Oresai

It`s seven am here, still dark. I have been up, for the umpteenth night in a row, since three am. This is a particularly bad bout of insomnia, one of a kind I haven`t had for over a year. I`m averaging about two hours of sleep a night and it`s beginning to tell.
There are stages to sleep deprivation...you go through an achy, tired, heavy stage, then onto a kind of `drunk` stage where everything seems funny and you (well, I) giggle lots.
Now I`m at the zombie stage, where I could extra in a George Romero movie, except instead of staggering, arms outstretched, moaning "Braaainnnsss..." I`m grunting "Sleeeeeeppp"....
Och well, been here before, and what`ll happen is that one of these nights I`ll fall asleep and crash for a good solid six hours, and wake up feeling like a new woman!
Just wishing it would hurry up.
Nights are strange...so many folks are `night people` but I`m not, naturally...the daytime is mine, the sunlight and life of the skies with the dawn`s birds, the horizon glowing with warmth and light, the feeling of having more company during the day, whether I see another living soul or not, because somehow, you can feel the world awake...
Nights are different...time stretches there, and the dark can become claustrophobic, suffocating, when I sit beside my windows looking out at ...well...darkness...no streetlights here, the islands homes are quiet and dark and asleep...the only light is that of the moon if there are no clouds, and he casts a chilly, unfriendly coolness upon the waters of the ponds at the side of my track, and a colder yet road upon the sea at the bottom of it.
And in the lonely nights, your mind takes flight, and in the lonely nights, your fears become sharp and piercing, and in the lonely nights, you can feel bereft of all hope.....

So yes, I`m a morning person! The sun never fails to cheer me, I`m Sunna`s woman, enjoying her heat in the summer, her light every time, watching the beneficience of her bring the soil slowly to waking again, ready to take seed and root, ready to birth the years crops.
This far north, we get only two real seasons..summer and winter. There is no marked in between, no spring with it`s slow, lazy stirring of blood, no autumn with it`s mellow, langorous winding down. We get short, bright and glorious summers, and long, dark and heavy winters. In midsummer, the sun never truly sets, and it never gets dark, a mild twilight only marking the passing of the days.
But in midwinter? Well, often I need my lamps lit throughout the whole day, and the sun stays low on the horizon, almost kissing the sea she is, and her light`s a thin, mean thing, but still welcome.

I see the skies begin to pale in the distance over the East fields. A faint shimmer of pale gold lies there, a lazy wench beginning to stir for the day`s work.
I see the tiny lights of creel boats leave Kettletoft harbour, braving the seas to make an often mean living. Rather them than me.
Another day, a brief thing, after such a long, slow, lonely night...