The view from my small third floor apartment overlooks the earth roof of the funeral-home on the adjacent street. The colors of the plants on the rook suffer a full range of colors throughout the year: brown to gray to yellow to green; then back to yellow for the flowers and finally on to the oranges and reds of this time of year -- before repeating the cycle. The wildlife is mostly squirrels and starlings with the occasional house-cat.
In the summer the view is dominated by trees and tucked among the trees, the tops of building. I don't know what most of the trees are but some of the buildings I know or at least recognize. When the leaves fall I can pick out the 6 or so tall buildings, most of them churches, in the dozen or so blocks that I can see before the city disappears over the horizon or out of the periphery.
The houses that I can see on my own street have a sort of monotony about them: same hight and number of windows, same depth of porch roofs, same state of functionality that, while not run down, speaks to me of a certain lack of love. Just a house to rent or rent out – a good-enough place to be. But I'm being uncharitable.
These houses, or at least the front porches, are a constant source of human life. The farthest one and the second nearest are perpetually being worked on by would-be handymen or, when needed, professional handymen. The third house boasts a lovely (lone) rose bush in the planter and bicycle traffic like JFK has plane traffic: it can always be heard and sometimes seems like the bikes were ordered to a holding pattern until it is too dark to see. A few houses farther down two or three women sit with books but never seem to read.
Beyond what I can see is a restaurant to the west and a chronically empty parking lot to the east. These are worth mentioning because, even though they are out of sight, I feel their effect up here. During football season six or eight of the neighborhood boys “practice” their plays against imaginary opponents and miraculously always end up loosing. And everyone knows that teams loose because one of you is not pulling their weight. So I can hear the cheers and calls when everything goes according to plan and, a while later, the jeers and cussing that it unravels into. I don't worry too much: coach will have them out there again tomorrow.
The restaurant brings in people that are “not from here” - meaning that they drive instead of walk and worry about what kind of neighborhood they are in. But once they loosen up, usually aided by drink and good company, they forget their worries and laugh at jokes with a volume that my grandmother would insist belongs outside. Of course they are outside, which is how I know. Their laughter and conversation and arguing can be followed into view, into the funeral-home parking lot that is shared between the two establishments as their busy times seldom coincide.
I can see the parking lot if I stand near the window or as I walk by to and from the kitchen. Up here on the third floor, looking through a nondescript window of a nondescript building, I generally assume myself to be invisible, especially during the day when squinting eyes are not sharp enough to see into the relative dark of the apartment. But some days ago I felt like I was seen. And I don't mean simply noticed, I mean SEEN.
A young woman got out of her car, the only one in the lot at the time. As I walked by the window, I noticed her long curly hair flashing back and forth as she looked about. This was clearly her first time here and was not sure she was in the right place. She searched the back of the funeral-home and scanned the buildings on the far side of the board fence. The boys were loosing again and their yells warranted a look. Oh, there is the restaurant... but that is not what she is looking for. Maybe its one of those houses there... – while she got her purse in tow and slipped a phone into the end pocket without looking. Two plates of home-baked goods covered in plastic wrap, more bobbing curls, and I gasp as when jumping into cold water. She's looks right at me, right into me, right through me. Of course I'm frozen and desperately hunting for my invisibility, and in just one second that feels like a minute thanks to special relativity, she looks back at the houses where she might be going and smiles to her host who has come to the door.
We've all been there: going about our business, paying no mind, when out of nowhere we known - we KNOW - deeply, that we are being watched. We look around uneasily and convince ourselves we are paranoid and push out the though -or at least try to ignore it- and eventually it goes: the uneasiness has no closure, it just ceases. Except in this case, what might have been an uneasy feeling was turned back on itself and sent back to whence it came. The observed became the eyes and my gasp got stuck in my throat. Now my stomach tenses when I think of what other eyes – eyes without bodies, sympathetic eyes, nervous eyes, knowing eyes, dangerous eyes – see with the power of those eyes that have seen.
