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1978. San Diego. I'd just come out the other side of a relationship that blew up...I was angry, and disillusioned, and ultimately self-destructive. I'd lost everything I believed in ...I was as utterly, completely alone as I've ever been.

So I began going on walks.

I started taking late-night walks around the San Diego suburb I was living in at the time. I'd start walking early evening, and come back close to midnight, sometimes later. Walking and thinking and chewing over what had gone wrong with my life.

One night, at Fourth and E Streets, I got mugged and beaten by a street gang—sent me to the hospital with serious intimations of mortality. When the ER techs asked what my religion was, I refused to answer. I made my private peace with the universe, content with whatever was going to happen, live or die.

Then something happened. I got angry. I got angry because I still had stories to tell. So I fought back.

It took two months to fully recover. But two things came out of that incident. First, I have no fear of death. None whatsoever.

Second, as soon as I was well enough, I started walking again, sometimes until 3 or 4 in the morning through parts of town that made even street people nervous.

When people asked what I was doing out there, the only answer I could give was, "I'm looking for something."

So I kept walking through some of the most dangerous parts of San Diego, before it got cleaned up, when it was still home to hookers and drunks and gangs. Finally, one afternoon, I came to the same areas I walked through at night and I was struck by the dichotomy between that corner at night, and the very same corner during the day.

In the daylight, there were businessmen and kids and clerks, eager to get home to dinner and TV. Then, later, came the night shift, the lost people, emerging from shadows and beds of pain to walk the same streets in search of fixes, money, and bars, gradually fading away with the dawn. Two totally different worlds, sharing nothing but longitude and latitude. There was the nation in the day, and the nation at night, existing side by side but each fleeing the other.

A daylight nation.

And a midnight nation.

I saw a country bifurcated by more than just the presence and absence of light, but by lives cast aside and lost and uncared for; the walked away and the thrown-away on one side, and on the other, those who pretended not to see them, because not seeing is easier.

And I saw someone forced to walk both sides of the metaphor, to learn that the greatest cruelty is our casual blindness to the despair of others, that there but for the grace of whatever god you subscribe to goes any of us.

And finally, I realized that I had found what I was looking for, without ever being quite sure what it was. I found a story that would make my own life make sense again.

This story.

I still take long walks, and I still stop and talk to the people who stand at the corner and wait for something to happen to them, who wait for money to fall into a hat or a cup, who wait for someone to recognize their pain, because the line between the midnight nation and the place where I sit right now, writing these words, is thin and ephemeral and can be crossed in an instant.

And because the road to the midnight nation can be erased only through compassion.

I found my story, this story, on a hazy afternoon in 1978. Now it's yours. The keys to the midnight nation are in your hands.

What you do with them is up to you.

J. Michael Straczynski.

Sherman Oaks, CA

July 21st 2002.

That is alot to chew over. I wish I had sound on my computor for the song you put with it. This obviously isnt something you just randomly found and liked, its certainly something that you have had around, something that has influenced you for some portion of your life. Maybe I'm wrong. There are alot of concepts here to delve into, and many more I'm sure I missed.

It is odd, how often people claim to have no fear of death, the human will to survive is a powerful thing. What people truely fear, is the process of dying, and what comes after death.

"existing side by side but each fleeing the other."
I love this idea, of two nations, sharring the same location. That brings the thought to mind, what is a nation, realy? Officially it is borders, and leaders, and laws, but I think there is more to it than that.

"that there but for the grace of whatever god you subscribe to goes any of us."
This section of the line evades me, and I feel utterly stupid because of it. I cant for the life of me figure out what to make of it.

I dont realy have the energy required to make a coherent sentence for most of the deap content in this, so I will leave it at that. Perhaps in the morning, when I'm better rested, I can take another look at it.

You're totally correct. The video is my favorite musical group reading (not singing) the writing to a really amazing bit of music. It really adds to it.

Hmm... very interesting to say the least. I grew up in a town (it's not big but not small either, if you know what I mean) where it is nothing like a city. The closest I've come to the streets he was talking about is walking around Five Points in Atlanta Georgia after dark haha. However, even then I was scared, and I can see what he's talking about.

Of course there's a lot more to ponder, but I'll keep that to myself to avoid risking sounding like an idiot.

We may explore humanity and all the ethics that sort to distort and consume, yet at the very edge of the foundation is fear. As we grow, we are taught that nothing is bought with an empty pocket, as well could be said of peace, of those staving, those we pity, and those we convene with the incessant guilt of possessing what others do not have. Maslow once said that enlightenment can be achieved when the pyramid is fulfilled, and even if we not take step by daunting step up that steep flight, the principle that dictates the need of every person remain just as true. However, there will never be a point where harmony envelopes the world, and treat as though we are all equal true. We sometimes become nostalgic of Santa Claus, of how it was when we were young, yet now we know that to be a fairy tale. Perhaps, we should stall our regression and actually progress? Then again, who am I to preach what morals are anymore so than yourself? We shape and carve our own piece of haven, so we can escape into our own island of ignorance, so we can deal what really lie beneath, the ever-lasting shadow that mounts deep beneath the conscious. The one we call, reality.

We look for the kind, the soft, gentle, fair, and nice, but when will you realize that it is nothing so estranged as to seeking shelter under the very own bosom of your mother? So, the question now is, are there two worlds because one is dejected and isolated from the other or that one dreams while the other live in truth? Like the side of a coin, one lives in the naivety of the other while the other dreams of becoming itself.

 

Of course, this is how I see the world now, and only now. I may see it differently as will many of us as time or thought itself moves. Without the ideology of books, and the persistent past, I leave my present with you to shape as you will. You may point me wrong in judgment as well prove references for it, and be it state that it be fact, or superior in coherent form, be it so. Nevertheless, deep inside you somewhere, you know this to be true, that as life contradict itself, so will I, so will logic, and so will our forefathers, and forefathers before thus. Anything concrete lie in what we seek to believe ourself moreover so than we wish to believe of others.

We dream of wanting a purpose to this world, to everything and beyond, in that, we sculpt what we do not need. And the need of itself is wasted, as we do not what it is.

Most do not see because they do not want to know. We shut our eyes to the suffering of others only to protect ourselves from this image of a world we project. Many do not see the suffering of others not because they don't want to. But because the mind rejects the idea of such suffering happening in the world the "daylight nation" chooses not to accept it.

I am going to stop here because I have tried enormousness times to continue but it comes out wrong and not intelligent. The conversation this piece brings is something that must be spoken to one another to convey the entirety of the message. I will say this work is very deep and makes you wonder.

Ah, this is really amazing.  Just... yeah, haha, amazing.

You know, this reminds me so much about my buddy who'd left town with some chick and got a place with her in Hollywood, California.  Only girl he'd ever let himself get close to, shared everything with, and loved, yah know.  And they were happy together, for the most part at least, and he was doing well.  In a band that was being recognized locally, set to record an EP on a minor label, and all that.  Well, one day he walks in on her cheating on him with his best friend at the time, and all he could think to do was walk away.  So went he left, broken.  Started doing some dumb shit, and he'd always joke with her about shooting up heroin, so he figured eff it and started doing it.  Everyday, didn't care to eat or find a place to stay, he had a suitcase full of drugs, most of which he'd trade for more heroin so he could pass out.  And everytime he'd feel himself knodding off with nearly non-existant breathing, he jerk forward and catch his breath, when he figured he'd finally OD'd he just put his head down and smirked.

So, he's living his midnight life.  Back then the scene was big in Hollywood, parties all week, and his homies would usually let him crash at their places.  But one week it's raining paricularly hard and he finds himself with some disease that I forgot the name of - headaches, fever, nausea, vomiting, chills, fatigue - without a place to stay, and entirely high out of his mind.  Around this time, he's couch hopping with another buddy of his, and they end up soaked and freezing under an overpass.  That night my buddy knew he wasn't gonna see the next day, and that scared the shit outta him more than anything.  So he asks his homie to get some help, the hospital, anyone who could come take care of him because he didn't want to die.  The guy takes off saying he'd bring help, and my buddy half knew that he was only sending him away for help because he didn't want to let the guy see him die.  There, under the overpass, he pulls out his guitar and writes a song.  And I really wish you guys could hear it, but I don't think he has it recorded anywhere.  Ultimately, it's about him accepting his death, going out with his head held high and all that.  But obviously, he doesn't die, no thanks to the guy he sent for help.  Because instead of trying to get him to a warm, dry place, the guy takes off with a bunch of my buddy's pills to a party and crashes there without telling anyone.  I don't remember what exactly happened after that, but he eventually gets back in town with the help of the guy who was getting him in with the recording studio.  Gets a place, and yeah...

This was like 8 or so months ago, he put down the needles, just got through some methadone withdrawls - which is yet another story haha - and he's living with my cousin (another musician) right now almost being homeless again. haha  But yeah, this song is fukin' awesome.  And it reminded me of that story.

That is so fucked up. Damn, yeah. Just goes to show though that people who are there on the street are real people.

Ran into this thread and just wanted to share this again. Both for the original post and for Zero's story.

Also: Happy 20000 posts me! :)

I was thinking about this thread the other day. Thanks for bumping it!

This post is honestly the reason I started lurking on the forums which caused me to make an account. I really owe you man, this band is from a city about 5 minutes from me and i probably would have never know about them if not for this, thank you so much.

Dude, thanks for telling me!