There have always been windows, where I can look out. We
never had a house, and
I always wanted but never had a
window seat, with pillows and thick glass. We lived in many
apartments and my favorite one had two floors; I got the whole
attic to myself. The one window that didn't have an
air
conditioner stuffed crudely in it faced the
amusement park a
block away, the green sea of a
miniature golf course between
us. I slid my bed up against it and watched the repetition of
lights, the rise and fall of lit up rides, hearing the
screams of
single voices meshed together , the
sound of summer . I was
always looking out, staring out into some expanse where the
trees and the
roller coaster skeleton opened up, but I could
never see the stars for the
sodium lights. You have to get
outside to see stars, I've learned, but that didn't matter then, and
doesn't to this day.
When I lived in a hotel between moves, my room had these
oddly long and skinny windows, side by side . All I could see
was the parking lot below, the iron fence lining the corner, one
traffic light. Again, the trees and orange street lights blotted out
everything but a mist that rolled in each night, layering the sight
like gauze. I had no doorbell there and no phone, so the only
way someone below could get my attention was to toss a
pebble to my window and hope that I was home. So often I'd
leave them open, and for a spell, I played a certain song hoping
this one guy would ride along on his bike, recognize the tune,
and respond. He never did, and I knew he wouldn't, but I was
hopeful. Hope is one of those things windows seem to bring out
in me, a patient anticipation of the improbable.
My current home has no real windows to speak of, an attic
again, but with small boxes without sills punched into angled
walls and mostly stuffed with air conditioners and black
blinds. In order to stare out, I'd need to step out onto my porch,
and if I did, there would be that expanse I hadn't had before. I
am the highest thing around save for telephone poles and the
church down the street. But it's not the same as a window,
having that false sense of protection , the idea of seeing from the
other side of a portal , which is how it's always been to me.
There is one thing I've wanted to happen but hasn't yet. I would
like to be sitting somewhere, as I do, in front of a window
overlooking the sidewalk, and have someone come up to it
from the outside and hold their hand to the glass with an open
palm. Not knocking or tapping, not making sharp sounds to get
my attention, but simply to put up their hand, to which I would
reflect in my own outstretched palm . As though the glass wasn't
even there, yet it allowed us an intimacy that otherwise may
have gone untested , ruled out, as a form of connection. The sad
thing is that the only time I've seen that done is in movies, when
people are saying goodbye: train and bus stations, airports and
taxis . No one ever seems to do it to say hello , to say anything
that is meant to continue . This is one sad and strikingly human
trait of windows: that they let so much out by their transparency
yet are able to convey things through the barriers they create.
And that we, too often, are barred by the same limits that frame
them in.