As the sun dips below the horizon, a splash of light still lingers, coloring the western skies. It drains slowly and the inky dark of night rushes in to fill the void. But what lies between the day and the coming night or the night and the day that always arrives like First Shift to relieve it?
Our train is little more than a silhouette, but it’s here just the same. And it stops now to refuel at the Liminal Waystation where in the meantime, we, intrepid passengers that we are, explore the space
Between Night and Day
A day is both simple and complex. It is the time the sun is above the horizon. It is also a lifetime. In a very real sense, whole lifetimes arise and are extinguished within 24 earth-hours. Days are fragile and beautiful things, like strands on a cosmic web. And nights give them meaning. They are rest, cessation of sunlight, the counterparts of days. Not absences so much as pauses. Together, days and nights comprise a breath cycle. We inhale and exhale and then we begin again. But we don’t always do it at the same pace.
And what about the space between those breaths? The space between Night and Day is another undeniable liminal space. A passage. A becoming.
While Night and Day have long been the basis for the way we tell time, our methods have been far from consistent over the years because our periods of day and night are far from consistent and our needs for accounting for them have varied over time and across cultures.
The concept of AM and PM times has its roots with the ancient Egyptians. Thirty-six star groups called decans formed the basis of observations and helped determine times. What counted as night and what counted as day timewise tended to vary with the presence of the sun. The decans were depicted in the lids of coffins, a kind of guide for telling time in the afterlife. One simply couldn’t function without them.
The ancient Babylonians gave us the concept of 60 minutes in an hour. We lost the notion of ush along the way. These were the 360 divisions of time in that system or what would amount to 4-minute increments for us. Nevertheless, the contribution to the way we think of time and how we divide it up into night and day is undeniable.
Our circadian rhythm or system of ensuring that the body’s systems are optimized, happens in 24-hour periods and light and dark are important cues for all living things. It only makes sense to function in 24-hour days after adopting the hour as the primary division of that day.
The takeaway is that these divisions of times of light and dark have not always been neatly packaged or clearly defined. Different cultures have devised different systems to account for night and day and their lack of consistency.
Axial tilt also complicates everything. When it’s summer in the Northern hemisphere, it’s winter in the Southern hemisphere and vice versa. In the far north, there are places where the sun shines close to 24 hours a day during the summer and scarcely rises at all in the winter.
Would we say that these places sometimes only experience days or only experience nights? Or do we assign hours to each in the name of a consistency that doesn’t actually exist? In a global society, the imposition of systems is necessary for communication and coordination to take place given the vast range of experiences of natural day and night. Still, there is a “day” and “night” that we are primed to respond to as humans, and getting caught in between the two can be confounding.
What do we do to rest when we’re robbed of the cues nature usually provides? What do we do to wake ourselves when there is no rising sun? Can our systems provide enough structure to keep us moored and for how long?
Being caught between Day and Night is the stuff of nightmares.
Book Recommendation
The Watchers
by A.M. Shine
The Watchers is A.M. Shine’s thrilling debut and “day” and “night” and what it means to be caught between the two is at its center.
Here’s the description:
This forest isn’t charted on any map. Every car breaks down at its treeline. Mina’s is no different. Left stranded, she is forced into the dark woodland only to find a woman shouting, urging Mina to run to a concrete bunker. As the door slams behind her, the building is besieged by screams.
Mina finds herself in a room with a wall of glass, and an electric light that activates at nightfall, when the Watchers come above ground. These creatures emerge to observe their captive humans and terrible things happen to anyone who doesn’t reach the bunker in time.
Afraid and trapped among strangers, Mina is desperate for answers. Who are the Watchers and why are these creatures keeping them imprisoned, keen to watch their every move?
Why not pick up a copy today?
Writing Exercise
Write a piece of microfiction about a nightmare scenario in which the sun stops rising. How does the absence of light affect your main character? Do they devise any interesting tactics for functioning in the dark?
