reflections

18-04-20

There was something slightly offensive about the pungent smell of a woman’s perfume above or below me. There is also a subtle but pervasive foul smell of mildew or stagnant water. Someone occasionally smokes a cigarette and that acrid smell then finds its way, drifting around my space (”my space” hah). A few weeks ago, I, by accident, dropped a “torchon” on the windowsill of the crazy woman below me and it’s still there, in the same spot. There was a little girl down below playing with her marble who locked eyes with me for the first time and cast me a confident and knowing glance. It was 3 seconds of profound connection, as if we had already crossed paths in some previous existence and somehow, she knew exactly where we both were heading. A word that repeatedly springs to mind throughout all this is “conformity” - conformity of thought, conformity of opinion, conformity that you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing - as I once said to a friend: “You’re checking off the right boxes.” There is a woman sitting on her lawn chair right now. There is nothing that prevents me from standing up here and staring down at her indefinitely. I don’t have a garden. I don’t have a terrace. I don’t have anything. I’ll just proudly claim this stillness and nothingness... for only a few more moments.