The Window - a barrier and a link

OK, so I have to write something really original and exciting about windows. No, not MS Windows®, the one that single handedly enriched my vocabulary of 4 letter words in the past 15 years and finally lead me to the industrial design marvels of Steve Jobs.

Not that window. It is that old, little, witty design that has managed the impossible for millennia: separating two sides of the world at the same time when providing a link…, no, rather a portal, between those two worlds. The visual information freely crosses the window, the barrier between me and the outside, without crashes and rebooting, and sets off all kinds of sensation in my mind. I hear the chatter of the lark surging toward the sky on the meadow behind our back window; smell the spring flowers as I amaze their sudden appearance in the garden on the first warm spring day; feel the silky smoothness of the brand new, semitransparent, red blouse of the neighbor girl as she passes by my office window on the way for her first rendezvous; taste the Jerry Garcia flavor as I marvel at the ice cream making on a factory tour; hear the hammering of the heavy machinery at the newly erected skeleton of a skyscraper across the street from my hotel room – OK let’s forget about the hammering…-

Yes, the window that manages to separate and connect at the same time with such ease! A simple invention, the caliber of the wheel, that served humanity in so many different ways from the lookout of ancient people to defend themselves to the peephole of the submergible “Trieste” that allowed, for its two… hhmm shall we say lunatic?.. occupants, to preview the deepest underwater point on Earth in the Mariana Trench at 10915 m.The window that makes me wonder what lies behind as we pass by old houses in narrow, windy streets; that makes me pause for its sheer beauty when the window seal is decorated with burning red geranium; the stern, grated holes of the penitentiary center with their sinister look as I drive by them on the highway or the dazzling glass palaces of city downtowns with their grandiose windows mirroring the sky like the ocean on a windless day.

Yes, the window can do all that. But the best it can do is, separate while connecting. If we could just learn this from the window. If we could just learn to apply this simple principle of being separated yet connected, to the many other aspects of life: living with our next door neighbor, being born with a certain color or gender preference, liking indy music or Teleman, enjoying old black and white American movies or the latest Hollywood action farce, having a certain religion or pursuing a political agenda,

yes…, mostly for religion and politics!