Sit by a Window

Practice Observation

“Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop.

Die knowing something. You are

not here long.”

Walker Evans (1960)

          If you’re a writer, you are a studier of people. Airports, coffee houses, street benches, peering through windows everywhere, and mentally chronicling everything you see. Some writers go so far as to carry a note pad so they can jot down things they observe and record their impressions. One of my exercises is to notice how people react differently to the same situation, like at Costco the day of the toilet-paper debacle. I like to observe what happens on my street, which isn’t terribly busy, but does have people with certain predictable habits. In one household, for instance, the TV goes on as soon as they wake up and stays on until they go to bed at night. At another, a moving van pulled up last week to haul the older woman’s furniture to an assisted living facility. I felt glad about that, having watched day-after-day as she maneuvered her walker to the bottom of her very steep driveway in her slippers and nightgown to put her trash out or to slide her newspaper up the slope with her cane to a point where she could reach to pick it up. Neighbors helped her when they had an opportunity but falls finally convinced her it was time to move.

          I enjoy sitting by the window at a certain bakery/coffeeshop that is across the street from a VA clinic. Vets come and go, and one knows which era they came from, which war, by their age and by the way they carry themselves. It’s surprising how many of the Vietnam vets still wear remnants of uniforms, along with hats decorated with various military paraphernalia, reminiscent of high-school football players who, at forty still wear the jersey from their “glory days.” Recognition has been slow in coming to that cadre of veterans, and they seem to want to remind people that they, too, served with valor. Clearly, war and the fellowship bonds created by fighting side by side, imprint deeply and last a lifetime. Younger vets, especially women, carry themselves upright, and walk as though they still feel a Drill Sargent breathing down their necks.

          Observing the world helps me to get more out of it; to capture and store as much as I can inside me. Details are important; a raised eyebrow, a sigh, a sideways glance, a slumped shoulder, a plodding step, how we dress, how we hold ourselves, can be observed and interpreted. Writers need to notice so they have a storehouse of human behavior tucked away for future stories. But even if you’re not a writer, being an observer of human behavior—others and your own—deepens your life experience, adds significant awareness of what makes us tick, what motivates us. So that, like Thoreau “sucking out all the marrow,” when you reach the end of your life you will be fat with information and understanding. “You are not here long,” so enjoy all that your senses, and your heart, provide.

                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                  Jane