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↑ Photo by Caio from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/apartment-complex-in-the-evening-with-lights-on-12617920/
Stolen glimpses through uncurtained windows at dusk show many different kinds of normal. Live webcams of animals around the world remind me that my Now isn’t the only one.
When dusk falls families gather, lights go on. Sometimes I go walking at this time of the day and get see the golden glow spilling out onto the street from houses who haven’t yet closed their curtains.
My eyes are both drawn to and repelled from this sight. Drawn towards the comforting homeliness of it and the fascination of seeing how other people live, repelled by a sense of propriety. I want to be a trusted neighbour, not a voyeur!
And so I walk on, eyes averted, savouring the brief glimpse of someone else’s life and the reassurance of the utter normality of it. In these stolen moments I’ve seen structure and disarray, productivity and leisure, and I love it. All of it.
Reality TV isn’t the same. It’s not real, most of the time, because behaviours change when people know they’re being watched. But animals? Animals are different! The human societal boundaries around watching families live their lives don’t apply.
We can see birth, death, and all that lies between them with the press of a button, all carefully documented, curated, narrated. I’ve watched my fair share of documentaries. I appreciate the work behind them and the way they help to broaden my perspective of the world. It’s amazing to think that the technology that makes it all possible only came about in my lifetime.
How blessed are we to be able to ‘walk’ down many of the streets in the world with Google Earth, see the wildest of animals interact through the lens of a telephoto camera, and watch natural environments via 24/7 webcams!
The latter is my latest fascination. The ability to observe animals at a water hole in Namibia (h/t Jorge Sanz for the link), or badgers, birds and foxes in someone’s backyard in Denmark, makes me want to mount my TV on the wall as a piece of living art.
It would be a miraculous display of slowly moving, unassuming, undocumented, uncurated life beyond my home, neighbourhood, and country. A piece of Now that looks different to my Now. A reminder that I’m part of something bigger than what’s immediately around me.
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