Outside the window to my Home Office is a view of 65th street somewhere in the Bensonhurst neighborhood in Brooklyn. It rained outside, with the cars rollng and splashing the rain from the road. I see a bunch of buildings with shops in the first floor, and homes in the second. Well, I saw an insurance office, a driving school, a shoe store, and a couple of old repair shops. Cars are always parked in front of the block across my home.

Winter cold keeps the pressed paper and thin bamboo strip curtain rolled down, backlit a soft white. Gentle warm summer finds a screen in the bottom half, small bees occasionaly negotiate their way between the layered thin metal grids that allow it to fit windows of varying sizes. These bees are placed under a jar, slid paper underneath, walked outside. The view through the top depends so much on how you aim yourself. Laying in bed breeze passing over, looking up passes through yellow green leaves of the walnut tree outside which are tangled lightly in a tandem of jet dark power lines. Light blue, occasional clouds sneak in between the leaves. From a sitting position the chip-sealed pot holed curbless road is visible along with parked cars on the road into which it terminates. Directly across is a very cute pink stucco house which belongs to my very aging neighbor Hilma. There used to be several other houses in the view, the university purchases and levels. Slightly sad about deconstructing neighborhoods, it is nice in the meantime while it opens small well trimmed grass fields to play and picnic in.

Trees. Moss. A big-ass dorm with a penchant for fire alarms.
I don't sleep in here, but sometimes I stay up all night noding or journaling or writing letters studying or aching, and I see the sun come up.
Usually a misnomer as the sun doesn't visit this corner of the world in the winter. The other morning I was surprised: saw green-gold rays stretch across the wet street, various joggers in their patriotic orange and black, some kids crawling into the computer lab in a bleary dead-weak panic.

a house.

a house with a wierd history, at that.

first, it was a grotty old nursing home. i remember once upon a time, my mum and my sister would take flowers over to the residents. but i think they all died off, and the home remained empty for a while.

then, the archdiocese of glasgow took over it for a year or two. the window opposite mine was an office.

a few years passed by, and lo and behold, renovation began. the house was separated from its neighbour - the ugly connecting passage was removed. and some south africans moved in. really nice people they were, too - but the job that brought them here disappeared, and so did they.

a couple rented the house for a few months, and then they left.

then a family, and they left

then, another family, who didn't really live there - there only seemed to be people around on occasional weekends (but they kept the garden looking nice)

and now? renovation continues, and there's a lot of money being spent. we think there's another family moving in. and after sixteen years in this house, there might be someone to wave to in the view from my room.