How clear is our window to the world?

Good Morning Last Day of 2015.  Tomorrow the calendar clicks over into 2016.  Shall we go in?  Our hand is on the knob and it's turning.  Just a few more hours to go!  Oh sure, why not?

After a long intentional break from writing, it's good to sit down and reflect on the passages of the last 8 weeks.  

In November I took a break from writing, after the Paris attacks, in order to allow that event, and others, to penetrate deeply enough to create a life change.  Just when I was ready to get back in the saddle, San Bernardino happened - that shooting taking place quite close to home, a mere 15 minute drive east up the 210 freeway across Pasadena, where I reside most of the year.

This post isn't about terrorism, politics, animation, homelessness, gender, inspiring stories or media. The world swirls around us, day in and day out in an unstoppable round robin of breathing in and out.  This is how it should be.  Taken all together, I would rather be here than not.

This post is about a small window in my LA home - half of which is covered by a much needed (in the summer) regular old window screen.    The other half isn't.  It's not a big deal, not a fancy window, not an expensive window, not an expensive screen.  Just a plain window on one side, with a screen on the other.    You can open the side with the screen on it.  Simple.

So I'm lying in bed one morning, looking out the window before getting up and I see the screen on the window....I'm just kind of staring at it they way you do before you decide to focus your eyes.  It's blurry and dusty and I see the big tree outside swaying in the breeze.  I can see the tree but the screen is grey and blurred out, just kind of a grey film over the tree.  You've all done that....let your eyes focus in and out while you are just kind of staring at something.   

"Huh", I think, "that's funny, the clear side of the window makes me think of old fashioned 35mm film - capturing images on its emulsion with no pattern - just floating layers of emulsion responding to light wave after light wave.  The other side, the one with the screen on it, makes me think of computer animation, pixels defining each point of light, cutting the image into segments, like the way the screen defines the scene outside the window by overlaying a grid pattern on it.  Huh  funny."

Next I'm sitting in the kitchen, and there it is again, a window with the same configuration. OK, this isn't rocket science.  Windows have screens.  But again, I'm thinking about the two windows side by side, one clear and open, the other with the grey and dusty screen with its little squares, neatly dividing what I can see.

Well, this goes on, obviously, until I'm staring at every window in the house and contemplating the two sides - which every window has of course.  I'm thinking about those screens, about those little squares until I can't really think about anything else.   You see where this is going.

Because I know that our minds are like that.

Every moment I have a choice - will I look out at the world, or inwards towards myself through the clear window, or will I slid a screen into place, clicking grids into position in order to process, make sense of, judge, limit, define my experience?  Which is it?

At this point, this imagery and my new found obsession with the window screens is pretty much dominating my free time.  I'm consumed with the metaphor and reviewing aspects of my life, communication style, emails, Facebook posts, resumes, job hunts and wondering how I can get more and more of my life into the clear window space. 

I'm thinking about windows and screen and seeing them everywhere like you do when you have to buy a new car and all you see is the model you just test drove.  I didn't know there were so many dark green Honda hybrids on the road until I test drove one.

Anyway, this obsession with the screens and the windows and the grids just wont let up.  It was kind of like getting smacked in the face with a truth that once it takes hold just pretty much replaces old thinking.  In some ways, it's not particularly deep.  Yea, we all have our thought patterns, our ways of making sense of experience.  But lately, I've been feeling this very intensely - they way we do violence to one another, not only in the terrible obvious ways, but in the little tiny grid patterns we overlay over our loved ones, family members, friends and children.  They way we carve up our love into bite sized pieces that we can chew and swallow in order to simply deal with it all.

I've been actively in the job market for about 5 months, since I relocated to LA and taking my big alive clear window self and carving it up into smaller bite sized pieces that I want someone to hire.  That's normal.  I've been consulting and working but always looking for that 9 to 5 situation.   Maybe staying, big, wide open and clear - well, maybe that's old school, it's 35mm film emulsion living.  

Back to the window and screen.  

This small story this morning ends with my once again waking up, now as I do each morning, staring at that small window, back and forth, back and forth, thinking about living fully in full color, and then switching to living through the grid pattern, back and forth, my eyes glancing from the tree to the window to the screen.  At some point I reach up, and slide open the window even though it's only 40 degrees outside..

Now there is just the screen, no window pane between me and the big tree in the cold wind.  After about 10 minutes, I get up, grab my coffee and go outside.  

Now there is no window at all, no screen, no back and forth.  No contemplation, no waiting.  Just doing.  I'm walking down the block to find the tree that's outside my window three flights up.  Here it is.

Now there is no division between me and the tree.  I'm freezing.  It's cold, here is the tree.  Here am I.

I put my hand on the tree.

I feel it, thank it.  Now there is nothing between me and the tree.  Just us, in the cold.  It's windy.  The tree is tall.  I see it.  I touch it.  It's cold.  There are birds, there is wind, there is the sun, there is the sky.  

It's 2016 soon - Let's go into that time grid.....There will by 365 tiny days, carving up our experience.  The doorknob is turning, click, it's time.  Tiny bites of time.

The tree doesn't know what time it is, and right now neither do I.  That's about right and right where I want to be.

Peace in the "New Year".