#night workers

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Isac Friedlander, 3 A.M., 1934. Etching, plate.

Photo: patrons.org

[intelligentchristianlady]

Christmas Eve Thoughts

On this Christmas Eve, when a number of us will be out later at night than ordinarily, remember those who work in the night for our safety and comfort. Remember police and fire fighters; doctors and nurses in hospitals, especially emergency rooms; cooks and bakers preparing for tomorrow's meals; pilots and drivers and all those who keep things running; and those who pray for others as their ministry. From the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer service of Compline, "Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love's sake. Amen."

- Kent Higgins

[witchinthenight]

Dreamscapes

For over a year now I’ve had dreams that....well...aren’t mine. I go to sleep and awake in a dreamscape that isn’t part of my known dreamscape. It used to puzzle me but I’ve got it figured out now. The settings would change every time. I’d find myself in a coffee shop, a front lawn, an office building or some such ordinary place and I’d meet a stranger. Always a different stranger. At first, I would watch the stranger get entangled in their own personal nightmare plot, they could get eaten by a monster, attacked by militia, confronted by their abusers, lost, drown, or whatever other horror their own personal recurring nightmare had in store for them. The longer I had the dreams the stronger the urge to help became. Not help for me, but help for them. I went from passive observer to active participant. Then the goal was the same no matter whose dream I was in. I had to get them out. It was easy for me to see it was a dream. It was like telling the difference between a cheesy haunted house thrill and a truly haunted house. Their nightmares looked cheesy and fake but to them it was real. I knew I’d found the reason I was experiencing this odd occurrence when I managed to convince one of the dreamers to trust me enough to show them the way out. From there I need only guide them to the nearest exit and get them through the threshold to end their dream-thus ending mine. That was job-to show them the way out of their nightmare. I’ve done it nearly every night since. Rules apply to this new work I do. I’ve learned through experience that I can not force someone through the threshold, they must go on their own. There’s a time limit too-if I stay in their dreamscape too long, I forget my purpose and get caught up in their nightmare. That sucks, but one cool thing I can do is make an exit out of nothing, sort of how Bugs Bunny would pull out a black hole from no where, slap that puppy down and jump in-yeah, I’ve done that. As far as I can tell, these dreams I have are far more than dreams. I suspect it’s some form of ‘night worker’ gig. For those of you who aren’t familiar with what a night worker is, it’s when you travel astrally to places of need like hospitals, funeral homes, etc...to lend your astral energy to comfort those in need. You often wake up feeling exhausted and fuzzy headed until you figure out what is going on with your dream work. So, any other night workers out there? 

[littlefoxess]

[amberpaigetaylor]

Okay so

Basically I work nights in a supermarket and its fucking disgusting, like so boring ☺️🔫. However, every morning - maybe like 5/5.30am the cleaners come in, and the majority are hench bald men who look like they want to kill you or polish workers. But there's one guy called Larry and he's so old and sweet and every morning he comes up to you, shouts morning and tells you one of the cheesiest and worst jokes known to man kind, without fail, every morning. He is the type of person that keeps other people going I swear 🌺🌺

[elvenferretots]

Dear day workers: be nice to overnighters.

[grupaok]

...we defend the necessity of utopia as the durable record of proletarian subjectivity — an image encompassing all promises made to it and all memories of its past. It is only in view of this image, utopia, that the proletariat is able to maintain a relationship with its impossibility as a class. It is of its own nothingness, ultimately, that value thinks when “thinking its own sublation” — as in, 'We would be nothing without capital.' Communism is the movement that makes this nothing into everything.

Night Workers, Notes on Marxist Art History [via Third Rail Quarterly]

[acornerofnowhere]

Vignette: The Nocturnals

This is a very brief story this week, only a little longer than a drabble, on the subject of those workers with the thankless task of keeping the lights on and the buses running during the night. I often wonder how they put up with the rest of us 9-5 working slobs, so protective of our weekends while they slave away ensuring we even have weekends:

The Nocturnals

  We’re a different breed on the night watch. We rise with the night and fall with the dawn. We take our positions at the treadstone as the normal ones slump off to bed or play. We keep the world at a slow trot for these people’s benefit, for their convenience. We’re the invisible, the little pixies at the corner of your drunken eye. We took these jobs because they were there, because no one else would.

We’re the security guards who watch your precious wares through the dark, the ones at reception with one eye on the locked doors and the other on the home shopping channel. We’re the bus drivers who take you home after an all-night bender, ignoring your bleary blatherings and insults and your horrifying attempts at singing. We’re the ones with the mops and the screwdrivers fixing up your office for the morning, so that when you take your desks you can imagine the office-cleaning fairy swept up your workspace. We’re everywhere and nowhere. That’s our purpose.

We crash in the daytime, maybe shop for groceries in the evening when our batteries have recharged. Weekends are nothing to us, we’re the ones who make weekends possible for everyone else. Why do we do it? The reasons are as variable as they are for you normal folk. Some need the money, some need escape, some have debts, some have family, some have plans, and some do it simply because they have nothing in the day they want to see. It’s not as if anyone asks. We’re needed, we applied, and someone’s got to do it, that’s all that’s important.

You have this romanticism about the city, that it’s eternal and never sleeps because it’s infused with some sort of spirit. A spontaneous eruption of creativity, a machine that ticks by itself. We’re the ones who say otherwise. The city always runs because we run it. It never sleeps because we’re there clapping its ears at all hours. Without us, your city is a town like any other. You function, you commute, you play and consume, all thanks to us. We’re the night shift and we make your existence possible.

Now give us a pay rise…