Windows

Sometimes I like to look into windows…

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t set up a ladder with binoculars, or have a telescope in my apartment (anyone with a telescope in their apartment uses it to look at anything but stars). There just happens to be a lot of windows in Manhattan, and, well,  I look in them.

Most of the time, the apartments are dark with no one home, or just the flickering of the TV set. Others have the light on, but it illuminates an empty room. The majority of window are so high up, you can only see the ceiling of the apartment. But every once in a while, you’ll catch a cat in the window, or someone leaning out on the phone or having a smoke, or the crossing from one room into the next.

In the cold mornings when it is still dark on my walk to the train, there is a store front window that has plastic women advertizing a “Peep Show” for those people who are tired of not seeing anything when they look into a window. The light is always on.

But I think there is always something to see. When a light comes on in a window I think “now the show’s about to start” like the picture coming on a movie screen. Except it’s more like the window that no one ever looks into at a movie theater, the one behind the seats, high up on the back wall. The window where the projector is beaming.

And we sit in the dark, watching what’s coming out of that window, pretending we aren’t looking in a window, but we are. The light is always on.

So, I walk down the street on an island full of projection booths and in the cold dark mornings I think about what movies could be playing inside those warm yellow windows.

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