Through Windows
Seasons changing and glimpses into lives lived parallel.
By the time you read this newsletter, the sun will be setting later. You might feel a little jet-lagged - I know I always do when the clocks change in spring. I’ve been enjoying the brighter mornings. It’s been the push I’ve needed to structure my days better. Working from home is a good excuse to never really leave the flat - I could quite literally never leave. Takeaways at the press of a button and next-day-delivery for anything I could need. So, in an effort to not become a hermit, I’ve been trying to go for morning walks as a way to start my day with intention. Trying, I emphasise, because the temptation to roll out of bed straight for the coffee machine and from there to my desk is all too easy.
The weather has been good – of late – with warmer days forecast this week. However, as I write this, it has rained ferociously for the last few days, but overall, March teased me with spring. Summer, even, I could feel those summer days inching closer. I find it far easier to wake earlier when the sun splits the gap between the curtains, when the sun pulls me outside, hitting the buildings opposite, dancing through the hedge into the living room, spilling out over the dining table. I’ve discovered that the world is surprisingly quiet at 8am in a city park. There are a good few dog walkers and some commuters cycling past, but largely, it’s quiet. I feel I have the world to myself. I take a coffee with me on my morning walk and wrap up warm because, although the days are lengthening and the mornings bright, they are icy. Crisp. Buds painting trees bright green, blossoms beginning to unfurl, daffodils springing out of the earth in bright yellow bunches like bouquets picked by lovers.
I usually walk for a half hour, but I like to break the walk with a seat on a bench, ideally one with a view over the city, sipping my coffee, sometimes with headphones on listening to nostalgic songs, sometimes nothing but the sound of distant cars and people rushing by. I’m reminded of something Kurt Vonnegut said, “We are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different.”
It is hard to fart about at times, although I’d love to, although I love nothing more than taking far too long wandering around a shop, taking a book to a cafe, watching the ducks in the duck pond, stopping to pet a cat on a wall. March has felt like a month of transition - not just in the seasons, though of course, that’s part of it, buds appearing on trees, the occasional heat of the sun convincing me, momentarily, that spring has truly arrived - but also in the way I’ve been thinking about time, about balance, about how easy it is to disappear into routine without noticing. Some weeks feel like they pass in a blur of emails, of dishes piling up, laundry in mountains and stresses mounting, and suddenly it’s Friday, and I don’t quite remember how I got here. So, I’ve been making small efforts to mark time again. The morning walks help. Sitting on that bench with my coffee helps. Farting about, helps.
I read something recently about how we remember time differently depending on how much novelty we experience. Those childhood summers feel endless because each day held something new, something unexpected. It made me wonder how often I let my days pass without noting anything new at all. I don’t want to live my life on autopilot. I find myself saying, too often, that when XYZ changes then things will get easier. And factually, this may be so, but to live life kneeling at the edges of the future is no way to live. So, this month, I’ve been trying to notice more, to find novelty, to take in the changes around me. The first truly warm afternoon. The way the trees in the park are just beginning to turn green. The sound of laughter drifting from pub doors swinging open on the walk home.
The other night, I left the house and realised it was mild. Mild! The wind didn’t bite at my cheeks as it usually does, I didn’t tense my shoulders towards my ears and brace against the cold as I’ve had to for months. In fact, I didn’t feel the need to wrap my scarf around my neck, and I could, for a moment, taste it. Summer. I could taste the evenings walking home with only a cardigan, I could taste the beer garden drinks post-work, the barbeques just-because, the day trips, the sunglasses, sweet stone fruits and picnic blankets and hills with views. I could taste summer. She was giving me false hope, of course, but how I loved her for it. I was reminded of so many evenings in my life walking home in the soft glow of dusk, the city casting shadows onto the sky, the faintest of single stars peeking through the haze, the moon missing from its usual pocket in the sky.
As I was coming back from dinner at a friends, my stomach full, my soul happier as the weather turns, I realised my mistake at still wearing my winter coat. The streets were lively as I walked back, people lingering on corners, smoking in the doorways of pubs, lots of shorts and t-shirts even though it’s barely above 10 degrees. It always strikes me how a slight change in temperature shifts the way a city moves. People pause more, they amble rather than dash, they stop to chat instead of rushing inside. There’s an unspoken agreement that if the air is mild, if the night is soft, then there’s no real hurry. I take my time walking home. Past the row of flats where, if I glance up, I’ll catch glimpses of other lives – someone cooking, someone laughing, someone leaning on a windowsill, looking out at the same city as me.
It’s these moments I’ve been paying more attention to. The small markers of time passing, of the world shifting, of life being lived in parallel to my own. Opposite the very window that I work from every day are a couple who eat dinner by their own window. Sometimes lunches in the window. Sometimes coffee. Often, dinner - early, when I’m still working at my desk come 6pm. They’re a few floors higher so merely silhouettes, but it reminds me of Ed and I’s Bristol flat, with the small blue table in the window which we ate at together with a candle lit, watching the world go by below. I wonder how many people saw us in that window? I learned, living on a high street, that so many people don’t look up. Though I watched the queue for the post office and the parade of prams and people grabbing Sunday morning coffees, not many ever even glanced up to see me watching the world go by. It seems most of us are too busy rushing about our lives to look up at and see the other lives being lived in the windows just above.
I’ve been thinking about how easy it is to let days blur into one another, to let seasons slip by without really registering the change. It would be easy to lie to you and say I’ve been so much better at it this month, but I’ve not. I’ve been really quite bad at it, in fact, I’ve been living very much in a rush of deadlines, working more hours than I should and struggling to wrap my head around “what’s next”. But, I scheduled joy into this month. I attended a writer’s group and found myself leaving the way I leave a good meal; warmed from the inside out. Reminded of the value in farting about, in my bus journey there, in wandering through a park on the other end of town, in peeking my head in the door of a cafe about to shut.
In the midst of ‘busyness’, I’ve managed to let myself get excited about things. About summer’s eventual arrival, even if she’s teasing me now. About plans that feel like something to look forward to rather than just another thing in the calendar. About the small, everyday joys that I too often let pass unnoticed – fresh coffee, a hot shower in a sleepy daze, the rain on the window from the comfort of bed, a conversation that lingers in my mind long after it’s finished.
And, I suppose, I’ve been trying to make peace with the in-between. With the transition of seasons, the limbo of early spring where one day feels like winter and the next tricks you into thinking you can leave the house without a coat. With the feeling that I should be further ahead, or have more figured out, or be doing something different altogether. Instead, I remind myself: I’m here. I’m walking home on a mild March evening, under a sky just beginning to darken, tasting the first hint of summer.
TO READ: My reading list grows bigger and bigger and I’m embarrassed to say this month it has not had even one book taken from it. I’ve had the same book on the go for a month. A month! I’ll report back with recommendations soon… surely…
Normally, I make a new playlist. I won’t lie; my music choices of late have been rogue - music to push me through busy days at a desk. So, I’m cheating with an old one.
By the time of my next newsletter, my birthday will have just come and gone. I’ll be very much officially in the final year of my mid-twenties - at least, I think so. Thank you for joining me for another newsletter. It’s a joy to be writing them. And, sticking to the writing of them!
Thank you, as always.
