Who Stole Vincent's Starry Night?

Trial to the coward

The clouds glided gently through the night skies like a schoolgirl's skirt that is lifted by the summer wind in early June. The radiant body of a full moon on its tenth night gleamed the shadows of the city to life. The camera tripod was set up on my rooftop, my eye focused through the small lens of my recent Cannon photographic camera, with an added lens for close focus, which in some manner made me feel as a hunter, sitting tight with his rifle, waiting on the perfect moment the mysterious silhouette from a few nights ago would pop it's head out, and I would take my shot. I had been at it since the moon came out dressed in the elegance of her black night dress, which took place around 9:00 pm. Two hours had passed since then. A firm tightness gripped my back that now begged me to take a break with screams in the manner of cramps and twitches, letting me know, it had been keeping track of the time I'd spent behind the lens.

The only company I had was the voice of the radio broadcaster, speaking on the scandal of the Banking Fund for the Protection of Savings, the madness of the car horns from the never resting traffic distorted some of the message, and the heights of colossal buildings supported a stringent feeling of solitude. Although, these buildings had their lights on late into the night and people could be seen walking around in their white shirts and khakis, the uniform of the working ant only strengthen the sentiment.

In the absence of the mysterious silhouette, I let my curiosity disperse and take the reins for the time being. Leading me to pay closer attention to the details in the simplistic life of the working ant. Beings that live the eccentricity of their lives under the straightforward path of rules and obedience. From the scope on my camera, I spot one. It is the perfect image of this specimen, dressed in its common outfit, and a head, that tells a story like that of leaves of a settling autumn in the human physique. He sits tending to a pile of paperwork, sliding his hand on his bald head, and time to time taking his eyes off to spy the shifting hands of a clock. Has the same mosquito that bit Proust's gotten to you too? For those is has bit know time is not a thread but a palace of unraveling sand. Cash all your paychecks but know those numbers don't stand only for the material, but also for the intangible.

Windows are silent narrators. They are passageways to estrange worlds. The closest we will be to travel in time, as they are a capsule, where we can peek at the life and times of others. Behind the lens, I take time to listen to the stories they got to tell and see the life behind the mask of society. A glance at the old apartments next to mine enables me a quick pick in the world where a pair of old ladies play rummy on their dinner table while each wears an old mitten sweater. A fine china set of tea lays in front of them and in the corner of the room I can spot an old radio. One of them still has a brush of faded blonde hair, leading me to think, a few decades back, they were foreign to this country. My imagination almost instantaneously begins to manufacture a portrait of what seems like a recompilation of their youth, sitting with their parents while listening to FDR's fireside chats. The aluminum window frame of their apartment colored in gold is the first entry to a world that seems to be almost frozen 30 years behind the actual date.

Two buildings to the right. I can spot a mother preparing dinner for a girl and boy while the younglings bang away at the table armed with plastic forks and knives. For all I know this could be the family of the working ant from earlier. The mother seems to be stressed at the children's behavior, tired of the everyday labor, maybe wondering why she never got her degree and followed through on her college dreams of being a lawyer. But all those doubts seem to dissipate once she lays the food on the table for her children and kisses each in the forehead. A newborn smile enlarges her face in the appearance of a work from Botero.

Homemade cooking always warms up the heart, and this seems to be the warmest portrait life can show at the time. It makes me reminisce about all those Christmases my parents had to go out and get me the presents I called out for on my letters to Santa Claus. All the love that hid away in their actions, all the love one is too young to see back then, all the love one can give away when you have grown to be a parent. But to each other, we are nothing but wishing stars, each asks things of the other, growing too fast only to fade in the blink of an eye. For the children, our parents' don't seem to stay too long, and for the parents, the children seem to catch time too fast.