Pulling Back the Curtains
When I go on walks in the late afternoon, when my workday has come to an end and I am walking off the weight of the day, the windows in my neighbourhood are lighted as everyone around me arrives home after their workday, and settles in for the night. I keep my eyes peeled for dogs out on their evening walks, and smile at the fearless squirrels in the park, and glance at the windows, glowing yellow in the snapping air of winter. In the summertime, the windows are dark because everyone is out, enjoying the park or playing in the back lane or sitting out on their front porches, but in winter, the streets are empty, the houses are full, and the lights are on. I count the number of windows I see that have the same curtains I do in my windows. You know the ones - they’re white, translucent cotton, with vertical lines and little machine-embroidered dots by way of texture, and yes, they do come from the giant, flat-pack home goods store that rhymes with idea. Sometimes, the ubiquity of these curtains irks me. When I return home, I glare at the ones hanging in my windows, and wish I had something more interesting or unique. But then I remember that my best friend, who lives many thousands of miles away and who, if I’m lucky, I get to see once or twice a year, has those curtains, too.
The more I examine objects from the past, the more I keep coming back to two thoughts. The first is that humans have been spending most of our time trying to solve the same problems, again and again, in different ways and with varying levels of success. We’re trying to get enough good food, stay warm and look good, avoid bad weather, and bump along with each other - everything else is extra. But the second thought that usually follows this one is that there aren’t really solutions: just trade offs. My curtains are the same as everyone else’s, and come from a massive global corporation. I have no connection with the person who made them (or, more likely, the person running the machines that made them), or even the people who sell them. In exchange for that distance, though, I get a cheap product (in all senses of that word) that I can find just about anywhere in the world, and that, should the need arise, I can replace at a moment’s notice. And that availability means that lots of other people have them, too, which, in a way, connects me with people all over the world. They may not be especially good curtains, but their ubiquity - the very thing I sometimes find frustrating about them - is their selling point.
And there are lots of things like this - global soda brands that are basically the same everywhere, so universal and available that their branding is iconic and their absence more unusual than their presence. You could say the same thing about mass-printed books, with the same type face and number of pages and words in the same order. We readily accepted these products because they were, and are, cheap, available, and best of all, predictable. And they connect us - I smile a little at the person on the bus reading the same copy of a book as the one on my shelf, and there can be comfort in buying a familiar can of soda from a vending machine when we find ourselves far from home. But perhaps, as we flung our arms wide to embrace these products, we let go of other things - specificity, personal expression, local identity, skills, and the handmade. See what I mean? No solutions: just trade offs.
This afternoon, when I go out for my daily walk, I’ll think differently about those white curtains hanging in other people’s windows. Maybe I’ll think of my friend, or imagine some of the other homes where these curtains hang, and try to appreciate them for what they are. I think, though, that the feeling of having lost something, of having realised that loss too late, will be hard to shake.
Jennifer