Neighbourhood watching becomes daily noticing of the ordinary as it transforms into a tableaux caught in time with a cobalt blue canopy above. Van Gogh called it, “a divine colour and there is nothing so beautiful for putting atmosphere around things…"
Like the postcard on my noticeboard of La Place Teniers in Antwerp by Henri De Braekeleer, I am that woman sitting staring out onto the street, with my hand resting gently on the sill and the breeze blowing the nets ever so lightly and the old sash banging against itself with the sway.
The street below is as silent as the square with no outside sound except for a young man mounting his bicycle for his daily tour de France and a child running along with her mother, as if all were normal.
Across the way she lets him in, with an air kiss, after his jog and her few minutes of solitude are broken.
Neighbourhood watching becomes daily noticing of the ordinary as it transforms into a tableaux caught in time with a cobalt blue canopy above. Van Gogh called it, “a divine colour and there is nothing so beautiful for putting atmosphere around things…"
How I used to hang out of this very window at thirteen, wanting so much to be out there on the street with those others who seemed to know how to have fun, floundering in unsure girlhood.
Now I relish the blessed solitude, so long craved, which I no longer need to carve out of days full of busy and doing and routine.
No longer keeping the peace, I am that peace. Freed up from all the domestic pretence, where I used to bare my soul to the kitchen sink and rage at the pots and pans, thinking myself subversively subservient, when in fact I was choosing to deny myself.
The freedom gained is only now six months down the line being made clear to me, as I am confined within my old teenage bedroom again but this time I hold the key and sense the same rebellion rise up and recognize it for what it is – my scared duty to be myself.
Sarah O’Mahoney works at the Barnes Bookshop and volunteers at The Feminist Library and feels like it’s her second home. She has always had a very healthy interest in what makes women tick and how our menstrual cycle holds the key. She Tweets at @goodbeingagirl and blogs here.
