Rather Suspect

There’s a funny kind of lonely nostalgia that can envelop you when you’re in a city for too long. The bars are still noisy, the markets still alive, the people ever-changing…but you become a bystander, dwelling on memories. You suddenly aren’t in the painting, you’re outside of it — the Sunday afternoon art museum visitor, footsteps echoing against the bare walls.

But all this is a strange nostalgia, of course, because you aren’t a bystander. You aren’t on the outside. You’re as much a part of the city as anyone, so where’s the separation?

I used to think that feeling was a unique outcome of urban life, of being surrounded by so many strangers.

But I realized later that feeling isn’t a byproduct, it’s the point. People who move to cities are seeking that exquisite melancholy, that special kind of loneliness that you only feel when you realize you’re a bystander among a crowd of bystanders, each separated, each looking to the next to make that move, to cross the divide, to break the spell.