Man in the Window

The Kitchen Window. 

Sometimes one does not to have to travel to distant places in order to find a rarity that sparks one’s interest. Sometimes, looking out of the window is enough. The man in the window initially caught my attention because I had just lost the Roman blinds in my kitchen due to a rather unfriendly encounter with one of its straps—I pulled it too hard, it hit me right in the head, and suddenly all my kitchen activities were exposed to the public (well, the neighbours in the courtyard).

There’s something odd about living in a courtyard apartment. The simultaneously occurring lives of others suddenly don’t seem that irrelevant anymore. And by relevance I do not refer to engaging in voyeur-like activities, but to random encounters, like glancing across the kitchen window while closing it and receiving a glance back. An exchange of looks, not lasting longer than 10 seconds, ending with the uncomfortable realization that the neighbour thinks I’m a creep. 

The view from my kitchen window offered a variety of Roman blinds, curtains and other concealing items. However, the man in the window chooses to conceal only half of the window—allowing a peak into his life, just enough to be a fly on the wall. 

The Life of the Man in the Window. 

The man in the window lives a humble life. He enjoys rather mundane, homely activities. He never refrains from taking his time in the morning to rest at the kitchen table and enjoy his regular cup of coffee. His day continues to take shape unbeknownst to me because I leave the man in the window unobserved. In the afternoons, the man in the window continues to pay visit to his beloved kitchen table—how strange that some people spend more time with furniture than with their loved ones. What a magnificent kitchen table it must be! Every once in a while, the man in the window engages in conversations with the woman in the window. The woman in the window does not seem to fancy the kitchen table as much as her counterpart does. How marvellous the concept of subjectivity! 

Unexpected Turns. 

One day I walked into the kitchen in the early evening to find the man in the window gone. What a sight! Has the man in the window disappeared? The once so lit, half-revealed kitchen of the man in the window appeared as one black rectangle on the facade of the building. Irritated by this observation, I resumed my regular kitchen actives, catching myself glancing over every now and then as if I were checking in with the man in the window—making sure everything was fine. But the man in the window did not appear. He didn’t appear that very night, nor the following day, nor the following week. I thought to myself that perhaps the man in the window was temporarily out of the kitchen spheres to alleviate his boredom. But I was wrong. The man in the window did not appear again. His counterpart however, the occasional woman in the window, appeared every once in while. She did not have the same appreciation for that kitchen table, nor did she like the keep the blinds up. One day, she let the blinds down, turned of the light and I ceased to be a fly on that particular wall. No curtain call, no encore. 

Afterthought. 

A stranger’s existence in one’s sphere can be integral without us realizing. For it is their absence that leaves us astounded. Though the man in the window might have not even been aware of me in my kitchen window, I was disappointed, knowing I would not encounter him in the frame of that kitchen window ever again. Just like a portrait in a museum, the man in the window remains a memory.