Cioran, Antero, Kafka… all endowed with a nocturnal mind, that is, a mind that, in opposition to daytime bodily habits, chooses the night to put itself in intense activity. Most nights, therefore, a real torture, an incessant conflict that only ends when the light already invades the bedroom window. The tired body asking for rest, and the mind having in the stillness of dawn the perfect time to work. Ideas bursting like firecrackers, reasoning that builds upon each other, scenes, judgments, afflictions, plans, expectations, all bursting forth, sucking attention when the desire is to annul them all. Then, already accustomed to it, the spirit begins to call good nights those in which sleep is like a semi-sleep—the maximum it can reach—a state in which mental chatter blends into a middle ground between dream and reasoning, already automated by an unconscious enchainment and only interrupted by spaced awakenings, in which a conscious glimmer questions the degree of its own lucidity. And from this apparently terrible routine, many, many fruits, solutions that would never be given in a fully awake state, ideas that, if not originating from the deepest recess of the mind, seem to be placed by the hands of a superior spirit. Very well, very well: it is possible to learn to enjoy nights like this—it is just not possible, for a mind like this, to be in a good mood in the mornings.
Nocturnal Minds
