Week 4 (7 days late)

An aside before I begin. 

I have not been sleeping well. Most of which can be blamed on my 26yro cat (who henceforth will be known only as, the Ancient One). 

Most nights he has me out of bed at least 3 times before 6am, typically starting before 4am… but this is not my first bout with sleep dep. For many years as a teenager I suffered from insomnia and it was a time full of frustration & moments of magical clarity.

All of this is plausibly the only excuse I have for, whilst dealing with my most recent sleep deprivation, reading a book about people who work the nightshift & do not sleep or live like the people you & I know.

And yet, I know that my original draw to the book had little to do with my sleeplessness & everything to do with this romantic notion I have about big cities & the secret lives lives steal away whilst the rest of us sleep. 

In this way, the stories contained within Nightshift NYC’s pages do not disappoint.

There are stories from cab drivers & dinner owners, LIRR workers & folks from Penn Station, all of whom see & are part of NYC’s secret other lives. 

And this book makes excruciatingly clear that it is not just the people who choose to work these shifts who are different; a combination of the artificial light & the stillness dedicated to these hours work to change those who partake in them. 

These people learn to exist in two worlds & oft times sleep only 3-4 hours a day, straddling between their day jobs or family & their night shifts. And strangely enough, it is their night lives that seem to be the foundation of their world views & self identification. In many ways, it is as if they were granted access to witness the rest of the world in slow motion and don’t know how (or wish) to return to a life devoid of this view. 
The city breaths differently in these hours and so do the people who work them.

At the height of my insomnia, when I was 16, I traveled to Spain. In the 10 days I was there I slept very, very little; most of my time spent in the deep window wells of our hotel, watching the city. There was a feeling as if I was the only one watching over the city & if I did see someone pass below, there was a strong sense that if we were to meet during the day, that there would be something shared between us; a secret, only revealed to those willing to succumb to the city at night.

I’m not sure that this book captures that on it’s own or if I’m simply projecting. But I found myself longing for a time when my insomnia felt just a little like a passage way to a different way of seeing.

Something I was desperate for as a teenager in mourning; waiting for the cities secrets to be swept away into the bustle of the dawn.
Something I long for still.