I don't know how far away I am from "home," only that such a place feels much further away from me than just distance in miles. What I speak of is something immeasurable that has slowly grown and spread within my own soul. I want so desperately to reach out and touch this place -- to travel to this place no matter how difficult and torturous the journey may become.
One thing that fills me with passion and excitement at night is looking into windows. I especially love peering into old windows of places long ago abandoned. The windows represent something very internal and romantic to my own plight in life. When I look at a window, my soul reaches further onward and visits a time and place where anything could have taken place. The window represents a portal to endless possibilities. While roaming the city late one night in a drunken stupor, I stopped and peered up at a very old building with a busted window. Rust had spread across the frame of the window like roots penetrating the depths of time into something long past. I stopped and just stood there, letting the window whisper tales of moments immortalized in the scriptures of time and space.
"Her name was Jeanette, she was seven years old when she stood on the other side of me. She would press her little hands against the window and just gaze out at the city. Her mother was all that she had when her father passed away shortly after she was born."
I sat down on the curb while deeply captivated by the window's continuing tale.
"She would press her hands against me every night while her short little breaths fogged my glass. The city lights filled her with excitement and dreams. She would look up at the stars and wish so deeply to visit other places far from here."
I looked up and saw the stars, too. There were hundreds at first but hundreds became thousands as my eyes adapted to the darkness.
"Her mother and little brother were her only family. In the early 1920's, cars were still considered a luxury that only the rich could afford. One night, she left me to run downstairs. She saw her friend standing across the street waving to her. She went out the front door and ran across the street towards her friend. A car struck and killed her -- I was powerless to do anything. I watched in absolute grief as she took her last breath. The only thing I had left of her were her hand prints on my glass."
The window grew silent as a cold wind brushed across my body. After decades upon decades of time's passage, no one knew of Jeanette or of her dreams. No one would ever remember or even know such a day existed, except that window. It was far older than most things in this city, yet every window I passed would whisper to me. Every window wanted desperately to tell me its stories of days long past.
I found a park bench and sat down and just stared down the long, empty street. It was 2:30am. Tears were forming in the corner of my eyes. I felt an aspect of time and space that I had never encountered before. Multiple layers of time began to pile themselves on my consciousness. Thousands of windows across the city were crying out for me to come and listen to their tales.
As I sat to listen, my heart opened up and took inside the endless echoes and emotional depths of a thousand loves, a thousand stories. I felt the city begin to creep deeper into my own psyche as the countless windows joined in unison to explain a far more richer and expansive view of the world.
"Let me tell you about the beautiful love between a man named David and his girlfriend Lisa. Let me tell you how they met for the first time behind my view -- the kisses that would ring out louder as the depth of their love grew."
Then another wanted to tell me the story of a mother who was sick with cancer -- a beautiful woman who was surrounded by her entire family on February 18, 1931 when she finally passed away.
"The tears that fell from the eyes of her 4 year old son were minuscule compared to the heavy rains that fall on the other side of me, yet the power and depth of his young heart was more brilliant and warm than the rays of the morning sun."
Story after story filled my heart with such powerful emotions and feelings. I realized how narrow and small my own life experiences were compared to the greater whole of humanity. I began to understand that there was a layer of reality far more expansive and inclusive to all human experiences and interactions. Suddenly I could see patterns in the world that left me speechless and frozen.
Another window spoke ...
"Jeanette's window told you of her passion for the stars, I am the window of the man who killed her with his car -- and now hear my story of his life."
And so it began -- a complex web of human experiences wove themselves together into a great cosmic tapestry of precious moments within my heart and mind. I was unable to move as I fell to my knees while in the deep throes of an intense spiritual experience.
As it all slowly came to an apex of clarity, I reached out and, for the first time in my life, felt a compassion infinite in magnitude and infinite in diversity. It was a window deep within a lucid dream that, for a fleeting moment, gave me a glimpse of God.
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