All Night, All Right?

It was last Wednesday at approximately 2:00 p.m. when the party began. When I left the house at 9:00 a.m. on Thursday morning, I knew there would be a price to pay. But I don’t think I approximated the fee accurately. In fact I’m sure I didn’t – for how could I have knowingly committed myself to such a course of action being in full possession of the future costs?

There’s nothing in the world like the all-nighter. It works on so many different levels. I take incomparable joy from knowing that while all of the west coast is sleeping at 3, 4. 5 a.m., I am still going strong, experiencing life at a frequency that is unheard by the majority. Some never know in all their lives what I am talking about. Others taste it – in college perhaps – and know its intrinsic beauty, but then abandon the all-nighter as an immature facet of their past.

As time marches on into the night it also quickens. I look down at my watch one minute and it is midnight and then in what seems like only a second later it is 2:30 and I know I will not be going to sleep while it is still dark. The conversation is alert and conscious, and yet contained in a kind of atomic soup which bends and distorts what some call reality. We speak of quantum physics and it all makes sense to me. There are moments of calm and reflection as well as chaos and heightened perception. Inexorably, daylight comes. And responsibility too comes knocking on my guilty mind.

Meetings have to be made, phone calls received. I need to shower, brush my teeth, get to work, change my clothes…all petty tasks that take immense concentration and effort. I estimate when I will be able to lay down my head on the pillow and determine the time to be around 3:00 p.m. When that blissful moment arrives my last conscious thought is, “I made it. I pulled it off.”

But the cost hasn’t even begun to be counted. For even after getting fourteen hours of sleep I am still buried in a haze on Friday, tired all day and unable to think of anything other than getting more sleep. A friend comes for a visit, which is a welcomed distraction. But the minute he goes home I am back to bed for another twelve hours with the sandman. The next day and the haze is still there, could it be even stronger, more potent? I need a three hour nap in the middle of the day just to make it till midnight, when I then sleep another ten hours. Sunday already? Yup, and another nap in the middle of the day just to make it till 11 p.m. when I crash easily and without tossing and turning to get to sleep.

Now it’s Monday. And yeah, I’m back and in full form. But is that just a little hint of Wednesday/Thursday still lingering in the back of my head? I’d swear that it is. And so I say: I love the all-nighters. I just can't take 'em like I used to.