"I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane. .
I have passed by the watchman on his beat.
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet .
When far away an interrupted cry.
Came over houses from another street,.
But not to call me back or say good-by;.
And further still at an unearthly height.
One luminary clock against the sky.
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.".
~.
.
"What can we know? What are we all? Poor, silly, half-brained things peering out at the infinite, with the aspirations of angels and the instincts of beasts." .
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Munro Stark Letters.
.
The nature of men has both its light and its dark sides. An idea that Confucius believed in was Yin and Yang, the balance of light and dark. .
"Yin represents eternity, dark, feminine, left side of the body, etc. Yang is its opposite and represents history, light, masculine, right side of the body, etc. 'Yang is male, positive, and represented by the Sun. Yin is female, negative, and represented by the Moon,'' says Paul E. Desautels in The Gem Kingdom." (http://www.nisbett.com/symbols/yin_and_yang.htm).
Even though these two elements are meant to balance one another out, quite often men refuse to acknowledge their darker side. Instead feelings that we believe shouldn't exist in fact are merely tucked away in our secret heart of hearts, a place that we try and never let others into, even ourselves. This is a key element that I think Acquainted with the Night addresses. While to the outside world, people put up a front that everything is okay and wonderful: that we are open-minded and perfectly normal in our thoughts and actions, inside an entirely different story is taking place. .
Quite often, we are told to suppress feelings that society has told us aren't normal.
