It is the time between day and night - a time of low light, cool sea breeze and glimpses into neighboring houses whose windows open to this ironic city. For someone who has grown up in a veritable cocoon of mental and physical privacy, even with the distance kindly provided for by a canopy of trees and a wide road from this building to the next, it is still remarkable that one can watch other people's lives unfolding as clearly as high-definition television. It is a Sunday, and in a few windows I see families sitting around a table in well lit rooms, curtains widely drawn apart, studying high school notes together. Once in a while, a distracted child gets up to walk about and is summoned back to the table by a textbook-toting parent. The day of rest has translated for these parents into a day of militant hand-holding of their offspring while they prepare to fly to fairer shores and well thought-out destinies.
At another window, there are some potted plants struggling to look authentic, and among them is perched a black Indian kite. That window, I have come to believe, is his resting place - morning meditation, afternoon siestas, evening musings, what have you. I have seen him there often, sometimes just sitting and staring into his reflection in the glass, sometimes looking out into the urban-residential forest that is his home. Or perhaps it is not. Perhaps that thin ledge outside that west window of that nondescript house is the closest he can come to calling something his home now. Like a homeless man in a comfortable nook of the kerb, it is where he spends most of his day.
He now hops to the outer edge of the ledge and furtively peers into one of the south windows, almost like a pet that has been banished outside the house for misbehaving, and that misses being part of the hustle and bustle of the apartment life. Not getting much attention from the human denizens inside, he walks the lonely walk back to his appointed station at the west window, scattering a few raucous crows who haven't learnt by now that this is one window they have been beaten to, and continues looking into his own eyes.
You were born to fly. Why, then, do you tie yourself to a miserable steel balustrade that keeps men safe from their own worst fears? The sanctuary that you seek might well by out there in the skies. You will be only as alone there as you are here. You may no longer have to look at your own piercing likeness in a way that leaves you silent. Among the unfamiliar and changeable clouds, you may find a way to look into yourself and see the proud, free thing that you are meant to be. Why do you not fly away?
At another window, there are some potted plants struggling to look authentic, and among them is perched a black Indian kite. That window, I have come to believe, is his resting place - morning meditation, afternoon siestas, evening musings, what have you. I have seen him there often, sometimes just sitting and staring into his reflection in the glass, sometimes looking out into the urban-residential forest that is his home. Or perhaps it is not. Perhaps that thin ledge outside that west window of that nondescript house is the closest he can come to calling something his home now. Like a homeless man in a comfortable nook of the kerb, it is where he spends most of his day.
He now hops to the outer edge of the ledge and furtively peers into one of the south windows, almost like a pet that has been banished outside the house for misbehaving, and that misses being part of the hustle and bustle of the apartment life. Not getting much attention from the human denizens inside, he walks the lonely walk back to his appointed station at the west window, scattering a few raucous crows who haven't learnt by now that this is one window they have been beaten to, and continues looking into his own eyes.
You were born to fly. Why, then, do you tie yourself to a miserable steel balustrade that keeps men safe from their own worst fears? The sanctuary that you seek might well by out there in the skies. You will be only as alone there as you are here. You may no longer have to look at your own piercing likeness in a way that leaves you silent. Among the unfamiliar and changeable clouds, you may find a way to look into yourself and see the proud, free thing that you are meant to be. Why do you not fly away?
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