Catpaws Cafe

Nocturne

The times we are currently in has given me writer’s block so I thought I’d write love-letters to my favorite podcasts.

There is something about the NOCTURNE podcast, that makes it perfect. Not every episode, but often enough for it to be remarkable. I don’t remember where I found it, but I’m guessing a writer friend may have mentioned it. That’s how it usually happens. 

When the few introductory notes of Nocturne plays and the crickets in the background join in, it plucks at my souls strings, makes my stomach contract, and tear up in recognition of a kindred spirit, somewhere out there, are others like me. It connects with something deep inside, as if a beacon has just called out, and like a homing pigeon the compass within rights itself towards it. 
It makes me long for some undefined togetherness; that moment feeling more like home than any place I’ve ever been.

It’s like the best drink when you’ve been crawling through the desert for days; I want to reach out; to pick it up and drink it down, absorb it, breathlessly, before it evaporates or turns into a mirage. It is a drop of an elixir from a home I have yet to define. A handwritten letter from your best friend from another world.

I too have felt that hour, the ones during the night; that belongs to me, where the world has no claims on my beingness. The hour when my being relaxes, and mind does not race. Such a rare break from everything, and it is always too short, never long enough to be restorative; Not in a world where you have to keep in step with humanity.
It is the hour of being, of beingness, when no one is going to interrupt and accuse me of not doing enough by their definition; enough to find the next gig-job, keeping house, or in other ways try to make claims on my time.. When the veil is at it’s thinnest, and everything else…is near but not quite possible.

The darkness is a fuzzy blanket I wrap my soul in to stay sane. Which in itself is bizarre, given the dastardly deeds that take place under it’s cover.
Whatever I do at that hour, is for me, and me alone. It does not require justification. It is to nourish my soul. Not thinking of ways to improve my situation, life, or being; my mind forever searching for whatever clue I might have missed, crossroads where I took a wrong turn.

A reluctant city-dweller, I long for the darkness you never get in a city, a place where the herds gather for false safety in numbers, to earn their pennies to pay for the cost of living. There is no going for a walk after dark where I live if you want to stay alive. But we have a roof, and if I sit down I am shielded from the floodlights. Often accompanied by a cat – or two – sometimes by one of the neighborhood opossums. There I stay, sometimes for hours; watch the sky and the stars, planes and bats, trees lit up from afar, a strange reverse silhouette effect, trees that have managed to grow in this concrete jungle. Sometimes their leaves rustle at the hint of a breeze. Never still enough for a real candle, and always the traffic in the distance.

To listen for yourself, here are two of my favorite episodes.

Candle Hour

Artwork by Robin Galante

https://nocturnepodcast.org/the-dark-revolt/
https://nocturnepodcast.org/the-weight-of-the-river/