Chronographia (chro-no-graph’-i-a): Vivid representation of a certain historical or recurring time (such as a season) to create an illusion of reality. A kind of enargia:[the] generic name for a group of figures aiming at vivid, lively description.
All night long! It’s the right time for everything on the edge, like romance, armed robbery or hit and run. I can’t tell you how many times I fell in love in the back seat of my parent’s Subaru on a Saturday night. Maybe three times—ha, ha! My first liquor store I robbed was on a Wednesday night. I swooped in, cleared the cash register, and faded back into the night. It sounds pretty good, but I got caught and spent the next six months in county jail, where I met the worst people I ever met in my life. One guy had spray painted his landlord’s face. Another guy had stolen his mother’s washer and dryer and sold them to a family up the street. There’s more, but let’s get back to night time.
When we were kids we would play flashlight tag at night. If you got shined on you were out. It was usually over pretty quickly. If you got somebody in the back, they would call you a liar and stay in the game. Then, we’d go to the park and watch for shooting stars. They were beautiful. We would smoke and argue over whether they were shooting stars or falling stars. Then one night, we heard a woman yelling “No, no. Stop it!” It was coming from the woods ar the edge of the park. We decided to sneak across the park and check out the yelling.
It was Mr. and Mrs. Torbow. Mr. Torbow was wearing black underpants, black shoes and black socks. He was holding a fly swatter. Mrs. Torbow was wearing a wedding dress and was tied to tree. We watched them for about 15 minutes and went back to star gazing. We didn’t talk about it except to ask why they used the park for whatever the hell they were doing.
Then one night my father took us night crawler hunting behind our house. He had gotten plans for a worm shocker from “Popular Science” magazine. He stuck it in the ground—it was a metal rod with an electric extension chord hooked to it. we stood around it in anticipation of worms flying out of the ground. He plugged it in and electric current pulsed through our legs—started dancing and he pulled on the chord and unplugged it. Everybody went home without a word.
There’s a lot more I could say about nighttime as the best time: shooting out streetlights, stealing lawnmowers, hanging out.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)
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