WINDOW

I looked out the window at dawn and saw a young apple tree translucent in brightness.

And when I looked out at dawn once again, an apple tree laden with fruit stood there.

Many years had probably gone by but I remember nothing of what happened in my sleep.


Czeslaw Milosz

the window as bridge, the window as revelation

To say that everything in our world is interrelated to everything else does not mean that everything is directly connected to everything else. In fact, anything we identify as a “thing” has a limited number of direct connections, and even these connections vary according to the way we look at them. The tree outside my window is connected to the soil, to the birds that are perching in it and the insects crawling around its leaves, to the neighboring trees whose branches it touches, and even to me who happens to be looking at it. I was struck by this late one afternoon as the sun was setting and I saw my own faint image in the window pane superimposed on the scene, as if I were suspended in the middle of the tree. 

There before me was the fiction of the phantom spectator, the self, that imagines itself looking objectively, when in fact it is no more than a pale haze overlaying and obscuring the real connections I have with the tree. But if I focus on any part of the tree, I see that it is a web of connecting parts that make those first connections indirect. And so on, down to the subatomic level. And if this is so, then the tree is also, in some distant sense, connected to everything else, right down to the last jar of honey in the corner grocery store. No “thing,” at any level, from whatever perspective we look at it, subsists on its own.

from: James W. Heisig, Nothingness and Desire

(for erin)

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I looked out of the window

“I looked out of the window and saw: a red-haired house painter caught a mouse in his wheelbarrow and killed it with the stroke of a brush, then he tossed it in a puddle. The puddle reflected the dark-blue sky, quick black upsilons (reflections of swallows flying high) and the knees of a squatting child, who was attentively studying the little grey round corpse.”

from Nabokov's letters to Vera


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saint augustine in his study

Vittore Carpaccio, 1502

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onto the window, the rain

 Outside the Dune.

 Alone the house, monotonous,
 onto the window,
 the rain.

 Behind me,
 click, clack,
 a clock,
 my forehead
 against the window.

 Nothing.

 Everything passed.

 Gray the sky,
 gray the sea,
 and gray
 the heart.


Arno Holz, Drearily trickling drizzle 
tr. Walter A. Aue

Draußen die Düne.

Einsam das Haus, eintönig,

ans Fenster,

der Regen.

Hinter mir,

ticktack,

eine Uhr,

meine Stirn

gegen die Scheibe.

Nichts.

Alles vorbei.

Grau der Himmel,

grau die See

und grau

das Herz.

Trostlos rieselndes Tropfen 

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window-gazing

What are we to do with these spring days that are now fast coming on? Early this morning the sky was gray, but if you go to the window now you are surprised and lean your cheek against the latch of the casement.

The sun is already setting, but down below you see it lighting up the face of the little girl who strolls along looking about her, and at the same time you see her eclipsed by the shadow of the man behind overtaking her.

And then the man has passed by and the little girl's face is quite bright.




Kafka, Absent-minded Window-gazing
(short-story from the collection "Contemplation", Kafka's first-published book)


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the artist at the window

Paul Klee sits weeping
behind the windowpane
he watches the people go by
and they all become lines
and he sees only the lines
and the lines go by
in front of the windowpane


Peter Härtling, Paul Klee

Paul Klee, The artist at the window, 1909




hinter den fensterscheiben weint PAUL KLEE
er sieht die leute vorübergehn
und sie werden lauter striche
er sieht lauter striche vorübergehn
und die striche gehen vor den scheiben.




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don't be caught looking

She got up as if she were going somewhere. But she stopped. Then she
strolled over to the window that looked out onto the street. The houses
opposite all had the same little front gardens; the same steps; the same
pillars; the same bow windows. But now dusk was falling and they
looked spectral and insubstantial in the dim light. Lamps were being lit;
a light glowed in the drawing-room opposite; then the curtains were
drawn, and the room was blotted out. Delia stood looking down at the
street. A woman of the lower classes was wheeling a perambulator; an
old man tottered along with his hands behind his back. Then the street
was empty; there was a pause. Here came a hansom jingling down the
road. Delia was momentarily interested. Was it going to stop at their
door or not? She gazed more intently. But then, to her regret, the cabman
jerked his reins, the horse stumbled on; the cab stopped two doors lower
down.
"Someone's calling on the Stapletons," she called back, holding apart
the muslin blind. Milly came and stood beside her sister, and together,
through the slit, they watched a young man in a top-hat get out of the
cab. He stretched his hand up to pay the driver.
"Don't be caught looking," said Eleanor warningly. The young man ran
up the steps into the house; the door shut upon him and the cab drove
away.
But for the moment the two girls stood at the window looking into the
street. The crocuses were yellow and purple in the front gardens. The almond
trees and privets were tipped with green. A sudden gust of wind
tore down the street, blowing a piece of paper along the pavement; and a
little swirl of dry dust followed after. Above the roofs was one of those
red and fitful London sunsets that make window after window burn
gold. There was a wildness in the spring evening; even here, in Abercorn
Terrace the light was changing from gold to black, from black to gold.
Dropping the blind, Delia turned, and coming back into the drawingroom,
said suddenly:
"Oh my God!"


from V. Woolf, The Years



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life, in the room opposite

Nothing could be slow enough; nothing last too long. No pleasure could equal, she thought, straightening the chairs, pushing in one book on the shelf, this having done with the triumphs of youth, lost herself in the process of living, to find it, with a shock of delight, as the sun rose, as the day sank. Many a time had she gone, at Bourton when they were all talking, to look at the sky; or seen it between people's shoulders at dinner; seen it in London when she could not sleep. She walked to the window. 

It held, foolish as the idea was, something of her own in it, this country sky, this sky above Westminster. She parted the curtains; she looked. Oh, but how surprising!—in the room opposite the old lady stared straight at her! She was going to bed. And the sky. It will be a solemn sky, she had thought, it will be a dusky sky, turning away its cheek in beauty. But there it was—ashen pale, raced over quickly by tapering vast clouds. It was new to her. The wind must have risen. She was going to bed, in the room opposite. It was fascinating to watch her, moving about, that old lady, crossing the room, coming to the window. Could she see her? It was fascinating, with people still laughing and shouting in the drawing-room, to watch that old woman, quite quietly, going to bed. She pulled the blind now. The clock began striking. The young man had killed himself; but she did not pity him; with the clock striking the hour, one, two, three, she did not pity him, with all this going on. There! the old lady had put out her light! the whole house was dark now with this going on, she repeated, and the words came to her, Fear no more the heat of the sun. She must go back to them. But what an extraordinary night! She felt somehow very like him—the young man who had killed himself. She felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away. The clock was striking. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. He made her feel the beauty; made her feel the fun. But she must go back. She must assemble. She must find Sally and Peter. And she came in from the little room.

Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

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blue window

A pretty word, window.
Window: the wingbeat of the yellow butterfly.
Two carelessly painted wooden shutters open out,
clumsy blue window.
I jump in and out of you, ride you like a horse,
my foot dragging the ground.
Window on the open world, from where I saw
Anita, expecting, get married, Pedro Cisterna’s
mother urinating in the rain, from where I saw
my love arrive on a bicycle and say to my father:
I have only the best intentions regarding your daughter.
O wooden-latched window, child’s play for thieves,
peephole on my soul,
I look into my heart.

Window, by Adélia Prado

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the window shut...

I put myself inside, and I close the window.
They bring me the lamp and they say good night,
And my peaceful voice says good night.
If only my life were always this:
A day full of sun, or soft with rain,
Or stormy to end the world,
A pleasant evening with groups of passing people
I can watch curiously from my window,
A last friendly look at the quietness of the trees,
And then after, the window shut, the lamp still burning,
Without reading anything, or thinking about anything, or even sleeping,
To feel life running through me like a river along its bed,
And outside a great silence like a god who is sleeping.


Fernando Pessoa/ Alberto Caeiro

child in the window

In one of these rooms, was a window looking into the street, where the child sat, many and many a long evening, and often far into the night, alone and thoughtful. None are so anxious as those who watch and wait; at these times, mournful fancies came flocking on her mind, in crowds.
She would take her station here, at dusk, and watch the people as they passed up and down the street, or appeared at the windows of the opposite houses; wondering whether those rooms were as lonesome as that in which she sat, and whether those people felt it company to see her sitting there, as she did only to see them look out and draw in their heads again. There was a crooked stack of chimneys on one of the roofs, in which, by often looking at them, she had fancied ugly faces that were frowning over at her and trying to peer into the room; and she felt glad when it grew too dark to make them out, though she was sorry too, when the man came to light the lamps in the street--for it made it late, and very dull inside. Then, she would draw in her head to look round the room and see that everything was in its place and hadn't moved.

Charles Dickens , The Old Curiosity Shop



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