Viewpoint: ‘Midnight Guardian’

One artist’s view of downtown St. Paul

By Jared Arvin | Contributor | March 2025

The streets were slick with shadows, the kind that blurred the edges of reality, distorting the familiar into something more elusive. St. Paul’s Cathedral loomed at the end of the road, a sentinel in the city’s dark heart. The night was still, but not empty – it carried the weight of an unseen presence, a silent watcher in a world that never fully rested.

Cars lined the streets, idle and forgotten, as though time itself had stalled. The cathedral’s light wasn’t meant to comfort – it exposed. It beckoned you to face whatever you’d been avoiding, casting everything in stark contrast. The cross atop the spire, sharp against the sky, seemed to challenge the heavens, a defiant symbol holding court over the quiet city below.

I wasn’t looking for answers, just a moment where time might loosen its grip, where the constant ticking of life could ease for a while. My footsteps rang out in slow, steady echoes, the only sound in the stillness. As I walked closer to the cathedral, the layers of the city seemed to peel away, its history creeping into the silence, leaving nothing but a sense of something ancient watching over the present.

Under the cathedral’s glow, there was no place to hide. The stillness held a weight, forcing you to face yourself. I stopped at the base of the steps, letting the cold night settle around me. The cathedral towered above, silent and steadfast, as if it had been waiting for someone to notice. Maybe it always had. And maybe, for once, I wasn’t the one observing. I was the one being seen.

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