Reflection on a Masterpiece

"Tonight, a lot of people are still up watching the nighthawks hunt through the streetlights. The white bars on their wings flash, as they dip through the lights, then glide off against the dark trees that line the street. The trees seem more like shadows, except where the inverted cones of light catch their leaves and heighten their green. And despite all the people still awake, unable to let go of the evening, leaning from windows, smoking on steps or rocking on front porches, it's quiet--no small talk, or gossip, no stories, or lullabies--only the whir of insects and the stabbing cries of birds, as if we all know we should be sleeping now, leaving the nighthawks to describe the night."

I wrote this quote because I wanted to write something great.

I wish I could say this was mine, but it's not. This is from a story that many people have heard me talk about in the two years since I first read it. The story is called "Nighthawks" and it's by Stuart Dybeck.

I am not exageratting or lying in anyway, shape or form when I say this next statment: I had goose-bumps the entire time I wrote that quote above.

I love this story. I love this quote. The purest love a person can have for art is what I feel towards this story. I have often, as is my nature, asked myself why I have such passion for these thirty-fivepages, tonight I figured out what it is.

This story is me. If somebody would like to understand who I am, read this story. I didn't think I could be so attached to words on a piece of paper, but everytime I read it I have to fight back tears.

The story expresses in words what I could never hope to. It details the connections and lives we live at night. How we are more open and honest with each other at night. How somehow, through some almost mystical means, we can drop our gaurds and for one, breif, shimmering instant see ourselves for who we truely are.

The story is every night's end for me. Every night (provided I'm not completely and totally spent) I sit in my room and try to come up with excuses to stay awake longer in the pristine peace of night. Wraped in my blanket of night I rest in my chair with my feet craddled on the window sill like an old cowboy andnone of the roles and statuses that society has given me or I have chosen matter.

It's me, just me, and only me in my purest form.