19 May The tree is a veil

Today the view is bright and warm. Sitting inside behind the window looking down over the park, I can see through the dark tree to legs walking through cold sun. The needles are thinner at the base and through that veil I can see people beginning to walk together again. Two people striding, off to work in the courthouse, out for a cigarette break. They are lawyers discussing a case, friends meeting awkwardly for their first regular coffee in weeks, politicians discussing policy, lovers meeting after weeks of being kept apart and under isolation with their respective families. Not tourists yet though. None of my images show this. The tree as backdrop to other lives, veil to other lives and places. It’s not so dense in this light, it’s protection so I can eavesdrop. Like the movie Rear Window, it is voyeuristic – I can view and not be viewed. The tree is a screen, a protection on a day like today. Benign and green, it’s become merely an object. Watching the outside world from on high, I’m inside a camera obscura. The light pierces in not through a pinhole, but in the mean spaces between venetian blinds.