A lot of things can get in the way of love -- distance, money issues, being in different places in your life. But this week's essayist, Amanda Gefter, writes about facing a very different kind of challenge. It's read by Logan Browning (Netflix's "Dear White People").
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
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from the New York Times and w you are Boston. This is modern the stories of love, loss and redemption. I'm your host,
which Chakrabarti providing a lot of things can get in the way of love distance,
any issues being indifferent places in life, but this week's essayist Amanda gift her rights about facing a very different kind of challenge.
her pieces read by Logan Browning. She stars in the show, dear white people, which has just released it's third season on Netflix.
I stumbled across Justin's online dating profile, while waiting for water to boil, I had just gotten home from running errands ATM Mailbox grocery store and was cooking dinner before sitting down to work
it was just after four, a dot m message me. If you want to talk about anything and everything until the wee hours of the night, his profile said the phrase
the ours as it turns out, means different things to different people for him, a software engineer with an eye for design
and who can whale on an electric Qatar. The We hours are to em, maybe three. For me, it's a little more complicated
I have a circadian rhythm disorder called delayed sleep phase syndrome,
it's not insomnia. I've never had trouble sleeping, it's that my
Katy and clock tells me it's time for bed when the sun is rising and time to wake up as it setting.
As these things go, I'm an extreme case, a vampire basically off, set from societies clock by a pro
cement Lee eight hours. My father,
There is similarly kroner challenged, as was his mother as a child. I struggle to live in the daytime world. Some children feel they were born into the wrong body me
felt as if I were born into the wrong time now, as a freelance writer make
my own schedule. I have reveled in the freedom to live by my own clock, going to bed around eight or nine a dot m and waking up around four or five p dot m.
I've always lived in cities, New York, Philadelphia.
London Boston, yet my world is
sparsely populated. There are no lines when I grocery shop, no traffic, when I
I've, no phone calls emails or social media stir. As I work alone with my books and my thoughts, I write about physics being nocturnal, isn't a requirement for physics writing, but it helps the dark of night is perfect for contemplating the universe, with everything silent and still it's easier to notice the cracks and realities facade. Of course, my corner logic. Freedom comes with a few technical difficulties, such as an inability to take calls from editors, listen to music without had found
or remember what day of the week it is, since my days are always changing in the middle, then there's dating from
states usually go ok because there in the evening, but complications quickly arise it's hard to explain to a date that you don't want to drink at dinner, because you ve just woken up and have a full workday ahead. Tire of saying you can't go to branch or to the beach, because you'll be sound asleep when they ask why you don't just go to bed earlier, as if perhaps you'd. Never thought of that. You have to explain that your inverted schedule is an appeal
friends. On my first date with Justin, we went to an art museum at seven P M, where we spoke
about our families and passions, software and string theory. I learned that he had a nine to five job, not minor into five, the other one.
and enjoyed cycling and being out in the sunshine
didn't mention that I was midway through a regimen of prescription, vitamin d administered in blitzkrieg doses
sunshine was not in my vocabulary or for our second date. It was my turn to make plans.
I know you're on a normal human schedule. I texted him, but
Perseid meteor, shower peaks tomorrow night want to find a dark spot and watch.
Being a normal human. He replied I'm totally down for that at midnight we found a cozy spot by the Charles River and gazed upward watching for the stray dust of an ancient comment,
Despite the city lights, we saw three meteors blaze above the Boston skyline. We talked about starlight how it had begun its journey thousands of years ago, and we were looking back in time. I
but how, in a sense, that's always true. My now is not the same as his and never will be theirs.
is a delay each of us living in the immediate past of the other, regardless of how tightly he wrapped his arms around my waist. We are all trapped in our own time zones. The best we can do is try to meet in an imaginary middle. So that's what we did. He booked us a trip to go night skiing. I made it to the beach in time to feel the sun on my skin. He rigged up a high powered bike light and took me for a long ride in the summer dark.
I ate thai food for breakfast. He ate pancakes for dinner. Eventually, however, the constant compromise made for two grumpy
Leary, I'd shells of human beings. We were in love but exhausted and ready to give up resigned.
Nursing our heart ache from the opposite side of a circadian rhythm. He went back to his home town in Maine to clear his head. I returned to the night to live in one one afternoon. I e just after midnight. I got an email from here.
suggesting we try a new approach. There is no world we both occupy. At the same time, he wrote it's an illusion. We don't actually need to find that instead of fighting our difference, he said, let's just love each other from
whilst the clock, so we decided to move in together, we found an attic apart.
With tons of skylights, where sunlight would flood the living room,
in his day and moonlight which stream, through the ceiling during mine,.
We were still unpacking boxes when there was a total lunar eclipse and we pulled
lounge chair into the kitchen and watched as the earth's shadow slid across a terracotta moon. As a token of
our new living arrangement, I gave Justin an illustration edition of the day boy and the night girl a fairytale by George Mcdonald from eighteen. Eighty, two snuggling
The couch we took turns reading chapters allowed to each other in the story, a which raises two children in captivity,
allowing the boy to see only day and the girl only nights, but one day the boy stays out,
then he supposed to and when it gets dark. He becomes terrified.
The girl finds him shaking in the garden and tries to comfort him explaining how gentle and sweet the darkness is, how kind and friendly how soft and velvety.
Since she's wide awake. She promises to watch over him while he sleeps,
when the sun rises. He awakens to find that now, she's scared
stranger to the sun, and so he carries her in his arms, while she sleeps until dark.
Justin and I figured we would do the same,
a pair man insisted on coming at noon, just insane,
so I wouldn't lose a night sleep when he didn't have time to buy wrapping paper birthday gives I had them ready with ribbons by morning.
I always made sure to wake up before he got home from work, so we could cook and eat together his dinner. My breakfast then he'd go to bed and I'd write for hours beneath the moon. Eventually, I would crawl quietly into his arms and we dream happily alongside each other, for a few minutes anyway, before he had to get up on weekends,
he played guitar soft friends soaked in the sunshine all. While I was still dreaming by the time I
dragged myself to the coffee maker, he'd cycled thirty five miles and eaten two meals with the sun setting. He greeted me with a happy good morning
He told me about his day. I told him about my yesterday and so it went the earth. Spinning for each of us.
Turn. We made the most of the hours when our lives overlapped, then let each other through
I live our own times like animals.
Our wilds. In August the
Earth made its annual pass through the dust and debris of that ancient comment. Late, that night Justin drove me to a secluded beach on the north shore of Massachusetts. Where
a handful of star gazers, stared skyward. He put down a blanket as frogs croaked in the distance. Then he fumbled in his camera bag pulling out a small boy,
box, I couldn't see what was inside just a glint like the flicker of a star. Then he asked. Will you marry me?
play back on the blanket grinning as meteors straight to the sky,
Then it was nearly two m too late to call anyone to wheel our news of family and friends. Instead, we just
lay there in our shared place in time. So
Did by sand and ocean and a few hundred billion stars
the Logan Browning reading Amanda gifts essay, the night girl finds a day boy more from Amanda. After the break. The.
before the work messages begin to pour in, let's gift our selves a good morning a good morning as a moment to pause and ease into the day it's
meant to run and chase the sunrise or its gently settle in
routine a good morning.
Is a moment to be present to find clarity and be grounded for the day ahead. Good days start with good mornings and good mornings start with Yogi tea, Yogi tea, T's mate,
more than just tastes, good, I love spelling my boyfriend and I often play spelling bee together by together. I mean sitting next to each other playing into
and not cheating. Sometimes when I open up spelling bee- and I see that you have completed a few words on your own, I feel a little betrayed
give may have happened again. So I have one.
And who I will send screenshots from spelling bee of inappropriate words. Then I was getting nervous. I sent it to my parents or something
me and my dad. We liked the first together and I wish her out. I it
J C K, p o g.
Jackpot Panic, yeah,
nice
I'm same as earth's sky. The digital puzzles editor for the New York Times. You can try spelling bee and all our games at N Y Times, dot com, slash games, Amanda
after and Justin are married now and recently celebrated their two year anniversary. Amanda says that they try
They have their wedding at a time that would work for everyone. I was like how lake
He pushed the ceremony because I need to be awake for this and it was at seven o'clock and it was in a planetarium in Philadelphia. So it was under this giant moon and all these stars, and it was really beautiful and perfect and dark and lovely,
A Amanda wakes up in the late afternoon and goes to bed in the morning, and she says that for her whole life, she felt that she was meant to live on that schedule. There was a piece of me that did sort of know deep down that I was just living on the wrong hours, and I was at my parents' house not long ago, and I was going back through old diaries and saw that I, when I was like nine years old, I had written these diary entries where I said, I can't wait till I'm older and I can live on altar hours, which was apparently this like phrase that I had come up with this
I have what I thought should be my my normal day where, where day and night are inverted, so I think I just always knew that, and I knew like some day I'll be able to to to do that,
is a tyrant who you were the way the people who have this describe it? It's like if you travel to another country and your jet lag for a few days. That's what it feels like all the time you have this disorder and you like Frere, a normal person, you eventually a just and the kind of definition of this disorder. Is that your unable to do that? You can't
so just being on my own schedule, lake, like oh, my god, like the brain fog, lifts and you're like I can think straight hand. I feel more.
and like it would be really hard for me to now go back. Amanda says that before Justin she mostly dated people who schedules worked more
we with hers, but she knew that she and Justin were a great fit, and these days they're still making things work on opposite schedules. The hardest thing about. It is not even so much the logistics and it's not even so much not having time together, because in the evenings we have a fair amount of time where we're both up. It's the fact that we're never the same point in our day and we're never in the same kind of mental space. So
You know he gets home from work and he's been up all day and doing things and he gets home and he immediately like wants to talk and tell me everything that happened that day and I'm like please just let me
In my coffee. You know I just have to like have quiet for a minute and wake up then, and then around midnight. My brain just turns on and all of a sudden, I'm like a chatterbox, and I just want to tell him like every idea I have for every writing piece.
Jihad and and he's just like trying so hard, not to yawn yeah, he all he wants to do is go to bed so like we can be sitting right next to each other, but we're in different time zones.
And she says that she's learned to see her differences with Justin in a positive light, like Jessica, always refers to me as his night elf, because the apartment of the mess then he'll go to Van and he wakes up and it's just sort of like magically clean and and then you know he can do so much for me during the day that I'm completely incapable of doing I mean it's really like writing. A book to me seems feasible. Picking up, my dry cleaning seems utterly impossible. It forces you to be creative about how you relate to each other,
and what you can do for each other, and I think that's a good thing. Amanda doesn't want to romanticize living at night too much. She knows that many people facing similar challenges aren't able to have a flexible schedule, and life can be very difficult, but she says she is truly come to love the night time hours with this disorder and people ask like. Would you change it? If you could- and I honestly don't know the Answer- Lake
I still can leave for saying that makes me feel. Like course he should change, but I mean it would make our lives easier and it would make my life easier, like I'd, be able to. You know, go to the post office if I had to, but at the same time like, I really love the night, and I love having all that time and quiet to write and to think and to read and just to kind of have my own little world and we get to have these different lives and then come together and share them, and- and I think that's special
Amanda Gesture, she's, a science journalist who writes about physics, philosophy and cognitive science and she's
the author of the memoir, trespassing on Einstein's lawn more right after this.
I love spelling my boyfriend and I often play spelling bee together by together I mean sitting next to each other playing individual
and not, cheating, sometimes when I open up spelling bee- and I see that you have completed a few words on your own. I feel a little betrayed.
They may have happened again. Are you? I have one for
and who I will send screenshots from spelling bee of inappropriate words. Then I was getting nervous. I sent it to my parents or something
me and my dad. We likes this funny together and I wish Heather out. It
J C K, p o jack
jackpot panic, yeah
nice
I'm same as ascii. The digital puzzles editor for the New York Times. You can try spelling bee and all our games at annoying times not come flash games.
Daniel Jones, editor of the modern love column for the New York Times says that a man
story deals with one of the most unusual issues he's ever encountered in a modern love essay after reading. Thousands and thousands of submissions over the years, and then coming
for us, a problem where a woman is having dating issues because she's awaken
and asleep during the day and
anyone. Ninety nine point: nine percent of the people she would date
are living in the reverse world,
seized on it immediately because of that. But I think that the way that this
Pecos to another level is, is how they decided to attack that problem and and their solution
it's to move in together essentially and then take advantage of that overlapping time. It was just sort of like boy
an innovative like we need to live together.
order to have enough overlapping time to have a relationship, essential, eighth and
That idea and the way that this circumstance was just
so unusual, really just moved me
and here's Logan Brown. I chose this
say and loved. This essay, because I could relate to it as someone who wants
and always is pushing for love that this.
Man and this man didn't give
AP when their lives didn't
the Lee coincide. That love can cover a multitude that love can transcend and overcome. So many things I feel like this translates in so many ways and if this couple could see
I'll figure out to love each other, even though time was against them in that way that anything else is possible
thanks again to Logan for reading this week's piece. You can see
In dear white people on Netflix, modern love is a production
the New York Times, and I you are Boston, NPR station, its produced directed and edited by Caitlin O
regional scoring and sound designed by Map Reed Iris Adler. Our executive producers are in turn, is shemeah logo.
You'll Jones is the editor of modern love for the New York Times, an adviser to the show special thanks to Julia Simon
Strem, Ian and me Ali at the New York Times. The idea for the modern love podcast was conceived by LISA Tobin, additional music, courtesy of a p dot m, and if you want to listen to the podcast rate or review us on Apple podcast, for tell your friends to listen, I make a chocolate bar t see you next week.
Transcript generated on 2022-04-15.