Nighthawks by Edward Hopper is one of the paintings that could catch my eye forever. I almost hold my breath while looking at it. Studying every detail. Partly recognizing myself; partly not wanting to do so.
Fragments and moments. That is our life. Grey movement in the cold morning sun. Busy metros with quiet people turning newspaper pages. Amusing laughter and small talk of an army in suits marching towards coffee and lunch places. Almost deserted streets in the pre dinner time waiting to be drowned in people and cars rushing home after work. The shine and glitter right before midnight and then the calm softness of the night slowly turning into morning.
Our role and presence in these fragments is of no importance to the moment itself but does define us and our current being. Are you sitting in this metro? Are you having a coffee near the window in the financial district observing the pumping stream of people? All faces. All seconds. Are you in your dark apartment, with a drink and a laptop, hearing the glamour outside and smelling the spirit of hope for a good night out? Or are you, maybe, part of the night and, after having fled a party with a subtle buzz in your ears, maundering down the road fully parked with cars filling it with the sound of your heels?
In any moment, you might look up and see observers like you – an older gentlemen reading a book in a restaurant, a stranger waiting at the traffic light, a woman eating ice cream right at the entrance of the store. All lives. All insignificant dots burdened – or gifted – with consciousness. All players in this lonely but so painfully beautiful game called city life.
I love the city. It can be impersonal and heartless but even the most bitter fragment has an unexplainable sweetness to it. When I feel lonely, standardized, and substitutable, I long for hiding in the city. Paradoxically enough, being surrounded by hundreds of people, directly or indirectly behind walls, does not reduce our feeling of lonesomeness. It creates something new; something special. Crying our eyes out in an isolated high-rise room and seeing the hundreds of lighted windows outside, gives us the feeling of being even more alone. But – being alone together with others.
This is exactly the feeling that is so powerfully captured in Nighthawks.
Sometimes i fell in the strange trap of cities.I sing a song a popular one to release my cynical face.
I find the map and draw a straight line
Over rivers, farms, and state lines
The distance from A to where you’d B
It’s only finger-lengths that I see
I touch the place where I’d find your face
My fingers in creases of distant dark places
I hang my coat up in the first bar
There is no peace that I’ve felt so far
The laughter penetrates my silence
As drunken men find flaws in science
Their words mostly noises
Ghosts with just voices
Your words in my memory
Are like music to me
I’m miles from where you are
I lay down on the cold ground
I pray that something picks me up
And sets me down in your warm arms
After I have travelled so far
We’d set the fire to the third bar
We’d share each other like an island
Until exhausted, close our eyelids
And dreaming pick up from
The last place we left off
Your soft skin is weeping
A joy you can’t keep it
I’m miles from where you are
I lay down on the cold ground
And I pray that something picks me up
And sets me down in your warm arms
I’m miles from where you are
I lay down on the cold ground
I pray that something picks me up
And sets me down in your warm arms
Life is meaningful. Wrapped around a glassy box. All shattered.The city could burn as a fat as you digest. I swallowed all the anger and looking back at all the strangers. We are all good.
It is beautiful indeed.
I imagine something very wild and I know what is going to happen…. Why do we hide ourselves over the fancy walls? Deliberately I am seeking the true answers. Reality. What seems real to me is the inside of my feelings that i can’t touch. Like breaking a mirror with no flaw and suddenly see the real me.
The city which brightens her warm looks, a city in which a low hello may change your life, at least your worst day 
an amazing city that brought an energy to this timid heart. The city where I always want to sing.
These short thoughts seem unknown…well I am unknown also. I read all you have written here. They are just lovely. It’s been a long time since i haven’t seem somebody who expresses his/her feelings bloody perfect. Truth is that I read all of them many times. I am affected by your intelligence… I am not obsessive though, but I am just punishing myself by not expressing what i really feel about this city, this people.
What is important for somebody who is totally a stranger? To be lonely in everycity he lives with lots of people around. Alex, not my real name. This city is not my city but now I kinda like because I know somebody who is walking in the same streets that I walk. I know somebody who can be a life worthy, forever… she is shopping from same market that i buy oranges. She is somebody whom I can trust and forget what I felt before. I know whe can be as good as it gets. The only problem is that these walls around us. We live the same moments, see the same view, breathe the same fresh air in colliding seconds. Shattered as my mind, my heart never beat like this before. I was a hero for many of the people that i knew in my life but now i question why do i need to be a hero. Simple as my night, i walk alone to my dreams. You made me talk to myself, unconscious ….
i just want to disconnect myself from these feelings that i got. This can not be so complicated like it seems. I want to express my feelings and get back to my old life again. Now I am a nighthawk and know that you’re feeling right. This makes me happy. The one that can’t be left alone. I memorize every glance that she flashes. Like I said before in my post but there was a missing part… with you, life is meaningful and I can bravely say that I am meaningful with the person that lives in the same city I live. The city where we miss the sun so much
The last place we left off
Your soft skin is weeping
A joy you can’t keep it
And I pray that something picks me up
And sets me down in your warm arms
indeed you are beatiful!
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