I come from a family that didn't sleep much; there was always too much to do. We might have slept more, but everyone in the family really liked the late night. Although I was sent to bed at some "reasonable" hour, I also loved the late night, reading under the covers with a flashlight.
Until I left home, I shared a room with my grandmother, a tiny, ancient woman who spoke only Sicilian, and who was virtually a total recluse. She left the house only for weddings and funerals; privacy was scarce. And because she rarely got any exercise, Nona was subject to dreadful fits of nocturnal cramps in her legs. At four AM or five, or maybe even six, she would suddenly begin to gasp and scream in pain. "I'm dying!" she would scream (in Sicilian) and suddenly I, collapsed over my book and flashlight, got that adrenaline awakening. My job was to wake up my mother, who would run with hot packs and liniment to her mother's side.
"...When later on I took to staying up all night and spending all day in bed, though i did not see the light of day I felt its proximity with an appetite for light and living all the sharper because it could not be gratified."-Contre Sainte-Beuve
From the time I was a small child I was accustomed to quaking in the face of imminent demise on a regular basis. I stayed awake long, long hours, afraid Nona would die. I was the only child in the second grade with chronic dark shadows under my eyes.
Staying awake until the wee-est hours is a childhood habit that stuck. Once I left home, I immediately discovered the flip side of the late night from bunking with Nona, its pleasures and allure. All night coffee shops, conversations, collaborations, adventures. No traffic, empty tables, silent streets, opportunities to do what one might not, if anyone else was watching-- which includes, of course, love.
The phone stops ringing; the visitors are few and far between, and the friends who are willing to see you in those hours, kindred night spirits like yourself, are welcome. There are long, uninterrupted hours for creative projects, reading in bed, writing letters, staring at the computer.
"I was... often an extremely heavy sleeper... especially when I only fell asleep in the morning. As this kind of sleep is-- on the average-- four times as refreshing, it seems to the awakened sleeper to have lasted four times as long, when it has really been four times as short."-"The Captive"
Coming from a family of night people, I didn't see any problem with staying up all night until I wandered into the real world, where few employers, other than all-night cafe proprietors, had any symptathy for the naturally nocturnal. By the time I was 21, my destiny was clear: self-employment.
All the decisions I made in my life hinged upon a single consideration: would they permit me the right to keep my own hours (with the exceptional odd obligation) or wouldn't they? Inevitably I opted for the night.
The "real" world does not like my choice. Health-conscious people tell me that sleeping during the day depletes something or other and not getting enough sunlight gives me vitamin deficiencies. But being on a day schedule makes me miserable, and I get sick because I don't like what I'm doing, but staying up most of the night makes me happy, and when I'm happy I never get sick. So what is the healthy choice, I ask?
The nocturnal are an unrepresented minority, especially in this country with puritanism and health-fetishism on the march. Nocturnalism carries with it no end of nasty social stigmas, implying the presence of other "unhealthy" inclinations, like drinking, smoking, drug abuse, crime, dissipation, deviance, obsession and meat-eating, and there is no doubt a correlation. People make fun of it, refuse to respect it, are consumed with gnawing envy because they can't do it, or lecture you interminably about it, but to what purpose? Nocturnalism must be carried in the genes, linked to astrological occurrences, bred in the bone. It's like being blue-eyed or bald or gay or susceptible to poison oak.
After years of being thought weird for my late-night obsession, I was immensely gratified to discover that Marcel Proust was an incorrigible night person, a habit which he claimed to require for purposes of his health. For the last twelve years of his life, in particular, he remained cooped up in his cork-lined bedroom, sleeping all day and working all night. His publishers, friends and other persons of business did not present themselves at Proust's house until 10PM, and even then they were frequently made to wait for some time until their host had consumed his leisurely coffee and prepared himself for visitors.
Proust's faithful housekeeper, Celeste, kept his hours as well, ready to attend upon him when needed. She was frequently dispatched in the late hours to summon to The Presence whatever he might need in the way of inspiration, a certain kind of person, a string quartet. Of course he could be eccentric as he wished; he was independently wealthy, generous and gracious, and he never had to hold down a day job. And true to stereotype, he wrote with sympathetic understanding on the subjects of drinking, smoking, drug use, deviance, obsession and dissipation; of all the evils of the night dwellers, he escaped only crime, unless you count the fact that he didn't write more.