. There are no people around. No ringing phones. Nobody who needs something from me. Everything seems clear. Life makes more sense.

In this peaceful stillness, I am the closest I come to being joyful and happy these days. My feelings and thoughts turn to a future which seems just barely out of reach. And I always think of her.

I don’t know anymore who she is. I used to be so certain. I can’t decide whether it was better to have blind faith in someone who bitterly disappointed me or to have no one in particular in my heart to have faith in.

There was pain in wanting someone who turned out not to be what I believed she was. But there is emptiness — an oddly different pain of nothingness — in having a need and not knowing who might fill the need.

My visions of the future still seem clear, but it’s almost like a wonderful movie in which the co-star has been cut out. And without the woman in this role, my vision of the future no longer makes sense.

My heart needs to think about these things, but the rumination seems to be most useful to me during the still hours after midnight. When it’s daylight and the rest of the world bustles around me, I have trouble seeing things through spiritual eyes. Instead, I see the world through the lens of pragmatism that comes from a culture which has different beliefs than my own.

In this way, I’m the most peaceful and happy in these hours, especially on a winter night when the temperature has fallen to only 60 degrees. The things I want — family, creation, community, love — seem so close. So possible. Just barely out of my reach — but almost here.

Lucy lies next to me on the steps of the porch, panting as she watches the world in front of us and then as she raises her ears to listen to a train in the distance. It’s a peaceful sort of existence which millions and millions of other men and women have experienced over the centuries of our civilization. It’s an introspective alone time when everything seems possible — and a person can believe that tomorrow might be very different from today.

Life will never be perfect. My life around others will probably always leave me feeling like an alien who’s looking for “my people.” But in the stillness such as what I feel right now, I can believe that my people exist. I can believe my family will exist. I can believe there’s still love and meaning for me.

The daylight will bring new problems — and a list of old problems which haven’t yet been solved — but in this quiet stillness, I can believe the world makes sense. I can believe that I’ll be happy and loved and satisfied. I can believe in her.

And that’s why I need this beautiful, dark time of the day. It’s the only time when everything I need seems just around the corner — and that allows me to have blind faith in things which I can’t yet see.

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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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