by hand by measure by hour we are asked to choose how much to see of the world

Window blinds … well named. We stay in a place where the blinds are embedded in the windows, a fierce protection against the fierce light. Every one of the blinds must be hand turned in one little corner to open, a dial to open the lids to the sky.

Is there anything else I need to figure out? Is there anything else that’s needed as the thin weak fire morning sun comes through the tops of windows long lidded – by hand by measure by hour we are asked to choose how much to see of the world.

Mostly, I choose to cocoon. It could be a prison house, how strange it is to be kept from the friluftsliv (free-air-life). I shut out the smoke from the fire, and also the butte and mountains. I shut out the birds, the spreading oak. It takes so much energy to run through the home, every window, and open the sky, or pull down the air.

Conferences: I come to beautiful places then engage in strange rituals of sitting, hour on hour, in rooms without windows. In one, only the top corner of the room reveals the friluftsliv-freeairlife. Released from eight in thirteen days of full-day room-being,

Is it an affront to the windowless body to get up and dance for a minute, then immediately sit back and have people talk for hours in room tombs?

May 22, 2012