Dirty Window

We look past the dirty window.

We reconstruct the world where the smudges and smears distort our view; reinvent it in our imagination while retaining its most fundamental relations. We know this.

If we wanted to experience the world in full instead of seeing it through the dirty window, we would go outside.

We’ve been there, but for now we want to be here, appreciating the way the light penetrates the grime and filth that collects with time; the way the theater of our mind in turn reimagines the light, reframes the scene, fixing it into an ideal form of itself.

Sorrow beckons joy, for only in these quiet, lonely moments can they love each other, where no outside intruder can worm its way into their shared, broken heart, and tear joy away so sorrow turns to bay; to bleed; finally, to weep.

No one can judge us here, on the inside. On the inside, we burn like fire, but on the outside there are mostly shadows.

Perception is an object that obscures light. It gets in the way.

Now watch the shadows dance.

The jaundiced film that stretches across our vision is just there to filter out harmful rays. Staring directly at the sun blinds us. If we are exposed too long, we are eaten alive.

Why must we hide from the light?

What have we become?

We are the puppeteer,

Mistaking the shadow-play

Of groping hands

For a story

We want to hear.

***** * *****

Related Works: