After reading Night, the parts that stood out to me the most were the art that MacAuley mentioned. My favorite pieces were Starry Night over Rhone and Brassai’s Cloak of Night. Starry Night Over Rhone makes me want to sit near a body of water at night. Cloak of Night somehow reminds me of an airport at night. The lights always seem brighter at 10 PM in an airport.
For me, the night is connected to schoolwork. I usually stay up (like right now) to finish my assignments because the day is usually too noisy for me to concentrate on work. When it’s quiet and everyone’s asleep, it’s much easier to relax and focus on studying.
If I’m outside and looking at the stars, night makes me feel small. Similar to Diane Ackerman’s point, you can’t see space during the day. Her quote, “Don’t think of night as the absence of day; think of it as a kind of freedom. Turned away from our sun, we see the dawning of far-flung galaxies. We are no longer sun-blind to the star-coated universe we
inhabit.” sums it up quite nicely.
