When I imagine what qualifies as "deepest, darkest night" I think of empty streets and a weighty absence of life. My neighborhood is active much of the night. I have walked or stumbled through it at most hours and it is never entirely quiet. Except on the mountain. Nowon is a very urban area, on the northern edge of Seoul, that is leaning up against mountains. On one side of my apartment I can see dozens of identical apartment buildings and on the other "my" mountain, which is now partially obscured by a mega-church.

A favorite activity of mine is patrolling areas wherever I live. I tend to walk for hours pondering the love lives of superheroes and attempting to parallel my own existence to theirs. This allows me to come up with an explanation for my romantic failings that is rather more awesome than reality whilst inspecting the neighbor's garbage.

Below is video of the first snow of winter in my neighborhood followed by pictures of the last. I included the video largely for context and because I found watching the kids play in the snow enjoyable. The first snow was on November 19th, 2007 and the video taken around 9:30pm. The last snow was at the very end of February 2008 and the photos taken at 11:30pm. The next set is from the mountain, taken on March 26th, 2008 at 1:30am. The final set was taken at 1:30am on April 8th.

I wanted to put together a cross-section of the night here. Those of us who have been able have been inclined to include snow pictures because, well, snow is beautiful. I was very pleased with many of my snow pictures but the snowy wonderland is not representative. Right now it appears to be furniture season and the dumping areas around all my buildings are sprouting old furniture. Dumpster diving in my neighborhood is the most convenient I have ever experienced. On recycling day all manner of abandoned items can be found piled outside our buildings. Our soviet-style buildings house large numbers of families so there is always a fabulous choice of desks, chairs, tables, and home decor to peruse.