My brain is disconnected from the rest of me, looking out the window from some mid-level floor of a nondescript Midtown office building–it’s 9am and the snow looks like it’s drifting upwards, even though it clearly fell from the clouds overhead moments ago. I force my eyes to stop trying to focus on the individual flakes, the edges of everything gets a bit fuzzy-like the bad basic cable reception on my grandparents’ old TV. With my eyes relaxed it’s easier to take in the movement outside. There are enough windows up here that even without focus, my brain creates it’s own clear field of vision, glossing over the forced line breaks where chunks of big white wall run from floor to ceiling. This could have been an amazing panoramic view, had some architect not felt the need to turn this place into your typical high-rise.
The similarity of this to any given goldfish’s worldview cannot be ignored. Watching all the nasty particles of meals unfinished and those already thoroughly digested swirling through the tepid water until it settles somewhere below a bulb-eyed field of vision–what would it really be like to see through a fish eye 24/7, anyway? Does it really look like that obnoxious lens every kid uses on their pricey Canon Rebel for party photos? I’ll never know, not like I can ask. Too bad.
From a window on the opposite end of the room, I can see the wind is blowing the fluff-flakes on a leisurely horizontal course. It’s hard to consider that the flakes won’t look like imperfectly pulled apart cotton balls once they make their way all the way to the pavement below. The buildings both near and far look like pop-up book pieces against such a flat gray backdrop, every ornate copper edifice green from the elements, the carefully crafted stonework making eloquent filigree shapes that are never seen except by a building’s neighbors. Who are those types of decorations for, anyway? The people inside the building or those stationed on the upper floors closest to it?
Surely in a few months the desire to smash my face against the glass and drink it all in with my eyes will subside. My brain will follow through with it’s pre-programmed need to adapt to new places, people and things the piles of stonework surrounding me will no longer merit my attention. I doubt anyone but the night cleaning crew will notice the increase in nose prints on the windows, anyway.