Projection

Open your eyes, the sun has come out. A stream of cars whirrs down Haverstock Hill. The cars disappoint, the cars disturb. You want unfettered quiet but the pedestrian crossing perennially beeps. People don’t smile. They seem involved, rushed, too proud to acknowledge. The trees’ fringes are flushed with light. The leaves rustle in the breeze. The branches sway and move whilst the leaves just twitch. The sunlight comes all the way through onto the white stucco of the tops of the buildings past the trees; it doesn’t relent.  These are people’s homes somehow holding life behind their staunch keep-out walls.  The wind cannot disperse the light on the buildings, only the trees. You can always hear engines, always whooshes. Infrequent sirens. When each car emerges from the hidden point behind the bushes, it is an intrusion. Like the single-file humans inhabiting the pavements: cold, fixed, forward, stiff, guarded, tetchy. 

 You can see people in their houses though, unguarded. You can see what they do. You see them under the glass roof of their extensions. You see them at rest when alone: safe, secure, bordering on the convivial. You feel for them since you might very well be seeing yourself. You see how they move around without tension, fixity, without a  pre-ordained style. How they just shuffle here, there, talking, eating, doing something trivial on their phones. Slung out perhaps in some slack position on their couch. You see the rag-doll/Persian perched on the wall. You can see someone wander into the garden and maybe pick something up then move out of view. There might be a voice. A cursory dog-bark. 

People are living, doing such trivial but oh such precious things.

You fancy that people don’t sit and keep still, don’t ever contemplate. You wonder, perhaps, what they do do then. And you wonder then what your friends are doing behind their myriad personal WhatsApps in their homes, those you’ve seen recently and those you haven’t for so many years. You imagine them happy but then you think they might be troubled, even sad.  In conflict. You wonder how so many people can be doing things, all with a full and thirsty heart, all doing and looking for the next thing to fill them up, to placate them. You wonder at all the weathers and times but you only see the engorging evening sun of Hampstead. You see the branches rock and tremble, trying to hold their own in the wind. You see the delicate finger-whips of the cirrus. The sky is so pure, so vulnerable to losing its light. You see the distant chimney stacks. And still this golden glow, now, setting up a crispness, you imagine.

  When there are no voices, it is a sort of bliss. But it is also sad. Lonely. It is an emptiness. It is so serene. You can just behold. It is asking if you can appreciate the light and the flickering and the shadows without adornment. It is asking for you to switch off your comforting screens. It is something you are so in awe of and want to share, something so sacred. You feel that the people can’t see it, being so closed and one-directional. You feel that. Yes, maybe you do really feel it.