Quickening the Night.

Last night, and on into the morning, I created. Strewn all over my living room: images cut carefully from magazines, all glossy and promising; glue sticks and tape; self-portraits; little gold photo corners. I felt that if I kept creating through the night, that I could make the morning come faster, that I could bring the sun up more quickly, make the night melt away.

I'm afraid of the dark. Always have been. If I'm in the living room and need to go to bed, for instance, I'll turn on all the lights through the hallways all the way to my bedside table lamp, then go back and turn the lights off one by one until I am safe. But it's not the dark that terrifies me so much anymore: sometimes I'll walk through the hallways with my hand on the cool wall and delight in being able to hide away in it, melt into the darkness. I want the night to quicken, to go away, so that I can hear cars and children, mail carriers, bicycles, voices.

It's the silence, the aching of it. I feel as though I could scream and it would echo through the empty apartment, and that I would be left alone with my echoes ringing in my ears. I like to hear things at night, to remember. The buses re-routed onto my street, for instance: the huff, puff, cough, sigh, strong and comforting. Come take me away, bus, let me sink into your blue seats and drive me around the city until the morning comes. The ambulances wailing in the night, speeding to save someone: high-pitched, awful, whimpering. There aren't ambulances for broken hearts and souls, no red and white truck to take my insides and thoughts away and resuscitate them, cauterize them, bandage them, anesthetize them.

I couldn't stop creating last night. It was wonderful, and while my collaging and scrapbooking is always very meticulous and organized, there was a wonderful balance between logic and spontaneity, images and words. It's not quite a finished product--one page is wrinkled and its composition is bothering me--but soon.

It's Sunday. The worst night, the one I want to quicken the most. The anxiety and anticipation of Mondays are amplified for me, as I spend the entire weekend on my own, at home, recovering from the stress and the hullaballoo of the week. And then all of a sudden, MONDAY arrives. Tomorrow I will see the darling baby again, and my heart is already weak in the knees at the thought.