The View from Our Windows

It is December already. It’s been raining a lot recently where I live, and the window these days presents view-after-view of drizzles, droplets, occasional lightning flashes, and folks running right and left for cover.

In all the times I spend by the window typing articles, working on translation projects, and browsing for porn or scrolling down 9gag writing my thesis, I find it odd how the view from the window seems to transmit varying mood. I swear the view was depressing yesterday—somber, sad, and kinda made me want to cuddle with my duck plushies collection all day.

Not that I possess such sort of collection obviously, that’s just a . . . err . . Metaphor.

Haha . . . ha . . . They are Selvi’s  . . . Obviously . . . Right?   No, that’s not my room. Shut up!

Yet today, upon gazing at the same thunderous glooms of the graying image through the glass, I am feeling this emanating upheaval of spirit—the sort normally accompanying the storm of inspiration which initiates my writing.

What a phenomenon–a festive mood of cheer today, a haunting restlessness tomorrow. While this alternating impression seems nothing less than a magic (remember the time you look through the window and feel like you are in a video clip of a gloomy song? Magic), it is a mere illusion—the view may stay static, but to the spectating end the only thing constant is change.

And within this delicate process of change, underneath the ever-morphing flux, we apply selective criteria to capture only details of the view that associate best with our emotions. It doesn’t matter if grey dominates, a single spot of white would be the only thing noticeable during times when joy thrives.

For anyone wondering, we supply our own photo and image. This one is taken by Selvi.

And just like the projection of our image mirrored by the glass (if not, it obviously needs a scrub), our window doesn’t only reveal the outside. If the presented picture seems so distant and cold, we may have dwelt too long in solitude. If the gust outside appears so vicious and cruel, we may have relied too much on suspicion and distrust. And if each moment of the window-theatrics is a fleeting race we can barely capture, we may have forsaken much for the sake of routine to even appreciate.

At the end of the day, through every view, we are only getting lost deep in our own thoughts. And it’s not really independent of control. We have all the options to be positive and sweet when we sit together with our lover looking at the rain from inside the cafeteria window or being creatively engaged by the sound of droplets while typing down that document for a client. We choose the mind we live and work with, regardless of the weather, regardless of the environment. Optimism is always beyond being predetermined.

Then again, if you only enjoy staring into hard platform of wooden or concrete surface, you are totally missing out on the chance to be a hopeless romantic.

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JC