What I Love Most about Cities

Cities are always best at dawn and dusk. There's something softer and less imposing about a row of skyscrapers when they're mostly empty and the sky reflects blue and grey and orange off their shiny skin. Seeing a skyline just before the sun comes up or just after it goes down is like receiving a warm, spontaneous hug from your belligerent teenage child. That moment of vulnerability helps me remember why I love cities so much. There's so much innocence, so much potential wrapped up in those moments that I instantly forgive all the pollution, the traffic, the lack of green, and the daily, frenzied scramble to make a buck. Sometimes I just want to take the whole city right into my arms and cry.


Last night, like many nights, I sat by myself in my front yard during the photographers' golden hour before sunset, sipping mint lemonade, facing east instead of west. As I watched, the steel and glass buildings transformed into impossibly large trout, with a silvery blue irridescence, swimming into the darkening pool of sky behind them. The lights began to flick off, turning windows into scales. All those buildings seem to live their own lives at night once the people are all gone, and the slow minutes of sunrise and sunset allow us brief glimpses into this secret world. What do these buildings do at night, when we're all asleep back in our residential neighborhoods? Where do they go? What kind of trout dreams do they have? I swear I think of this trout metaphor every single time I see a city skyline at dusk or dawn. Maybe the similarities extend beyond the visual. I'm OK with that.