Night Fright!

Do you ever wake in the middle of the night with an inexplicable feeling of uneasiness or anxiety, even downright anguish, a sort of 'existential angst', and, try as you might, you cannot get off to sleep again? Do black thoughts flood into your head and torment you in the blackness of night, in one form or another, effectively banishing further sleep? If this "nocturnal numbness" never happens to you, you're one of the fortunate few, of which alas I am not, in which case you need not read on. But if you're a fellow sufferer, then perhaps the following is more or less familiar to you.

Where am I?

The other night I awoke just after three in the morning in a somewhat confused and anxious state and, try as I might, I could not get back to sleep. It seems I had been having a rather heavy dreamlike experience, not exactly a nightmare, but one that I'd rather have done without and which must have instilled a certain uneasiness and disquiet in my subconscious that looks to have been the reason for my waking up all of a sudden in a state of some anxiety. I had a strange sense of being ethereal, disconnected from the world and out of touch with everyone, as though unable to retrieve my past and re-connect with people and events that had been part of my life.

So there I was, awake, nervous and apprehensive, with a deep sense of abandonment and aloneness (rather than loneliness) that precluded sleep but which demanded stimulation, both visual and auditory if I was to get over it. So what would most people do in such a situation? Turn to drink? Gulp down a few pills? Try and get themselves sexually aroused?Well, I did none of those: I just turned the telly on to good old BBC 24-hour news and sat back to absorb some of the world's goings-on to take me out of myself. And it was the usual merry mixture of civil unrest, terrorist attacks, state-sponsored massacres, natural disasters, gruesome murders, all-consuming arsons, high-level fraud, political scandal, economic chaos, drug wars, widespread deceit and deception and the like. Have I missed anything out? You can fill in the gaps for me. All in all it made a great way for me to forget my own sleep-induced desolation and despair.

Yes, all this misery and mayhem in the world managed to take my mind off my own less tangible fears and envelop me in a general feeling of revulsion at the state of the world which is never free of upheaval and unrest. Half way through my viewing or revulsion, if you prefer, I got up, went down to the kitchen, found some strawberries in the fridge and washed them down with pure orange-juice whilst listening to something silly on the radio. Back upstairs I siphoned the python, as they say (well some of us still do), and so with belly assuaged and bladder emptied, I got back down to calming the mind and the spirit, an enterprise not so easily achieved. It was back to the world news and a further serving of calamities and conflicts, followed by a review of the day's major international sports events. That's where I drew the line and turned the tv set off.

Where am I?

Having set the television screen on a red mood light that allowed me to faintly perceive my surroundings once the main light was off, I settled back down to re-enter the world of sleep. It was now more than an hour later, around 4.30 am, and being summer, it was already beginning to lighten outside and the dawn chorus had struck up: an ideal backdrop for me to drift off. I hate the dead silence and darkness of the night, and the faint glimmer of light and chirping of the birds were a welcome sight and sounds. 

Within a few short minutes I was in the arms of Morpheus, transported back to the land of Nod. With my night fright dispelled and my spirit calmed, I slept soundly, though I knew that it was not an isolated occurrence and was bound to recur soon enough. Fortunately, I had devised an effective means of combating it (thank God for BBC 24-hr news!) and having the remedy made me less frightened of the malady. 

When snow falls...

The snow began falling in the early afternoon. It was light and somewhat powdery at first, but as afternoon turned into evening it became heavier and heavier until in a very short space of time it had painted everything pure white. And it continued falling. Quietly, gently, silently, but persistently. The layer of white began to grow and grow and, as I stood and stared out of the window in undisguised childlike glee, it looked like a veritable Winter Wonderland to me!

In the same way I have always loved to watch it raining, and the heavier the better, I’ve loved to watch the snow come down, the thicker the better! And just as rain excites me by the noise it makes, snow enchants me by the noise it doesn’t make, by its silent presence. It gradually produces an effect that holds me in thrall: it muffles sounds, so that it produces an eerie but fascinating silence that envelops everything. The sound of rain thrills me, the silence of snow puts me in awe, and the wonder of Nature enthralls me. And that in turn awakens in me a feeling tantamount to a sort of spiritual, not to say religious, experience in its own way.

And so as it snowed on, I did what I have done many times before: I took out my camera and began taking pictures of the snow and its effects. I opened the window or the door and felt a delightful shiver run down my spine as the cold sharp air blew in and I felt a few snowflakes touch my face, borne in by the chilly breeze. Undeterred, and feeling a sense of excitement, I snapped away, and the photos in this blog are just a tiny fraction of the many pics I took on that day. I wanted a visual record of the event, as indeed I had wanted of the snow that had fallen just over a year ago.

As night fell, the snow, still strong, continued to descend and now its general effect on the landscape was altered in the bright light of the street lamps. The dim grey light of the dark overcast day was replaced by the eerie glow of artificial yellowy-white light which picked out the free-falling snowflakes and lit up the carpet of snow that lay all around. In turn the snow reflected back the light and the end-result was a magical nocturnal display in yellow and white reflections, an optical melody to delight the eye.

Am I exaggerating the beauty and effect of snow? Perhaps I am… because for me it is a very personal and even emotional experience, as I have said. I have always found the sight of falling snow and freshly-fallen snow strangely comforting, strangely soothing in its desolate beauty. Few other natural phenomena can compare in my estimation. But the hour was late, and as I finally dragged myself reluctantly to bed, laid myself down, my mind was full of the scene outside. A gentle peace came upon me and I drifted into that welcome sleep that rests and refreshes both mind, body and soul.