CAKE | 07 — Call it a day
It's incomprehensible to me how anybody could intentionally dismiss daylight. Since I moved to Hamburg several years ago I have been craving sun every day with every cell of my body. Winters here are wet and grey and disheartening. In spring when the days get longer and the sun seemingly reappears in the sky after weeks and months of cold winds, rain and sleet, I feel like I come back from the dead. With the dense mass of vapor finally subsiding. Spring is when outer life finally resumes. When green returns. And the feeling of sun on skin beats anything anyway.
And yet for over 25 years she has slept during the day and has been awake at night. She says it started with her former husband – like her an author. She simply adopted his daily cycle and continued to go about her day at night, even without him. She takes pills to help her fall asleep; to counteract the body's ancient urges. She supplements her diet with vitamin D drops. Her skin is almost translucent and appears so delicate. For some reason she applies heavy make-up. Blue and purple eyeshadow and magenta splashes of rouge. Maybe it's to make her face look luminous. Maybe her bathroom is poorly lit. Or maybe it's simply her way of adding color.
How she goes about her life I didn't ask. Dentist appointments, lunch dates with friends, grocery shopping or a visit at the bank. All this must require extraordinary organizational skills. She must wake up very early – at around 3 or 4 pm – if she wants to do any of these things. It's hard to imagine her having many friends but apparently she does. She keeps in touch with them mostly through emails and phone calls, she said. I suppose living in different time zones helps.
She seems content. Wouldn't want to change a thing, she said. Still. Why anybody would chose darkness over light is beyond me. At night life is suspended. Drained of color. Imagine never seeing the sun reflected in a lake, watching a bee feed upon a flower or hearing birds sing. Nature is the consolation for almost anything, writes Walt Whitman. I can’t imagine living without. With the earth darkened and subdued. So awfully quiet. Devoid of its glory. And yet, this is what she does. She lives, she writes at night. Beautiful, tragic and highly acclaimed books. Maybe to her life is more vivid at night. After having lost her mother to suicide at the age of eleven and having grown up as a displaced person in camps, after being homeless and left behind, maybe this is what you do. Retreat into a safe space. Nevermind nature. Maybe there is no consolation for humanity's cruelty. Maybe this is her way of getting through this life. Maybe that very first night she stayed awake she called it a day.