The first time I visited my friend James in an apartment he’d just moved into in Houston and was given the tour, I realized that his bedroom window had a great view of a residential mid-rise. “Oh, man, can I PLEASE come sit in your bedroom and stare at that building at night?” I asked. “Absolutely not!” he answered. “What is wrong with you?”
I used to think that if I lived in a city like Manhattan, I would have no life, because I’d never be able to leave my windowed view into other people’s lives. I’ve been told by people who do live or have lived in Manhattan that this tendency passes quickly. Is it too easy? Is there too much? Is it just urban etiquette?
Occasionally I’m contracted to do editing for a financial services firm where I work on the twenty-something floor right next to another of those residential mid-rises. There are not many people home during the day. I see maintenance people working on things, or housekeepers. Mostly I see empty apartments. But still, each time I look up from my work to give my eyes a break, I study the windows of that building: wondering, dreaming.
I think this began a long time ago when my family visited my uncle in a small Mississippi town where there was very little to do. My older cousin would take me out for drives at night. Back then, kids weren’t often out after dark, so those drives were when I realized that dark skies plus lighted houses equaled watching people go about their daily lives without knowing they were being observed. I was hooked.
Please understand. I had no interest then, and have none now, in watching people in sexual situations. I’m not hoping to see anyone undressed. In fact, on rare occasions when something like that is viewable, I turn away, admittedly more from indifference than respect.
I’m usually more interested in setting. I like seeing people’s furniture. What they have on their walls. If they have a piano. If they have shelves of books. Then I like to see what they’re doing in that setting. Reading the newspaper. Watching television. Sitting at a table with other people.
I get a certain sense of security from the ordinariness of other people’s lives. A sort of, Life goes on as usual, no matter what horrors are happening in the world. Maybe that’s not surprising for someone my age. That girl riding through the Mississippi night began her larger-world awareness with the Kennedy assassination, and it was one jolt after another from there. Some of the most vivid memories of my youth are the assassinations; the times that my father came home from having to tell a soldier’s family he wouldn’t be returning from Vietnam; riot footage on television; the Kent State shootings. I craved those views of normalcy in a well-lighted house.
They also fed my imagination. Window tableaux were the starting point for stories I played out in my head. If writers are born as such, then everything feeds the compulsion to build a story. Long before we have enough life experience to draw from, and hopefully long after, we borrow from other people’s lives to make stories.
But even for those of us who aren’t writers, isn’t there a fascination with looking into other people’s lives? Is that why we read fiction and biographies? Is it why people check out web cams focused on a street in Paris or Manhattan or a beach in California or the New England coast? Is it why we read online journals and blogs? Is it why we watch reality shows?
What are we looking for?
“What are we looking for?”
The greener grass on the other side, of course! Or ultimately – comparison. So often do people wonder, “Am I doing this thing called life right? Do I do things like others or am I an outcast? What can I do to make things different? What can I do to keep things the same? How do I get happy? How do I stay happy?” Therefore we observe and we absorb in search of comparison, insight and reassurance. Whether it be for positive results/reasons or not.
(At least…that’s what I think)
I am overwhelmingly curious – curious to the point of distraction at times. We don’t have blinds on the windows, except in the bedrooms. When cars drive by at night, I wonder what they see, or even if they can see in at all (we’re a couple hundred feet from the road).
My big one is cars. I’m amazed at what people will do in their cars when they don’t know that people are looking. Just the other day I saw a woman put her finger up her nose and then in her mouth…yuck. I also notice what’s in cars. Friday at the drycleaners, I parked next to a shiny, new Audi. There were at least a couple of dozen empty Mountain Dew bottles on the floor mixed with empty cigarette boxes (Marlboro Menthal).
Ew, ew, ew. I have never seen an adult woman do such a thing. Even men in cars, not the second part.
Ew.
I’m sticking with houses, where I don’t have to witness that kind of detail.
Ew.
I love to drive by people’s houses at night and gawk in the windows! (actually, it’s better and safer if somebody else is driving.) I just like to see how their houses are decorated, especially older houses. I think in my next lifetime I want to be a realtor so I can go through people’s houses. I see it kind of being the same as touring a historic house–seeing how others live(d). I also like to see the different layouts of places, and what people have done with it. I was in heaven when we went house hunting several years ago.
I love touring houses. I saw one last fall that was a total 70’s throwback. It had a spiral staircase, white rocks (in a nook by the staircase), and even a sunken firepit in the living room surrounded by carpeted benches. It was way too Brady Bunch for my taste, but so much fun to see.
” I take it you enjoy “Rear Window” then?
I think she watched it through the window of a neighbor’s house just the other night.
Yes! I was even going to mention that in my post but I forgot. That has always been my favorite Hitchcock movie. And of course, I understood Jimmy Stewart’s character completely.
I love looking in windows! Whenever my partner and I go for a walk he gets annoyed because I want to see what other people’s houses and rooms look like. I think it’s absolutely fascinating!