It is almost midnight in the city.
I am sitting on my balcony enjoying the beauty of city lights. This view is across Sydney's Chinatown. It is the stage outside my studio where the aerial dramas that inspire my artist's soul are staged each day. It is the world I wake up to and go to sleep by. The players in my theatre are light and the infinity of the skies. The city is the stage-set. Shakespeare dreamed that all of the world is a stage. For me it is enough to simply appreciate the nuances of this small part of it.
There are a few light clouds in the sky. The star Canopus is high in the heaven like a theatre light illuminating actors. Achernar is a star found toward the south, and Alpha Centauri and the Southern Cross
in the southeast are famous players in dialog with the clouds.
As the night progresses, one by one, more and more lights in the apartment towers go out. It is interesting how in some buildings most of the
lights are on, and in other buildings many more are on. It is as if each building has
its own type of tribe and its own tribal habits.
It is a warm late summer night here in Sydney so I have my shirt off and I enjoy the soft touch of the nighttime breeze on my skin. It is such a relief after the heat of the day. There is rain and increasing wind predicted for tomorrow, but for now the weather has a gentle touch made for the maximum enjoyment of the view from the 12th floor.
There is just me, my iPad, a camera, and a bottle of Drambuie (which grows more delightful with every passing shot glass) and the
view that draws my camera, and the sounds of the city. Those sounds of life in the streets below mingling with the sweet honey scent of the Drambuie.
People in the country value their silence. There is no possibility of any real silence here in the midst of all the skyscrapers and their streets. A great metropolis is like an animal that has its own kind of breathing sound. For all that the sounds come from massed air-conditioners, and whole armies of automobiles, and perhaps not so loud but seemingly more persistent, the noise of people, it ends up being animalistic in character and marked by the lives of people. People laughing and crying, talking or being passionate in every sense of that word, or snoring, or simply breathing. It is their collected sounds that make up the flesh and blood of the organism that is the city.
There are people who value the sounds of silence in the country, but I prefer this tribal beat in these city noises. These noises I add to with the relatively quiet click... click... as I take more photographs and grow more in love each passing second with he beauty of the kingdoms of the sky and city and my fortunate view and experience of it all.




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