The View from Sylvia

Pick a window in your home and spend 10-15 minutes there looking outside. What do you see? What details are a part of this common view that you can give new attention to now?

Sylvia the cat perches on her bed and eyes the cars passing below with some disdain. The weekend’s snow has mostly melted, save for the edges of things—the curbs and chain-link fences where it accumulated after the plow came through. An icicle hangs from the back end of my beater, clinging to life under the gaze of the rush hour sun. I didn’t park within the lines, I notice with a gulp; I had to take my best guess in the midst of a wintry mix. Maybe that’s why the cat is judging.

There are frigid puddles polka-dotting the parking lot of the news station across the street. I wonder if they had to clear the satellites before the morning broadcast. I’ve seen them do it before. They set up a ladder and climb into each dish, painstakingly scooping out the snow with a large brush, looking like they’re struggling to find a comfortable position in a giant Papasan chair.

I’ve lived in this studio apartment for four years, embracing the charm of my century-old building (covered head-to-foot in ivy in the summers) but growing disenchanted by the lack of culture around it. Nothing is enticingly walkable. The nearest café closed years ago. I live within a concrete jungle, an industrial theme park of sad, identical-looking gray buildings and their even grayer surface lots. I need more than one hand to count the dumpsters in my line of sight. In the distance, I spy a busy car wash; beyond that, the off-ramp from two merging highways. It’s all built for cars, I realize. And save for that elusive summer ivy, there’s no green to be seen anywhere.

It was fine before quarantine. My small quarters encouraged me to get out, to explore, to go elsewhere, and to come back home sated and sighing. But now these walls are my reality. There’s no change to the scenery, just the hum of cars racing north on a one-way artery, away from the city and into the suburbs. Occasionally a squirrel climbs up to the second story and crosses my window. The elderly Sylvia has no interest in such antics. She sleeps on.

Perhaps it’s time to start packing again, to see what else is out there. Sylvia deserves a new view.