There are two twilights each day — the gradual fall of darkness, when creatures of the night awaken and walk until sunrise, and the other twilight — the sliver of morning before the day has started for real.
The morning twilight is subtle and mysterious. It’s the time when dreams and reality blend and bleed into one another. I woke up this morning with a dream still resonating with such clarity it was hours into the day before I realized that it had been — as they say — only a dream.
Those early morning dreams are rich territory for writers of fantasy, horror and mystery genres. In those dreams we tell ourselves fantastic tales. Some of my early twilight dreams have turned immediately into short stories. It was as if I had been writing in my sleep.
It always strikes me as odd that the evening twilight is the one that brings MONSTERS to mind when, for me, they are lurking in the early morning quiet, slipping home after a night of MONSTROUS behavior.
What will I dream tonight? What will I dream tomorrow morning?
I’m not normally an early bird but during summer I sleep with my windows and curtains open so I know that early morning twilight you described so beautifully. There is something quite magical about seeing shapes slowly take on form and depth. I rather like knowing that I’m the only person awake to see them. 🙂
YES! And when you are still in a dream state and slowly come into full consciousness that early light can creep into your dreams.
For about a week, there were some very vocal song birds in the courtyard behind my apartment. The cat and I were waking up at the earliest part of the morning to a chorus of voices. Not the usual New York City pigeons cooing, but the kind of bird sounds I’d associate with living in the country. There was probably a nest with young birds and now they are off in different directions, but the cat — an odd non-early-rising, let’s sleep in feline — was all ears and twitching whiskers.
That sound entered my dreams too.
Hi Candy,
I’m not someone being scared easily – and neither Twilight nor Nighttime shock me. There’s no reason for me to fear…
Even sometimes when I’m out in the Twilight I enjoy setting my feet one after the other, leaving footprints within as well the leaving as also the new day – footprints in two dimensions… the here and the there… the past and the present.
I like your blog post – it returned my memory to my last morning walk.
Thank you for sharing!
Thank YOU for sharing, too!
I like the image of leaving footprints in the past and the present.