Five Thirty in the Morning

It is six o'clock. I am at the kitchen window. I can see the small park. I can hear cars on the road. The sky is grey and cold.

Six o'clock in the Evening

It is six o'clock.
I am at the kitchen window.
The sky is grey and orange at the same time.
The street is busy. People are coming home.
My neighbour's dog barks at every car.
A child is calling for her mother somewhere.
The light in the kitchen across the road comes on.
Someone there is also making dinner.
I am cooking rice. The pot makes a small noise.
The radio plays old songs in the next room.
This is my favourite hour of the day.
It does not last very long.

Five o'clock on a Sunday Afternoon

It is five o'clock on a Sunday in November.
I am at the small window of the back room, with a cup of coffee that is no longer hot.
The sky is the colour of weak tea — a pale brown-yellow that the autumn afternoon turns,
for about an hour, before the light goes properly.
The garden is empty. The neighbour's cat is on the wall opposite, considering something I cannot see.
A car passes, far away on the main road. Then nothing for some minutes.
The leaves on the small tree make a quiet sound when the wind moves them,
a sound like paper being slowly turned.
I do this most Sundays, although not always.
Sometimes I am out, or with friends, and the afternoon happens without me.
It happens, I have come to think, in roughly the same way it happens when I am watching.
The Sundays when I am here are not better. Just different.
The coffee is cold now. I will not drink it.
The light has nearly gone. I close the curtain, slowly, and switch the small lamp on.

Eleven o'clock at Night

It is eleven at night, and I am at the small window of the spare room.
The street outside is mostly quiet now, although someone is laughing on the corner —
walking home, I think, from somewhere they have enjoyed.
The street lights are the orange-yellow that street lights are at this hour,
the colour I associate, without being able to explain why,
with the particular feeling of having stayed up later than I planned.

There is a cat on the wall opposite. It has been there for about ten minutes.
It is not particularly looking at anything. It is, I think, just being a cat at eleven o'clock,
in the way I am being a person at eleven o'clock —
neither of us doing anything that justifies the time, neither of us minding much.

I do this some nights, although not most. Most nights I am asleep by now,
or reading in bed, or already drifting between the two.
On those nights, the cat is presumably also on the wall,
and the laugher presumably also walks home, and the street
does whatever a street does when nobody at this window is watching.

I have come to think this is, on the whole, a comforting thing —
that the cat is on the wall whether or not I am here,
that the small private business of late-night streets does not require my presence.

But on the nights when I am here, I have a particular relationship
with this view, this hour, this cat. I am not, I think, learning anything from it.
I am simply there. The cat is there. The street is there.
This is, on the whole, enough.
In a few minutes I will go to bed.
In the morning, the cat will not remember any of this.
I will, but only briefly, until I am busy with something else.
For now, this is what I have. It is, I think, what I came in here for.

Eight in the Evening, in October

It is eight o'clock, and I am at the small window of the back room with a cup of tea
that has gone slightly cold while I was on the phone to my sister.
The sky outside is the colour autumn gets at this hour —
a particular dark orange-grey that lasts for about twenty minutes
before turning into the simpler blue-black that means it is night.

The garden is mostly still. The neighbour's cat is on the wall, considering something I cannot see.
A dog barks twice, somewhere two streets away. Then nothing for a long while.
I have lived here nine years, and I have stood at this window, on rough count, perhaps four hundred evenings.
I have learned, in those four hundred evenings, that there is a particular order to the way an autumn evening empties:
first the children go in, then the dog-walkers, then the people coming home from work, then the runners,
and by a quarter past eight, mostly only the cats are out, and the people who, like me,
are looking out of small back windows for reasons that are difficult to explain to anyone else.

The sky changes slowly. The orange-grey softens into a grey-blue, then darkens further.
I do this most evenings, although not all. Some evenings I am cooking,
or watching something, or talking to someone, and the sky changes without me.
On those evenings, I have come to understand, the same thing happens. The cat is still on the wall.
The dog still barks. The runners still go past at the same time.

The watching does not change any of these things. It changes me — for twenty minutes, I am more here
than I would otherwise be. The looking is not really for the evening; it is for me.

The tea is cold now. The sky is mostly dark. The cat has gone, presumably to be a cat somewhere else.
The back room is darker than the kitchen, and I leave the window slowly,
because I have, for these last few minutes, had a small understanding with the evening,
and I am still here, and so is it,
and this, on the whole, is enough.

Eight in the Evening, in October

It is eight o'clock, and I am at the small window of the back room with a cup of tea
that has gone slightly cold while I was on the phone to my sister.
The sky outside is the colour autumn gets at this hour —
a particular dark orange-grey that lasts for about twenty minutes
before turning into the simpler blue-black that means it is night.

I have lived here nine years. I have stood at this window, on rough count, perhaps four hundred evenings.
I have learned, in those four hundred evenings, that there is a particular order to the way an autumn evening empties:
first the children go in, then the dog-walkers, then the people coming home from work,
then the runners, and by a quarter past eight, mostly only the cats are out,
and the people who, like me, are looking out of small back windows for reasons
that are difficult to explain to anyone else.

There is a flat across the small garden whose kitchen light comes on at about quarter past seven
and goes off at about ten. I do not know who lives there. We have, in nine years, never met.
I have wondered, occasionally, whether to find out. I have decided not to.
The relationship of two kitchen lights on at the same time, four hundred evenings out of nine years,
is, on the whole, the relationship that suits us.

The sky changes slowly. The orange-grey softens into a grey-blue, then darkens further.
I have come to think this slow change is the most particular thing about autumn evenings —
not the colours themselves but the careful pace at which they happen.
Things in autumn happen slowly. Spring rushes; autumn does not.

I do this most evenings, although not all. Some evenings I am cooking, or watching something,
or talking to someone, and the evening changes without me.
On those evenings, the same thing happens. The cat across the way is still on the wall.
The dog still barks. The runners still go past at the same time.
The kitchen light across the garden still comes on at quarter past seven.

The watching does not change any of this. It changes me — for twenty minutes,
I am more here than I would otherwise be. The looking is not really for the evening; it is for me.

I have come to think, over nine years of doing this, that this is the truest thing I know about attention:
it does not change what it watches; it changes the watcher.
The evening, on the whole, is unbothered by whether I am at the window.
I am, on the whole, transformed by the act of being there, in small slow ways
that do not show up in any particular evening but accumulate,
in the way the season's colours accumulate, in a way I only really notice
when, sometimes, I look back on the year and find I have, somehow, been changed by it.

The tea is cold now. The sky is mostly dark.
The kitchen light across the garden has, while I was looking, come on as usual.
I leave the window slowly, because for these last few minutes
the evening and I have had a small understanding,
and it is, on the whole, enough.

It will, I hope, continue to be enough. There are plenty of moments that ask to be more.
It is, sometimes, a relief to find a moment that does not.