Windows

I have always been fascinated by windows.

They’re a boundary that can separate you from another world. Your moment is on hold while you focus on the forward movement on the other side of the glass.

My world is a series of windows.

Windows are everywhere. I’ve seen years fly by through taxi windows, subway car windows, ferryboat windows, bus windows, airplane windows, hospital windows, bedroom windows, car windows, and even drive-thru windows.

Windows are for watching, for waiting, for looking, and peering into somewhere else, somewhere different. Somewhere where the world keeps turning when yours doesn’t. Even window panes show the passing of time as mildew creeps up them like wrinkles around the eyes.

Windows not only look out, but in. They look into the depths of the eyes that reflect back. They hold the secrets of where those eyes have been and what they’ve seen. If you look closely and carefully at that reflection, you can see those images hidden deep inside your eyes and they’ll dance across the pane, along the mildew and cobwebs and eventually blend into the streaks of raindrops or cracks. Perhaps, too, the images are distorted and blurred with tears.

Who doesn’t enjoy the occasional huff on the glass to make pictures, smilie faces or hearts in the fog, when the worlds outside and inside the window become too much? But even when you wipe away the fog and smilies, nothing has changed.

Sometimes you wonder if people can see you, are aware that you are there, or if you only blend into the scenery, like a picture on a wall. Do people really look into windows or only out of them? There’s an odd sense of power in being able to observe what people don’t know you are looking at -- of being able to pierce into someone else’s world without being invited or acknowledged while only a window is privy to your own world.

You start to realize that people show what they want people to see. Or else they are so absorbed in the battles of their own world, they cant see that other worlds exist upon other worlds, and that someone could be peering into theirs.

I’ve learned many things from windows. I’ve learned that reality is different for each person, and that reality is always changing and moving. It’s like we’re all in a race, and some people's lives move faster than other's, some have a direction, and some don’t know where the finish line is. Some crash and become a frozen life watching the rest of us race behind the shattered glass of their own smashed window.

Windows also protect you from being consumed and trapped. They give hope. They offer proof that time is passing, despite the illusion of stagnation...and they provide a way out. They contain any perceived danger and offer an escape route.

Windows are a constant in my life.

Sometimes I wish I could experience the life I always observe outside, feel the sun without it being filtered through the glass, and the wetness of the rain, or the touch of another human as their world passes mine.

But for now I’ll just watch through my windows.