Proof that I'm not Proust

Perhaps I live in a Hardboiled Wonderland of some sort. Today, I saw a woman carrying a window going into the T station. It was a small square window, about 16''x16'', a wooden frame painted white with paint that has been scratched off at parts. The window was divided into four, and the four square glasspanes were in place. Where did she get that from? Where did she come from? Where was she going to? Where can I get a window as well?

I have never read Proust. I never made it past page 1, even in the English version. But I have read stories about him, and one of the things about him was how he didn't like newspapers. The stories were always too brief, too to-the-point. But what were the details of the crime? What were they thinking? What were they doing before? Who else was there? That sort of questions. Yet, he adored reading train schedules, imagining the exciting places that people travel to, the train picking up all sorts of passengers. I don't know if I agree about the newspaper bit -- newspapers are boring, and I'm not fond of tiny irrelevant details. But that thing about train schedules, now that is something all together different.

I like looking at maps, tracing the roads connecting cities to cities, the subway stops to other subway stops, the airplane hubs interlinked with airplane hubs. It's imagining places, people, dreams and goals. Walking around in unknown neighborhoods, wondering what lies behind those walls, wondering what I can see through the windows if I peep. Sometimes I do. It's riding in a train, wondering how the next stop looks like, looking at the people riding with me. At night, it's seeing the passing glow of windows against dark buildings and wondering who was there. It's about being there, yet being anywhere but there. Time and place are of no consequence when you're in the time warp of space travel, except if you lack a romantic soul.

The places I love the most are those whose streets I have walked on, whose concrete pavements I tried to wear out with my shoes. There is no need to plant a flag to proclaim that you have arrived; the land that you walk on is yours.

But back to the window. There was an old man who lived in the house behind my apartment back in Berkeley. I could see his living room through the window of my bathroom. And when I brushed my teeth at night, I could look beyond the screen and the tree to see him seated at his table reading the newspaper. I looked at him for two years. I noticed when he installed a computer in the living room. I've seen how it was when he finished reading the papers and left. I've seen him settle down to read his newspaper. The room was always glowing with soft light and the warm tones of wood. It was a different world than mine.

Certainly, I am not Proust. This is all I have to say about a window.