The Window

For this blog entry, I’m focusing on windows–primarily, my office window at work–& how its view soothes & provides me with mini-forays into nature, even if I cannot find time outside. Maybe it’s just me, but I have to believe I’m not the only introvert with anxiety who finds a kind of escape when gazing out of a window–especially a window with a view. In memory, there are a number of windows that I fondly recall, windows where I sleepily gazed or daydreamed away. Windows like my bedroom window from Prospect Street, the turret window from my room in the Round House in Rockport, even windows looking down at the Garden Quad at Gonville & Caius in Cambridge or a Roman window that showed an ancient cobblestone road below. Windows offer portals to other worlds.

I suppose that like Prufrock’s measuring his life in coffee spoons, I could measure my own life in windows & views as snapshots of different segments of my life.

As the seasons change here in Utah, my office window keeps providing kaleidoscopic panoramas which display an ever-changing mountainous landscape, constantly altered by weather & season. And I never grow tired of looking at the Wasatch Mountains. They truly are quite a visual & geological marvel, & they remind me of their longevity, incredible age, existence beyond any comprehension of time. When green, I think of the Napali Coast of Kauai, most famously depicted in Jurassic Park from aerial vantage points. When snow-capped, these mountains remind me of the Swiss Alps.

Maybe it’s that earth &rock as elements seem eternal & permanent, even though they truly aren’t? A kind of metaphor for life, I guess.

Provided the years of cubicle life I experienced in my previous career positions, I certainly don’t take my current office view for granted. Maybe that’s why I take so many pictures & share these mountains with others via social media channels? I suppose that on some level I hope to connect with other introverts with anxiety, to offer strategies & hope & even attempt to normalize the challenges we commonly face.

Likely, there’s some kind of symbolism manifesting in a room-with-a-view mentality I’ve nurtured ever since seeing that 1985 film for the first time in 1996, in the middle of the night. I had borrowed the VHS tape from a coworker & friend at the plant where I was a machinist, assembling computer circuit boards during 2nd shift to put myself through undergrad. At that time, traveling to Italy or even going on a plane for that matter seemed so out of reach for me in an economically depressed former NH mill town.

And I’d been obsessed with literary figures like Rapunzel or The Lady of Shalott, forever gazing upon worlds that simply passed them by.

Thus, it feels a little like Working Girl for me to now have this office view to enjoy. Time keeps slipping through the hourglass, grain by grain, even after years of travel & milestones & life events. And I still feel like that little girl in the Round House turret, waiting for life to begin, forever dreaming away & imagining different worlds, stories, circumstances. I think this must be an INFJ curse, to live in our heads more than in our lives. But what can be done about it?

And it’s not like I think myself so special. I look at the brilliant minds around me at work, & I feel dwarfed, miniaturized by their intelligence & ability to excel in every facet of their lives–while I can only throw all of my energy into one thing at a time. The curse of the Libra is to always be seeking balance but rarely, if ever, attaining it. So, I guess I’ll console myself with such window views in the meantime, during my Sisyphusean struggle called life, watching the storms roll in & dissolve away.

6 thoughts on “The Window

  1. This is probably the most beautiful post I’ve seen in a while. The window offers an escape from things that we cannot get away from in our own minds or even in the moment. And the wonderful thing about looking at those windows is that were able to find some kind of clarity maybe and connecting with the amazing beauty that mother nature is offering us at that time. No matter what it is. I think that the infj brain can find beauty in the sunniest of days and the darkest of storms. It appeases all aspects of our mind. But to live in our head is something that we are extremely bersten. And I do the same thing, sitting outside or looking out a window and trying to feel the connection so that I can escape from different parts of my brain. And to be successful in things is a desire and finding balance is the key and yet being able to focus on one area is what happens to me. I try to find the balance but it’s challenging and when I don’t find it I feel as though I’m inadequate in some area. And that’s a struggle. But this post offers views through those windows that allowed me a little bit of an escape from my current thoughts, mental trappings, or whatever you want to call them. Quite a beautiful post, visually and written.

  2. Wonderful views! And interesting musings about the need for windows. Though I was pretty well adjusted when I was a child, and did well in school, I would not have made it if I couldn’t have stared out the windows with great frequency. It saved me, I think. 🙂

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