WALLACE SHAWN
“Night” from Night Thoughts

Night is a wonderful blessing. It's amazing, and I'm so grateful for it. In the darkness, lying in bed, we can stop. To be able to stop-that's amazing. We can stop. We can think. Of course it's frightening too. We think of what may happen to us. We think about death. Murders and murderers stand around the bed. But night gives us a chance to consider the possibility that we can start again, that when day comes we can begin again in a different way.

The aggressiveness that has been our daily mode of being can't help us any more. We wake up and start massacring people whom we see as our enemies. We wake up and break into the earth with gigantic drills and terrifying explosions. We wake up and find our place in a monstrous final struggle. On the one side, there are all the lucky people, and on the other side, strangely allied together, we find all the unlucky people, plus the birds, the crickets, the ladybugs, the bees, the monkeys, the parrots, the forests, and the rivers. At the moment, the lucky people are clearly winning, and almost all the evidence seems to indicate that they'll ultimately prevail.

The nonhuman creatures and the unlucky people are running from place to place, gassed, strafed, shot at, booby-trapped, gasping for breath. And the living planet that we've blasted and bombed and injected with poison is now, like an enormous animal who's been tortured for hours by some horribly disturbed demented children, finally beginning to die, and its terrible groans are dreadful to hear. But the animal may not die, if we can convince the children, who are ourselves, to stop killing it. It's perhaps still a possibility that we might be able to stop being murderers. This could be our night, and during this night we might be able to stop. Stop. Think. And start again in a different way.