Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992: Limbo/Twilight #2 Summary & Analysis

Smith interviews Twilight Bey, organizer of the gang truce. They meet in a Denny’s restaurant in February of 1993. Twilight explains the origins of his name: when was a young boy, he’d stay out until the sun came up. He acted as a “watchdog,” ensuring no rivals entered his neighborhood. Additionally, people would tell him he had “more wisdom than those / twice [his] age.” One night, while he was at home writing, he replaced the “ce” at the end of “twice” and found “twilight.” He notes how light symbolizes knowledge and wisdom in the Koran and the Bible. He also notes how twilight conveys a sense of  “limbo,” which he associates with people always telling him he was “before [his] time.” When Twilight first broached the idea of a truce in 1988, nobody believed it would happen. Yet, in 1992, it did.

Twilight Bey continues to meditate on being “stuck in limbo.” He feels “like the sun is stuck between night and day.” Unlike a lot of people, Twilight doesn’t associate nighttime or darkness with negativity. He sees it as “what was first.”  He describes seeing “darkness as [him]self” and “light as knowledge […] of the world.” He asserts that “to be a true human being,” one must bridge this divide between darkness and lightness, between self and world.

Twilight Bey feels as though he never sleeps. Late at night, he watches young kids beating an old man. He scolds them, asking why they’re out doing this and aren’t at home, where they belong. During the day, he sees “the living dead,” people who are severely addicted to crack-cocaine. Seeing the “living dead” makes Twilight understand that “what goes in the daytime creates at night.”