Dreaming from my Window Above

Dreaming from my 

Window Above

Could she be a world famous author? I could see her from my window on the world.  From this window overlooking the ocean, the view was not of cars hurrying and crowded rows of houses, but a world of flat, shimmering calm water, rocks swimming out from the low cliff.

Each day I watch as she walks the beach to a large outcropping of rocks laid bare by low tide.  As she strolls, she bends over as though to begin an exercise.  Rising gracefully, she stops, purposefully stretches her arm back, gaze on the water. Suddenly, her arm snakes forward.  Following the sudden movement with my own gaze, I see tiny splashes of foam rise up from the calm ocean.  “She’s skipping stones!”  

From my elevated distance, her age is indistinguishable. In miniature, her stature disguised. A teenager? An adult? But of what age? An aura of calm....possibly someone older? Measured steps suggest maturity.  Dark lenses glint when her face turns to the sun. 

I watch this tranquil scene until nudged by the intrusion of the beep-beeping of my wristwatch. Reluctantly, pulling my eyes away from the beach, I review and re-enter the day’s schedule.  

But was she a world famous author?  I don’t really know.  The only thing I know is that when she reaches the giant log wedged against the low cliff, she sits down. Arranging herself, she becomes engrossed in something on her lap. I recognize the posture.  

In a similar posture, at my desk, I write interminable reports and memos. Head bowed, arms resting on the desk's edge, hands holding my work; I stop briefly to stare at nothingness searching for the next right word or phrase.  

The difference?  She sits on a bare log, on the beach and in the sun.  I sit in air conditioned comfort in an ergonomically correct chair, behind a solid oak desk. Dreaming at my living room window at home, overlooking ocean, beach, and tide, I see a very different reason to write. 

At my broad oak desk, I write for someone else.  Up here in my ivory tower, I will write for my own pleasure. 

“So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable,

and then when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.”

~ Christopher Reeves