I think I have something about the passing of time. I love clocks. In our house when the children were growing up, the clocks were scattered all over the place and so nobody really got a clue of what a clock nut I am. When we moved to the condo where we have a penthouse unit, all on one floor once you get up here (but we do have our own elevator), it suddenly became very obvious because there were (ARE!) clocks all over the place. Of course, different clocks have different opinions of how fast time passes, so as we get close to the hour, those of the clocks that chime each pick their own time to start chiming. So the hour sort of goes on and on. And on.
But I didn’t start out to talk about clocks. I meant to talk about calendars, my passion for which is, I suspect, part of the same mental quirk. This last Christmas the Architect, in a stroke of brilliance, gave me, among other things, a calendar for my desk. Each day has a piece of artwork: in the last three days they have been a Tahitian landscape by Gauguin (1892), a detail from Caraveggio’s Rest on the Flight into Egypt (1603), and a French 15th century tapestry, The Lady and the Unicorn. But the recent one I loved the best was a domestic interior: L. Panteleev’s House in Murmanov (1913). The picture looks through the double doorway from one room to another. It looks as if it could be a log house, and the windows are uncurtained, but there are two chairs with arms that spiral down, a round table, a couch (I think — it’s on the far side of the table), and one wonderful small couch or large chair with upholstered sides as high as the back. I suppose the purpose was so that a person could sit sheltered from drafts. Outside the windows the world is white, with the general suggestion of bare branches. No sign of people, so you can inhabit the room, in your imagination, yourself!
I have no idea who L. Panteleev was, but I love looking at the picture and imagining what sort of life went on there. Or what my life might be in those rooms. I don’t know where Murmanov was, either, but 1913 was right around the period when the Russian empire crumbled, and I wonder if what I am looking like is a last view of what rural life was like before their world crashed in.
But I like all kinds of domestic interiors. I love Vermeer, not only for the sharp perfection of his images, but for the rooms and the life that seems to be going on just out of view. I got a book for my children that my granddaughter has just laid claim to — she’s five now — which shows a cross-section of an apartment house and everything that is going on in each of the rooms over the course of the day. Lucy seems to think that it’s a Where’s Waldo sort of book, where you have to find things. I just like imagining lives in each of those apartments. At one ambitious point in my life when I obviously had more time than I have now I started a cross-stitch effort which was to portray a doll house, and I looked at the pattern wistfully, again picturing life in those rooms. Unfortunately, apparently I didn’t have enough time to finish it even then and have no idea where it might be now.
I like being driven through neighborhoods just when it’s getting dark enough so that lights are turned on, but the curtains or blinds may still be open, and I can speculate about the snatches of life I see as we go past. This is why I have to be driven for this particular delight: if I were behind the wheel, we’d probably wind up in a ditch or scrunched into a tree because I was peering into houses instead of watching the road.
I’ve always excused this peculiarity in myself on the grounds that I’m a writer, which come to think of it is a great excuse for practically anything, but I wonder. Do other writers get fascinated by the glimpses we get of life as other people live it? Are lighted rooms and open windows a temptation to them, too? Do they, like me, find endless interest in the lives of other people however it’s portrayed?
Or am I just nosy?
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Just nosy….I’m kidding. I think as writers we have a thirst for picturing what is or what might have been about all facets of life.
I haven’t really thought about it in terms of peeking into windows necessarily, but I do color my world with what ifs or what woulds.
Example – My mom and I were driving past a football stadium edged by woods on one side. My mom says, “Look how pretty those woods are.” I say, “Great place for a sniper to park, get out shoot a few students and easily get away.” She looked at me and said, “You are so weird.” I said, “Nope, just a writer.”
That’s just how we roll.
I too think it’s a writer thing. So you are off the hook, Beppie! My example – I constantly find myself wondering what the person in front of me at the store is thinking, where they’ve been, what they’ve done. Why are they nervous and in a hurry? Why are they dressed like that? LOL Who’s waiting for them in the car? What are they going to do with that duct tape and rope? Ah! (Okay, it was craft glue and yarn. But you get the picture!)
I love all kinds of pictures. And calendars are my downfall. I have way too many of them just for the pictures.
Oh, goody! There are at least three of me walking around!
Amy, although my mind doesn’t run to those more violent kinds of events, I certainly spend a lot of time speculating on things. On people — when Geoff and I are out for breakfast on Saturday (our habit from the time the kids were old enough to open a box of cereal for themselves) I love looking at the people at the other tables, trying to guess relationships. Breakfast, even eaten out, is an intimate meal, don’t you think?
Melissa, we’ve been reading each other’s minds. Just as well we can’t read everybody else’s, isn’t it? Most of the time I’m sure they have the same kind of boring, routine thoughts that are running around inside my head when I’m doing boring, routine things..
Vicki, you’re my kind of people. This art calendar my husband gave me is the greatest. It has separate sheets of glossy heavy paper, 6″ by 7″ (I was inspired enough to go over to the Architect’s desk and find a ruler), with pictures on both sides. Comes in a plastic case, and apparently you go through half the year (not there yet) and then turn them all around and go through the other half with the back pictures. I’m loving it. Today is King Charles I of England Out Hunting with two servants and a magnificent horse. And what looks like a satin jacket and velvet pants. Ah, hunting just isn’t what it used to be.
Beppie, I am glad I am not the only one who gets carried away with my imagination. Yes, it has to be a writer thing. My imagination goes wild a lot. Sometimes, my mind seems to race with ideas from being around people, places, or things, and I have to write them down in a hurry. I live close to where my story takes place, and I go to the town quite often. That is when ideas start jumping all over the place!
Well, join the herd! One bit in one of Nora’s books, Born in Ice, has an really interesting portrait of a writer — he’s continually nosy, has no scruples about overhearing conversations and then asking a participant about them later, goes back and forth between chatty outgoing periods and insisting on being entirely alone for days at a time while he works. (Which a man can do, of course — it’s a little hard for us to hang the kids on a peg for the duration.)
Gave me the notion that maybe Nora knew what she was talking about –
Curiosity is part of human nature, I’m thinking. After all, what are most television shows but a glimpse into another person’s life. Whether fictional or real, people’s lives are fascinating and we can’t help but wonder and compare.
Nosy or curious? Maybe a little both… *grin*
Great post, Beppie!
Smiles,
Chiron O’Keefe
http://www.chironokeefe.blogspot.com