4 - The Michigan Daily - Friday, October 27, 2000 ite LI~rligutn 1ui4g Why to stay up all I t's Thursday, 3 a.m. In your time this col- Iumn was due yesterday, Thursday, at 2 p.m. In your time it is Friday. I am sleep- ing. I wrote a column entitled "Why to stay up all night," but I can't read it yet because 420 Maynard Street Ann Arbor, MI 48109 daily.letters@umich.edu Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan MIKE SPAHN Editor in Chief EAMILY ACHENBAUM Editorial Page Editor Unless otherwise noted, unsigned editorials reflect the opinion of the majority of the Dailys editorial board. All other articles, letters and cartoons do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Michigan Daily. I didn't write it yet. Fc poses, I am talking in my sleep. The vampires have gotten it all wrong. Being nocturnal has nothing to do with renouncing God or sucking blood. In fact, there are some very bizarre people that will accuse you of just those crimes, at high noon, walking through the Diag. They taunt with bright Bible citations and megaphones. Avoid these people. One way to do this is to stay up all night. darkness you will not1 all intents and pur- night Arbor's premiere restaurant before dawn. It's inside a trailer that probably tore off the moon and, after a slight hot disintegration through the frosting of our atmosphere, slammed its glowing orange self into the concrete bedrock of Ashley Street. The Fleetwood has ever since stood petrified as an insomniac's haven. They serve good omelets and coffee, and you can smoke there - the waitresses smoke there. It's a great place to write a paper or talk with friends as you make that final push toward morning. Some people may view it a serious detri- ment of late night that the social fabric seems to lose its thread. Cliques, posses and clubs all dispense of their titles as their individual members disperse among the city's beds, the communal umbilical cord temporarily cut. So, excusing parties, most of the pleasures that nighttime has to offer are intimate-often isolated - experiences. Solitude shouldn't scare us, though. At its best it should make us appreciate the peo- ple about whom we care. The value of staying up all night is not to be found exclusively in the activities you choose. Nighttime puts limitations on the places we can go and the people we can see. Everything is closed and everyone is asleep. So staying up demands that we value time differently, or at least as some- thing that is different from daytime. So how is it that we assign value to day- time? It seems to me that we measure in efficiency, and in the regular highs we* receive from interactions with other people. I've got no gripes with that way of doing things. But when it comes to staying up all night we are wrestling with a whole new animal. A darker one. One that doesn't really know how to tell time and all of whose friends are on indefinitely long vacations. In a way it seems that nighttime demands an inactivity that will offset the activity of the day. But you don't need to sleep to be inactive. You'll notice that if you take a very long walk, eventually your mind will kind of empty itself and your steps start to become smooth and mechanical, as if you are walking on a conveyer belt. At that point you really aren't doing anything, so far as your mind is concerned. You're just walkin' and the night air is brisk (or maybe palm tree and ocean salty balmy) and all the shop window glass shows unlit mer- chandise that reflects nothing so much as. the dark. Why should you stay up all night? Because maybe when you're turning the 30th corner, preparing to walk up a street you had never noticed before. you bump into an old friend and you both smile knowing how strange it is that you should. meet here, in this remote corner of town: now, at this hour of night. And so you go to the Fleetwood for a cup of coffee.'w - Patrick Kilev can reached via e-mait at pkiley@ umich.edu: Problem needs more attention from all Patrick Kiley 1 aki