Observations
January is so very cold and so very dark, for so very long. The saving grace is the provision of stars. I view these from my apartment window, high above the street where I feel detached yet connected to the life playing out below. Mostly I make up the storylines as I can only catch a word or two. I make up narrative based on gait and demeanor to amuse myself momentarily.
In all this time I don't think anyone has ever looked up, at me or at the stars. They are so very fixated on cafe life and the trials and tribulations that play out night after night. During the long nights, I sit and watch. Looking to Heaven at the stars, viewing constellations and the beauty of the moon. It's restful, soothes my soul. Then I turn my attention to more earthly things below. Less of the caressing slow motion of the stars and more frenetic, bright lights and comet like flashes of life, gone in the blink of an eye.
I imagine it as a constellation of cafe lights. As there are strangely four cafés in a row. An asterism of cafe's! I laugh, but it catches in my throat. Surely each must offer something unique. Watching from on high I wonder if they still exist at all at their source. Or like a star, they are just travelling light and they burnt out long ago. I watch what feels like echos of life. From above and below the disconnect I feel is palpable and painful should I ponder it too long.
I sit, betwixt the two, on another plain, going nowhere whilst the universe and life drifts by. Connected to nothing and nobody with only the essence of existence drifting up to my window, night after long, dark night.
What of these cafe's? I study the demeanour of those entering and exiting. The people are dressed smartly it seems from my vantage point. I see the swirls of cigerette smoke plume out of the door and the soft ding of a bell. There's a different bell for each café so even if I turn my attention away I can tell which is being frequented, like an orchestra where everyone has perished on the spot but for those on the triangle, who are still playing on, nervously, wondering if they are next to be struck down! Ha!
I can't recall ever walking the street, surely that can't be right? How would I have got to this building? The beginnings of unrest begin, where I muse about whether I exist at all. Panic rises, thoughts to whether I died and my memories are disintegrating as I float to the heavens. DDing. Ahh the double D ding - cafe 2. The triangle player quaking in their shoes. Am I the person who dictates who lives and dies in the orchestra? Perhaps. People stay all night there in double D ding. Not like the swift in and out, shrouded in cigarette smoke action of café 1. They enter walking tall, striding in with confidence. They leave stooping, dragging their feet, clothes seemingly ill fitting on their form. All confidence gone, vanished as if extracted and turned into the billowing smoke that powers the premises next door. Where the people walk in and the people walk out, with seeming renewed splendour. In a cloud of smoke as if making an entrance on stage...
My thoughts drift, my eyes feel heavy. I sit wedged on the inner sill of the window, back against the frame. I wake, startled and aching. I get up and stretch and ponder going to bed. But all the cogs whirr into action and my mind is too busy to contemplate the aloneness the bed brings. Trapped in a cell with myself. I instead reposition myself on the window sill. Aware that with the ironmongery outside the window makes the whole room prison like. My door attracts my attention from the shadows. When did I last use the door? I start to fret that if I approach the door I'd be absorbed into the shadows, I shudder.
The lightest of dings occurs. Signalling cafe 3. Should I ever be able to leave, I presume this would be where I'd go. Only single figures ever walk in. Never so many that they can't select a window seat. Perfect! I laugh and wince at the same time. I wish to break free of this spell and there appears to be no direction to walk. There are lives being lived outside but nothing I would want to be part of. I'd just be alone at a different window. With a different view. I'm tempted, but not so tempted that I even move a muscle. The window seat occupant reads a paper, a reminder that there is news and things that I know nothing off. I can't imagine the headlines tell of cafe's that blur into star constellation's, that there's wider consensus that stars are cafes in the sky! Momentary amusement is followed by that dread. That dark cloak that seems to lock you in place without warning.
I hear cafe 4. The bell that seems to be missing the 'g'. Din! That triangle player is misplacing her hands I believe, interrupting the resonance. She's surely the next to be struck down and she knows it. This café has such a presence. The opening of the door seems to deaden all sound, nothing and nobody dares move. Silence. Until the din! The din being less of a din and more of an absence of echo. The whole of life dulled. I know nothing of what goes on. I only ever see people enter. I presume the exit is elsewhere, onto another street or maybe they are swallowed up.
I become aware of how hungry I am, how tired and thirsty. There is a shooting star that gets my attention, I watch the point at which it disappeared and drift off, perhaps to sleep perhaps to join the orchestra. The remaining triangle players scurry away and there are no more dings. Just absence of sound. Perhaps I slumber in cafe 4. No window seat. No distractions. No shadows. Just absence of all things. I can fret no more there. I will just sleep until I emerge on a different street.
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