l i f e
the circle window
contributions
christopher@30seconds.org
An ergonomically perfect place. Here, let me go sit in it, smoke the cigarette I shouldn't and come back to tell you about it.
Two arts and crafts houses across the street are framed in by southern black oaks and the thinner elm. A low hedge of azalea, perfectly square, separates me from the sidewalk thirty or so feet away. Ivy takes the places of a lawn and dirt and moss fill in the rest where the sun sometimes shines through the think boughs of the trees.
My building sits on gray dry dirt that crumbles easy between the fingers. Built in the Spanish Deco style of the late 1920's, my three story building has settled pretty well in the past seventy years.
The concrete urns that serve as huge planters are covered in thick olive covered moss. Moss that holds the soil around my bansai trees. Roots stick up from the ground in random places, far from the base of any tree. They form the channels for the rain water when it rolls off the terracotta roof, down into the monkey grass and through the ivy.
The wooden overhang three stories up juts out far enough over the building's façade that not matter how hard the rain falls I can sit in the circle window and remain quite dry.
Around twilight the gas lamps come on down the street and the cicadas begin to call as the first lightening bugs flash on and off. First here, then there.
There is only one eyesore, a plastic hanging basket sitting just below me. It was a fern I thought dead and for a full cycle of seasons it has stubbornly held onto life. Growing back and dying in a mottled ugly fashion with no help from me, even though it once fanned out brightly against the walls of my dining room.
But I haven't really told you of the window.
It curves perfectly with the small of my back. My head rests directly across its center line. My feet are comfortably stuck against the outer wall a couple of feet above my head, and my posture feels absolutely wonderful. A slightly relaxed fetal position from which I can play guitar or write or drink. Nothing about it impedes any action I might so like to take.
No one sits in the circle window but me. Water stains the concrete in a symmetrical line leading inward and it appears damp, though it is not. Soft light illuminates the iron stairwell to my left, giving me plenty of light to read by.
And so I've given you the circle window. But in doing so I've realized that the window by itself is nothing and it depends entirely upon its surroundings for the effect it lends. Aside from providing a comfortable position it is only a part of the building façade.
Is any of this really so different?
goodnight 7.8.98
