Worlds Within

When I was a child, one of my stranger habits was how much I enjoyed looking into others' windows at night while driving by. I remember certain ones vividly-- ones where there were Christmas trees, portraiture, glass cabinets, and what often fascinated me most of all, real curtains. Those people were clearly important. It wasn't until I got older that I encountered neighbourhoods with stained glass, shutters, and the like. Those moments where, maybe my family was at a stoplight or had to slow down, I got to catch a glimpse of those private other worlds. Worlds where people met for meals, sat and talked, or reclined in the silence to read books or recline together... And they all had different feelings that came with them.

When I was a young adult, I began to make a joke that I wanted to live in a shack someday, where from the outside one might never suspect that inside, with the pull of a lever, one could enter a whole world of some sort of Old World warmth and splendour. I still think it's a cool idea, symbolically. I also still hope that someday I'll spend my physical days in a cottage, with a sweet country garden, but it is fine appearing as such inside and out. I have found that I do not need or desire much to be happy, as long as it is full. Of meaning, of love. Shabby books that spent their evenings with others before me; traded preserves, and ink for letters to friends and God. 

I confess that nowadays I still have a bit of a habit of allowing my glances around in this childlike manner, on occasion, imagining what life or a visit there would feel like... What is it like waking up there, after that overnight conversation on their couch? But rooms have become emptier, and colder. At least they're not flickering with the light of TVs anymore, but the blue, steady light of LEDs seems almost more nefarious. I wonder if I am reaching for a world that may no longer exist here, or maybe never did. Then the question becomes: do I go somewhere to find it, or do I bring it with me, and plant new seeds in this desert? Perhaps nothing has been lost, but planted, and the seeds have been inside my little shack all along.