Daydreams Put On Paper

My apartment, like most apartments in Manhattan faces out on to a wall of other apartments. With so many buildings and so many people on this relatively small island, it makes sense that sometimes the city feels a little cramped—even when I’m sitting in my own living room.

From my window I can see other windows—hundreds of them really, but a couple dozen very well. There are four or five that I can see straight in, and it almost feels like they’re my next door neighbors- even though we’re separated by 200 feet, 6 stories up in the air.

I can see their couches and televisions. See blurred colors on their screens and bodies moving—moving through their daily lives. I wonder if they see me; sitting on my couch with books spread out around me. Slowly walking in circles around my living room.

There’s a strange duality in this city full of people. It feels so big, but at the same time so small. I am isolated but surrounded by humans. I am crowded but also alone.

I wonder how many of the people I see through the windows feel that too.

I like to imagine these people’s lives. Imagine their stories. Imagine what is going on within the little window viewpoints I have into their days. I think that’s a thing that writers do (I feel weird about calling myself a writer-- it feels like a title I don’t deserve—but that’s a story for another blog post) they imagine things and people and situations. They rearrange the world outside their head into a different, inner playground, where they can control the pieces and move along the plots.

Maybe it’s a little crazy, creating fiction from the things that I see, but I never really claimed that I was all that sane. Isn’t that where inspiration comes from, though? From looking at our lives, at the cities and people and craziness around us and thinking “Yeah… this is good, but I could do it better. With dragons! And knights! And epic romance! And magic spells!”

Stories are just daydreams put on paper, so I might as well write mine down.