Everyday voyeur
Walking past all the apartment, gazing up at the patios, checking out the furniture. Wondering how people utilize that space.
Wonder how other people live.
At night, I stealthily look into the lit windows of my neighbors.
On a second floor, I spy a painting. I can’t tell if it’s good or even if it’s a poster. The light is dim, as if that person is another room.
Later, I come back, and it’s bright. Another room is dimly lit, perhaps light from the living room. Another painting, or a poster? I look away, to another place.
A cheap plastic chair, the kind you find on patios, sits in someone’s living room, shoved against the wall. Are they a college student? Newly moved in? Surely in these apartments, you must be able to afford furniture. Or maybe that’s how you afford nothing better than the white tulip chair?
Lights in another room, shades drawn. Disappointed. I want to see these other people, but not get caught. I feel isolated in the evening. Rarely at home this time of day, the people are still alive, still active. Watching TV. Talking. Doing what? I want to know.
I’ve made no friends with neighbors. There’s a guy in the same block of apartments with his garage filled with stuff. Workshop type stuff. A computer tower. Workbench. Things hanging on the wall. Crammed the gills. No place for his car.
The door is open. I look in. He catches me looking in. I come by again, he catches me again.
No hello.
We like to be isolated, but we like to look. The best friendly hello I give is met with a muttered hello at best. I smile, but the smile falters. I don’t know if I’m not being met warmly because people are not warm here, or because they’ve got their eyes to the ground, like I have my eyes to the ground. We are shy. Don’t want to make friends. Mind our own business.
Perhaps that’s the connection I’m looking for.
A missing sign posted on a trash enclosure grabs my eye. I think it’s another plea to help find a lost dog, a dog that will never be found. Please help me find Brutus. He’s a loveable bulldog with a collar and brown eyes and also answers to Boogie-Woogie-Woogie-Doggie.
Closer, it’s a plea to return a notebook computer, no questions asked. Along with a long laundry list of other things stolen, from a purse to specific items of clothing.
But most important is the notebook. I feel sorry for the woman. It contains two years worth of thesis work.
No questions asked, she says in her note. Please just return the notebook.
I’m thinking it would be enough to ask for the notebook back, but she also asks for her jeans, her scarves, her sweatshirt.
Part of me wonders if it wasn’t some jealous ex-boyfriend. Why would you steal her clothes?
Yes, that sucks that she lost her thesis work. But these things never turn out well.
Just like a lost dog is almost never found.
I’m remembering back to your old place where folks didn’t ‘make friends.’ Have you expected your new place to be different?
Can’t even imagine losing all that work!!! Reminds me–must backup my files. Ugh.
The difference between the old place and the new place is that people can’t be bothered here. In the old place, it was probably more a matter of safety.
Except for the children. They stared at you. There was this one girl, probably about 10, who didn’t seem to go to school. Every time I walked past, she would stop what she was doing and just stare. She’d stand by my car and stare. For a while I thought she was mentally disabled, but I changed my mind on that. Disturbed, probably, though.
Anyway, you don’t meet the eyes of the adults there. You mind your own business.
And here, while there must be children somewhere, they’re quiet. I don’t see them.
I don’t know what I expected as far as friendliness goes. Apartment complexes aren’t conducive to making friends in many cases, anyway.
I lived in a house for five years, next to a woman who treated me like her daughter. Sometimes it was a bit stifling, because she noticed when I didn’t go to work, when I broke my routine, and had keys to my house.
But she would bring me pies she had baked, or little presents. She was very sweet.
I don’t miss having someone watching me all the time, but I do miss her kindness.
And to be truthful, it takes a lot to get me to be outgoing. I suppose I could just seize on one of these new neighbors and start talking, but I’m often shy. (Until you get to know me, and then all bets are off.)
So I guess I can’t complain for not making more of an effort. But I swear, the women who lived in the apartments above us at the old place… Wouldn’t even meet my eyes or smile or anything. Probably because they knew their kids were driving me to insanity.
When I’ve lived in a rental more than a year, I end up making a friend or two. Three years is the longest, where I met friends with Dan, a lady from China who studied opera. The next was two+ plus years where I made friends with Sweta, a lady from India who was doing a postdoc in neurosciene. Here I made acquaintances in my building, one in particular is Lieselot. But she, like the rest of The Students, are about 10 years my junior, so we’re ‘worlds’ apart.
I moved into my complex a little over a year ago and the lady downstairs and I have become friends. I am, however, acquainted with the man upstairs who checks on my windows and door when I am gone during the day. Other than that, I have little in common with my neighbors, but we do say a friendly hello in the parking lot when we see one another. That may also be just a Southern characteristic as well.
Since I bought my Condo, I believe I will be here for the long haul; so, I have made a point to get to know the people immediately surrounding me — again, for safety’s sake.
Mel, hopefully you will be able to meet those that are closest around you!
Nice meditative entry…
I’d never become particularly close to neighbors until we moved into our house, until we met Niki and Eric (aka “Bob’s Your Uncle” and “Betty’s Page” on the Brood). Oh, sure, we’d had exchanges now and then with neighbors when living in university housing, even swapping food with a couple people, but nothing quite like this.
Until we met Niki and Eric (now in Seattle, unfortunately for us), I’d never quite realized how nice it could be to have friends, really good friends, living so close by. Come to think of it, it was rather like college dorm life, the casualness of our stopping by, except that much of our time revolved around their young son Van rather than playing cards
After Niki and Eric moved and as new people moved into the neighborhood, I did what I could to be friendly (i.e., dropped by to introduce myself, baked goods in hand), but nothing ever came of that. And I guess that’s ok. Neighbors don’t have to be close friends exactly, and we are on good terms with the neighbors we do have, even though we don’t exactly socialize. Still, I miss having close friends so near by.
I must say, too, that I’ve always been one for looking in people’s houses, liking to catch glimpses, fragments of their lives. Maybe that’s why I’m not as bothered as Todd when our blinds are up and I know people can see in, don’t mind all that much if others also want to catch a glimpse of our lives.