curtains

I’ve always been a procrastinator.  If I really think about it I think it’s because I’m afraid of doing something that’s inadequate. I’m afraid it will a disappoint someone or prove my inability to do what I would like to accomplish.  So, I sit and think and doodle and do nothing.  The other day I had two hours with nothing to do.  My failed plan was to study Tagalog since I have my language proficiency interview in two weeks and am beyond far behind.  Languages are just hard for me.  Always have been.  Maybe it goes back to my fear of failure. 

So, there I am sitting in this delicious bakery right against a window.  A big window.  The kind of window that takes up a whole wall, and on the other side of the window is the street.  The busy lively street where people are working and walking and talking and laughing and living.  The busy lively loud street where jeepneys are stopping and trikes are honking and cars are swooshing through the soon to be flooded streets.  It was raining, but not intensely.  Not like the night before or like it would be a few hours later.  Just raining.  A moment of peace amidst the chaos of Megi. 

I was inside.  Dry.  Taking this all in.  Watching it all.  Trying to figure it out.  Where were these vehicles going? Who was in them? What were those kids talking about? Why is that woman sad? Why is that man laughing?  How much business did that vendor get today?  Will their vegetable supplier be wiped out of crop because of Megi’s furry?

Then it dawned on me.  How amazing are windows?!?!  If this had been a solid wall I was sitting next to, I’d be sitting with no one but myself, but it was a window and I was sitting with the street.  So many buildings have windows.  People seem to love windows.  In gloomy hospitals it seems worn out patients will offer a smile if they get the chance to look out a window.  In our homes we love windows that reveal the world outside the physical structure of our houses.   Even busy multi national corporation offices have windows.  Sometimes they are entirely windows for that matter. 

Windows connect us to other people, to a world beyond ourselves.  It’s easy to see why someone invented a clear glass window.  We want to see the world. We want to be involved in the world.  It’s a beautiful world beyond the window and we want to share in that beauty.  Something about the life moving on the other side of the glass energizes and inspires us.  We want to feel the presence of life beyond us.

They solitary confinement makes a person go insane, even if they weren’t mentally ill before entering isolation.  Prisoners say the worst prison cells are those without windows.  Without access to the outside world.  We need that connection to the other side, whatever that side may be.  We need it.  It keeps us sane and gives us hope. 

It’s interesting then that as I’m fantasizing about a home of my own the first thing I’m going to invest in are curtains.  I love this massive window and the connection I feel from it, but that connection isn’t whole.  There is still a piece of glass dividing me from the noise and rain and smog and shouting.  I’m still entirely in my head.  I can imagine what all those people are doing and thinking and where they are going and why they are going there, but I’m distanced from them.  Safe from the exhaustion required to try to converse in a language I don’t speak, safe from the pollution, safe from the sadness I would feel if I heard a persons story and knew for sure that they had nowhere to go when Megi again picks up speed. 

I want curtains for privacy.  Privacy from curious neighbors who like to chika chika.  Privacy so I can retreat to my house and isolate myself if I’ve had a long day of miscommunication and cultural confusion.  We have curtains which further separate us from everything and everyone outside.  We close them so we don’t see the bad, the sad and the painful…so that we have an escape from the parts of life that are too hard for us to deal with.  The ugly things.  Curtains guard us from the world, disconnecting us from a community.

We, humans, are strange creatures.  We want connection but only at a safe distance.  One that doesn’t challenge us too much or make us too uncomfortable.  We are willing to cover our windows and voluntarily create spaces of isolation.  It’s all very strange to me.  I look forward to curtains I can close to the world or open to let in the sun.