Twilight Changes Everything

Kafka wrote that twilight was the strange time when everyone’s heads drop momentarily and then we all carry on with our lives.

He identified that there was a single moment between light and darkness that if identified could be used to a purpose.

It’s always held wonder for me. The moment beyond the sunset when shadows and silhouettes replace the world of the light. In this space truths can be changed. Trees can become giants. Small night time creatures – great beast of the night. Friends become unknown and unrecognisable from those who would do harm to you.

Within this uncertainty my mind races and speeds. Every sound becomes something new and menacing. On sundays evening bells ring out beyond the hillside where I live. Incomprehensible voices converse about unheard things and again I imagine, I feel what they may be saying.

All of this in the few moments between evening and night.

I remember camping in the new forest in a deer enclosure and listening to the creatures unseen singing the last song of the day. A song more powerful and brilliant than at any time save sunrise. I remember the intensity of the silence that followed as they all stopped dead when the darkness fell. The absence was chilling but wonderful.

I watched the bats at twilight as they danced around the apple tree. The father, mother and children danced insanely in a pattern I could not discern yet alone follow.

I watched the pale moon brighten and the sky change through every shade of blue.

I listened to the echo of life as it faded one more time.

I smelled wood smoke drifting silent and aimless from distant gardens.

I felt warmth fade slowly, replaced by thick jumpers and coats.

The autumn comes in the north quicker every day and oh how my love for twilight grows.

Distant Thunder in the Twilight