Humanity at Night: Flashes of a Greater Story

You can see so much life happening in one journey as a passenger at night. Be it in the city or countryside, in a car or on a train; the scenes flashing by fascinate me - the minuscule moments of domestic life that you bear witness to as you drift past on the journey to your destination.

I love seeing families around the hearth…an old fashioned word that now, more often than not, is the buzzing blue hue of a television. Sometimes human interaction reigns over technology though, lit by the dim glow of the ubiquitous low watt fluorescent bulbs. Babies in diapers. Spouses in mid argument. Siblings doing homework. Dogs scratching their fleas. Cats hunting their prey. Devotees worshipping at mosques and churches and neon-lit bars. Wedding receptions and funeral wakes. Grandmothers diligently sweeping the dirt that is the floor.

The slices of light in the night are like stills from a movie; each scene with different characters unaware of one another, even though sometimes only inches separate them.
I close my eyes and they play back in my mind, stringing together, flickering like an old fashioned movie. Intimate glimpses into personal lives that are unknowingly shared with me, the night passenger.

-M.D.

I can relate to this on so many levels.  I remember specifically riding the bus home to my town in Costa Rica after dark.  Houses that blended in with the landscape during the day became like little light boxes of life at night.  You got a glimpse into the lives of others in a way that was both insanely intimate but starkly separate.  Homes and people you would never meet, there in front of your eyes do just a moment.  Showing humanity in its purest form.