There's a particular quality to the silence of a building at four in the morning. It's not absence of sound — there's always some hum, a fridge, a distant siren — but absence of intention. Nothing in the room is trying to do anything. Even the laptop fans give up.
I notice I think more clearly here. Or maybe I just think differently. Daytime thinking is shaped like an itinerary; this thinking is more like weather.
Cities at night belong to a different cast. Delivery riders trace looping routes. Cleaners on the metro. A man with a leashed cat. Each operating on a schedule the daytime city doesn't see.
What I like is that nobody is performing. Daytime everyone is rehearsing some version of themselves for an audience. At 2am there's no audience, and the people who are out have stopped trying.
The books I return to are short. Sebald, Tokarczuk's Flights, Calvino's Invisible Cities. There's something about the form: not enough room for the author to hide.
I tried reading Infinite Jest three times. The slim Sebald sits on my desk. It's been there four years.