Walking through campus at night, when the paths are empty and the only company anywhere is the shadows that bleed farther and farther into the darkened grass as night goes on, is a surreal experience.
A college campus is a world of infinite stressors that weigh down the minds of students and haunt them well into their off hours at the bar or at home while they desperately try to shut themselves off from academic worries. To be in that place associated with obligation and effort at a time when neither is required, say 11:30 on a summer night, lends a rosy tint to the otherwise inky landscape.
The lecture hall where you took Freshman Statistics with 74 of your closest friends is now an abandoned playground that adopts the eerie yet intriguing aspect of a graveyard. That corner of the library you lived in for a week and a half during finals writing countless papers and citing a thousand and one sources becomes a museum of relief and the joy associated with surviving the impossible.
The soccer field surrounded by a track becomes the perfect arena for any matter of intimate and sensitive conversations including the immeasurable amount you dislike your RA. The bleachers to your right spontaneously transform into a treasure trove of dares and challenges that toe the line which divides platonic and erotic.
Night freezes a place in time. When you are in the moment, it feels like it will never end and the sun will, for the first time, fail to rise. Night is a time of endless possibilities when any task or adventure, no matter the length or complexity, can be accomplished in full with the utmost quality. This is why the best stories and the best ideas are lived and borne out at night. In the still hours between 12:30 a.m. and 4:30 a.m., every person awake and active is imbibed with extra helpings of ability and courage. The only people I am awake with at those hours are my closest friends, the ones I trust with my life, the ones I will try anything with. This gives people the security and ability to climb the back of the 20-foot-tall bleachers or voice their innermost demons or hang their underwear from the underside of those same bleachers next to those of the girl they have a crush on.
Being in a place normally associated with deadlines and pressure at a time when both are a distant memory, or simply an objective concept that has no bearing on your immediate circumstances and thus is not internalized, produces comfort and passion, which in turn produce the most cherished of memories.
At night, when you are the only one awake, you own the world.
