When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world:
Hamlet (Act III, Scene 2)
I really do love the time of day around midnight and a little afterward. It's quiet. My mind achieves clarity. I can put the past day's activities into perspective. I can think on the next day's events briefly.
Oh, I get my 7 1/2 hours of needed rest, just not before the witching time of night. But, there are no witches for me. In the days when DeVere wrote plays, like Hamlet, people believed in witches. There was no electricity, so good people were in bed sleeping. Only those who perpetuated mischief would be up at the witching hour. Witches did their planning, their "brewing" in the early morning hours.
Yeah, but modern bodies work differently now. There is electricity. People don't have to get rest beginning shortly after dark. Most people don't have farm chores to perform early in the morning. There is no fire to stoke. Breakfast is ready-made for the microwave or a McDonalds is on the way to work. Witches are not the only ones to share the "ungodly" hour of 12 AM or 1 AM.
Cemeteries today are not in churchyards, and hell does not haunt the place of the dead. Honor, tribute, love for the departed are written on the epitaphs that dot the ground above the coffins.
It's a different place Hamlet. And I love this anticipated time of night. And I love the thoughts of the one I love that so often come to me when I am considering all the attendant events, past, present, and future. Because the one I love inhabits all the moments of my being.
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