“The Open Window”

The Red Kerchief by Claude Monet

‘A window to jump into, not out of.’

I thought that a few days prior, after a walk I’d had. There’s a certain house in my neighborhood that, from the time I was little, has never closed its curtains. Not once. Nothing ever changes except the lights. Off in the daytime, on in the night. Surely evidence of someone living there, but never have I seen anyone in it. A home entirely changeless, entirely personless.

I used to think I was the only one interested in keeping tabs on the house as I walked or drove by, but this isn’t the case. Its plainness is the spectacle of the neighborhood. Everyone who comes near cranes their neck in an effort to obtain that exhilarating 5-second glance into this mysterious house as they pass down the street. The desire to see into a life is, in itself, a desire to understand your own, a constant barrage of checks and balances to the tune of, ‘Am I normal?’ 

These are the things I think about.

Most of the time, a perfect, changeless home would make me come to the undesirable conclusion that I am, as suspected, not normal. However, this house—this morgue, is the exception. Its strange, sterile beige-ness reminds me of hospital rooms, aloneness, and a certain wallpaper just yellow enough to conjure madness. And the bowl, that sinister bowl.

The room is dated. It’s been the same for twenty-four years, perhaps forever. Part of me believes it exists outside of time and space. Against the wall in the living room sit two empty chairs facing the street outside, a small table between them. Nothing has ever moved. Nothing added, nothing taken away. In short, when the world is reduced to nothing but ash, the house will remain, and the invisible eyes within those motionless chairs will continue to gaze onward at ruins they had time to expect.

Where we have limited tenure, the house has none.

The other day, on my walk, however, I noticed something so entirely shocking I sped up a bit for fear that seeing it alone could be a harbinger of doom. There on the table between those changeless beige chairs was a particularly assaulting, bright purple bowl. The complete antithesis to everything around it. Its inner lining, a sickening neon green.

While the consistent lack of something should make you entirely expectant of nothing at all, it somehow seems more likely for something entirely out of the ordinary to occur in an utterly ordinary room. 

We always look in the window. The open window.

There are things you wait for. Is this waiting not confirmation that anything can happen?

Sometimes, I wonder if everyone who looks in the window sees something different. The house with no one in it, a mirror perhaps. The purple bowl with neon green lining—red with pink lining for someone else. Maybe, horror of horrors, it’s not even a bowl.

Does it mean something? Am I the only one thinking this? 

How do you decorate with a purple bowl? You think you understand something, someone, and suddenly, an ugly bowl with neon lining just appears. It doesn’t go with anything you have. It’s the only thing you see. Suddenly, everything revolves around the bowl. 

How does it happen? When does it happen? Will therapy teach you to hide the bowl in the pantry? Get rid of it entirely? Maybe smash it into a million pieces.

One wonders. 

 “I can change—I am capable of change,” the bowl hums. “I am not for everyone, but I am for you.” 

‘I’ll get a better look at this bowl the next time I pass by,’ I thought. ‘I will not be afraid.’

Today, walking past the house with no one in it, the bowl was gone.