Tuesday, June 13, 2006

View from a window

What is it so relaxing to just sit and watch the traffic go by?
Depending upon how you look at it, I'm either lucky or unlucky enough to live on a busy main road. Although my town isn't the biggest around, I live right on the main artery through the centre. It's just gone 9pm, the light is slowly fading from the sky but the occasional lit cars still seem too bright as their headlights swish by beneath me, leaving trails on my retinas like a long-exposure photograph.
My apartment is two floors above a shop, my third floor eyrie being just great for such casual voyeurism. No-one ever spots me so high, above even the upper deck of the frequent double-decker buses that squeal to a halt at the bus stop opposite every 10 minutes or so, loaded with lounging teenagers busily hiding illicit cigarettes from the driver.
I silently scold the erratic one-handed driving of those with cellphones clamped to their ears. I imagine I'm down there amongst the high-pitched revving of a vintage scooter club out for a midweek evening blast. I wince at the oversized exhaust fitted to an improbably tiny hatchback and think how proud the owner probably is of the fact that the noise can drown out his stereo. Sometimes fate and the road conspire to throw up a fun surprise; tonight an ancient pick-up truck trundles by, its flatbed rear filled containing a fairground dodgem with a mannequin clinging to the wheel, its bright ginger hair wafting crazily in the breeze, framing a rictus grin.
It's great to see such things hurtling past my window. I never wonder, as some might, what their destination may be. It doesn't matter. The few hundred metres I can see in each direction is all that matters, and what I ultimately see is not individuals with lives and cares of their own, but rather a wonderful collage of metallic paintwork and tiny habits. Like a daydream, they are gone almost as soon as they appear; fading from memory before a tangible opinion can be formed, to be replaced by another.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your writing style is very eloquent, you should put it to further use and write some lyrics.

:) sarah x

Charlie said...

I'm terrible at writing lyrics. Seriously, I've tried before. Some of them even survived and are unveiled whenever I need to be made fun of.

x