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Monday 6 August 2001
Quite unsurprisingly, my street
log has turned me into something of a peeping tom. Every
single person who walks by my window gets a good ogling from
me. Are they interesting enough to be the one drawing that
I do for the day? Do they look too much like yesterday's person?
Why don't more people smile? Why do so many people in Melbourne
wear black?
Up until last week I used to keep my blind
closed while I sat at my desk, only allowing a little peep
of sunlight to come in from behind it to remind me that there
was a day out there. Last Tuesday Anne came to visit and came
into my study. "Do you always have your blinds closed?"
she asked and only then did I realise what a waste of sunshine
and street life this was. My excuse was that the glare was
too much on my screen but the real reason (which was too lame
to say at the time) was because someone might see in...
heaven forbid!
So my blind is now open until it gets dark
out and I watch all sorts of people walk by. Mostly grumpy,
going somewhere in the cold kind of people, primary school
kids skipping and chatting loudly and the occasional local
identity like the grumpy old rocker, the beanie lady, the
shouty man and the guy who sings loudly (complete with a kind
of yodel in his voice) to his walkman with his baseball cap
perched way on top of his head.
So all was going fine, and my log was growing
slowly one day at a time when suddenly yesterday I realised
an old guy had stopped outside my window and was having a
good old look up at my window... He stood there for a while
bobbing his head around as he looked back and forth and I
didn't know whether to snap my blind closed or just keep on
working like nothing was going on.
He pretty soon got into his car with his
wife and left and I realised I didn't care at all. Who cares?
What's he going to see? A messy study and someone working
on their computer. Woo! Big Deal! Really, my life is like
that. I worry about something small for so long I don't even
think about it rationally anymore, it just becomes a part
of my routine. It ceases to be a worry, just a fact; "someone
will see in and that's bad". And then it happens I surprise
myself silly that I coped.
So the log
continues and I love looking at the sky. link
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