From my apartment window looking down to the sidewalk and street below, if I take time to notice, if I brave to linger, a curious scene comes to light.
My leaning, cantilevered bird's-eye view is a strange perspective, looking down on people, places and things. My second story window affords a human-eye view of the street, the life that passes by in single-frame, stutter-step motion. The noon day sun exposes a different impression of ordinary life.
From my perch, it's not only the odd shaped penguin-footed, hat-capped and coated bodies that exist, but the distinct silhouettes of all their shadows as well. The people are drawn, sketched out in grays and thread-woven textures while their accompanying shadows are in a flat, dark-charcoal to blue-black inky pattern that bleeds out from the bottoms of their feet.
These bodies can stand perfectly still for hours yet their shadows will ebb and stretch, genuflecting to the passing of the sun. All of this motion and pattern randomly scattered over a matrix of cement squares, defined by dry black cracks like grid lines. The pedestrian’s push-pin bodies and their liquid shadows plot an arbitrary and erratic course up and down this cement petri dish.
Hunched above, I venture my gaze over the paint chipped window frame. Up here, I’m immune from the sidewalk bacteria below; above, overhead, looking down and watching, like any self-absorbed mythical god, humanity becomes a curiosity; the going's on of the wanderer's and staggerer's through life, their stitched-on shadows shackled in tow. How queer, how surreal the apparent dance between flesh and shadow. They pass, stop, stoop, turn, pivot and hesitate, a comedic ballet all for the amusement of those looking down.
The heat waves off the cement, distorting the figures, blurring their motions as if in a water pond. The hats and kerchiefs mimic deformed lily's as the shadows lengthen like ripples from pebbles dropped in an algae pond. The glare shooting off chrome bumpers and slanted windshields sting my eyes and push me back into the darkened confines of my sterile apartment. Watching for today has ended, I’ll fix a can of tomato soup and toast for supper. Maybe tomorrow I’ll venture a brief walk in the hallway.
