Front Window

May 5, 2010. Wednesday. 8:40 AM. Quickly now tell me, the experience of walking from the kitchen to the living room and back. Gray, damp morning light in the apartment, walk into the living room, gaze upwards, out the window placed at street level and make eye contact with the man on cement front steps across the street. 

I once said good morning to him. Ever since, he gazes at me with curiosity, wondering who I am and what do I do all day. I live alone, etc. I’m doing a life sentence. At birth, I was sentenced to existence for life. 

I walk on gray carpet. Wear gray socks to walk on old gray carpet that exudes tiny particles that create a constant choking sensation. The old folks across the ventilator shaft also suffer respiratory problems. I hear them coughing, hacking and spitting into their bathroom sink located across the alcove, about five meters from my sink. It's quite intimate, the bathroom setup. One can share the sounds of bodily functions and bathroom conversation. 

Put anyone in here long enough and that person would likely have trouble breathing. A steady leak of microscopic toxic substances into the air, the quantity is enough to create a sensation of slow suffocation and strangulation, but not enough to kill a person.

     

 I’ll get up right now and make the trajectory between kitchen and living room and then describe the experience. Before getting up, I’ll note the loud drone of the fridge, the clicking sound. That click reminds me of a description of slaughterhouses, animals packed in, waiting to be quickly killed and then bled, gutted, skinned, torn apart and de-boned. People have been eating meat since the stone age. It’s part of life. Animals eat other animals to survive.

 Walk into the living room, hear birds singing, see dandelions and grass, taller every day, watch the woman across the street walk to her black van. The woman sees me enter the living room. Probably the angle of view allows them to see clearly everything I do in the living room. People walking the sidewalk directly in front of the apartment can’t see in, due to glare, unless I turn on a lamp. However, I’m convinced, the people across the street can gaze into my living room. Maybe they also feel I’m watching them. We watch each other, although they have the advantage. I can’t see into their house, whereas they can see into mine. It makes me self-conscious sometimes. I also feel a little embarrassed, to be seen relaxing. People can’t stand it when a man relaxes. They’d rather see him standing, moving or pretending to do something.

The moment a man sits down, another man or woman comes along and tells him to make himself useful, to do something, even if there’s nothing that needs to be done. The man should find a task and do it. It’s considered bad form to sit there and relax. It’s so irresponsible. It would be better to pick up an electronic devise, to start text messaging, or entering something in a palm pilot, making a calculation, reading the news or cruising the Internet. Such activities are understood and respected, whereas to sit and relax makes people uncomfortable. It’s sometimes viewed as a form of laziness.

I’ll sit here and enjoy the moisture and temperature of air currents. Cool morning air through the open front window mixes with damp, putrid air from the bathroom window and warm gusts from the kitchen. Listen to a truck drive down the street, accelerating at one end of the block and then braking at the other... to be continued.