∞ I have been blessed, for the time being, with a very big back window. It runs the whole length of the counter, above the kitchen sink. The window, in fact, is the only big thing about my kitchen, the remainder of which begs comparison to a tin of sardines if ever its occupation is taken up by the sum of more than two grown adults at any given time. Any more than that results in a terrible tangle of elbows, and a prohibitive quantity of “excuse me”s and “pardon my reach”s, to the exclusion many more scintillating topics of conversation. But it is cozy. And having spent a good portion of my 20s tangling elbows in the matchbox kitchens of New York City’s burrows, its diminutive size suits my taste perfectly.
I’ve only thought to tell you about my kitchen, and more importantly, about the window, on account of the time I spend in front of it, looking out.
Over the noon dishes, there are birds to watch and the color of the sky to keep up on. And I do. Keep up on it. And at night, while my hands are busy with the scrubbing of plates and the removal of those stubborn remnants that cling to the bottoms of casserole dishes, I see a great many other things; other lives being lived in silent pantomime behind a great number of other windows, all lit up in the gathering dark, just like mine.
Here, looking out over this hidden intersection behind the buildings, where one alley meets another running all the way to the water’s edge, we are gathered together in our lighted squares: The woman with the pie on it’s crystal cake stand, the orange cat, the naked man in the darkened window, the old man with the terrible cough, the young student with the candle burning on its high shelf. At night we bare witness to each other out of the corners of our eyes, so as not to intrude. Or give ourselves away.
If you were to watch me as I watch the birds and keep up on me like the color of the sky. If you could stand at your own window and look at me through mine, what would you see? And what would you know of me in that, simply because you know yourself?
This is the question that follows me around all day, trailing my pen across the paper, stirring itself into the soup, sweeping itself into the dustpan with the fine white piles of flour and the dust bunnies and the crumbs.
Right now, for reasons I don’t quite understand, it feels like everything I write about, and every idea I’m trying to press into beingness with either a pen or a camera is an attempt to answer this question in myself. Because when I retrieve my vision back through the darkness, the person I see is just that, my own self reflected in the glass, and all those other lives in all those other windows only bright golden squares seen through the tired reflection of my own cheeks and forehead.
–EB
E. BOOCKMEIER 