Goodnights

It is not possible to describe the night. Yes, you will tell me, many have done it, many have written beautiful prose and poetry about it. No, I tell you, no; they have all described nights. They have spoken of goddesses of night and moon – Ratri, and Nyx, and fair Diana. But, no; nobody can describe the night, for each night is different, and even if you were able to integrate them from creation to infinity, you would find them indefinite.

I sit here in the morning so early that it is still night, and seems that it will never be dawn. The rain is like angry angels, their words like spears of water, like a pre-Raphaelite darkness, like benediction spoken like a curse. The rain smells of minerals, of ions and burning from the upper air, air so high that it knows nothing of me. And the scent as of curing tobacco that is the burning of Indonesia, that scent is hanging no more, but has etched itself into every lash of the wind.

There have been many nights like this. As I age, I have come to know that they are alike, similar – but not the same at all. Each is like a masterclass performance of a cello concerto, with the plaintive humanity and the pure note forced into beauty by the vibration of wood and string – and each one as different. It is not that the cellist or the instrument change from night to night. It is that each night is a different hearing of the same theme. Each night can be enigmatic in its variation, like Elgar made wild by Vaughan Williams and then losing its mind to Paganini, and yet sometimes like a calm sea by Rimsky-Korsakov. And some nights are warmer than day, more friendly than a hot meal, promising haven against the fall of darkness or the winter of discontent.

I am no dancer, no bright light upon a brooding stage. My pen illuminates no manuscripts in gold or scarlet or true indigo. But my eye, though adapted to darkness, paints hope against the gloom. In all these variations, whether of wildness or warmth, there is hope for the future, for the young, for those who resist the lofty sadness of approaching age.

As death falls like a drunken cavalier all over the pavements of Lebanon, we mourn those who have lost everything with their lives. Yet every night, no matter how chill, cannot be filled with nightmares alone. There will be dreams of powerful beauty and visions of new and glorious life. And some of them may very well come true.

Outside my window, the rain has stopped. God bless us all, and good night.