such great heights

Sometimes when it's late at night, I like to look out my bedroom window at the other condominiums. We're surrounded by other condos in pretty much every direction, and since we're on the 6th floor the other condos tower over and around us - but not in a looming, intimidating way. It's actually kind of reassuring for some reason. We hardly ever look out the window unless it's to catch a glimpse of some fireworks going off. Even our view of the sunset is blocked by a row of condominiums huddled shoulder to shoulder in the distance. But I still can't help looking. I can't tell if the view is actually beautiful or if I just think it's beautiful because it reminds me I'm home. But to me at least, when I look at it, even up close and for a really long time, the appeal holds up. I can't help but see it as something gorgeous.


It's 7 minutes past midnight and most of the other units' lights are off by now, but an hour ago about half of them were still on, and I could make out - for the condo nearest to us at least (just across the road) - a few details about each living room. For instance, one of the rooms was coloured a very pale and diffuse blonde, its jaundiced incandescence resting lightly on a cream coloured faux leather sofa positioned just next to the window, which anchored it firmly in the foreground of my ogling. The strange part is that I started picturing, with uncanny clarity, the owner of the sofa schlepping around in shorts and slumping into the sofa in front of the tv, his flaccid and defeated posture already telegraphing what you assume to be a glazed look, an expression of neither pleasure nor displeasure, but just abject emptiness and boredom on his face. But of course none of this took place, except in my mind. The sofa remained vacant, cream coloured and un-sat upon.


Further away there's a block of condos at the end of the road where Michelle stays. There's one particular unit that's too far away for me to really make anything out specific, but its one striking characteristic is that it's generously lit. Almost overflowing with light, spilling out onto the building's facade. Its hue is more white and fluorescent than red or orange. You can tell it's not lit by those little yellow bulbs embedded into the ceiling -- you know, the ones that shine down precisely like a mini-spotlight at some art gallery or pretentious italian restaurant. Instead, you get the feeling that it comes from a warm white fluorescent bulb or tube, casting its easy light about, and it feels bright and untroubled and welcoming for some reason. The large, full length window faces us directly so I can see straight into the unit and maybe just about make out the shape of a kitchen counter. In my imagination it's speckled black and caramel and made of granite (these condo kitchen countertops are always made of granite). Behind it stands a well-stocked fridge (silver-gray) and next to the fridge in a small alcove sits a shiny modern oven the inhabitant has never used and does not know how to use. The tenant is, in my mind, a 24-27 year old business/finance type person. Maybe she works in advertising? Or tax accountancy perhaps. She's a very practical and pragmatic person, that's why she opted for the bright white lights over yellow - she doesn't need it to be fancy, just well lit. But she cares that the apartment is neat, and keeps it clean and uncluttered at all times, tidies it up regularly and religiously. There aren't many pictures or picture frames in her condo - pretty much zero ornamentation to be honest, but it still manages to feel comfortable, bearing the unnatural polish and sheen of a high class hotel bathroom. She's lived there about two years now. At work she wears business skirts and contacts but around her condo she wears shorts and an old T-shirt from college, her hair, dyed latte with streaks of darker brown tied up in a rough bun, and a pair of thick rimmed black glasses on her face. Her laptop is probably open either in the dining room or her bedroom, on its screen, a cursor blinking on a half completed excel spreadsheet. She lives alone, but will be having friends over for the first time next week. She's pacing the wide and ceramic tiled kitchen that adjoins the empty living room with an absent look on her face, stressing out a bit over what to prepare. Alcohol? That's a given right? Should I decorate the house? What on earth would I decorate it with? Balloons? She scoffs and shakes her head. She pours herself a glass of water. It's getting late and she's got work tomorrow.


I know this from experience. I know this moment will pass, and tomorrow I will not feel this way at all. No matter how meaningful or significant or sacred the experience. The daylight and travails and tasks of daily survival will wash it all away, all sentiment, all desire, like a dream upon waking.


(The one photo she does have is in the living room, and it's an old family photo of her and her parents and her brother on vacation. Her brother was a talented batter for her high school baseball club, and then worked as a graphic designer after a brief stint in the army.)


But for now I'm determined to make it last for as long as I can, and to love it as much as possible. To attempt to inhabit the moment fully. To sit and untangle this knot of emotions, to actually slow down and live this out second by second.

And now I realise why I can picture that scene so clearly, because it's an amalgamation of anime and old experiences and people I know. Korean reality shows where they invade pop-stars' dormitories, Makoto Shinkai's photorealistic depictions of Tokyo. My personal experience with the strategic deployment of creature comforts as a bulwark against the loneliness of big city living. And I recognise and identify so strongly with the person slumped in the sofa mesmerised by the screen because i've seen that person before. Been that person before. The modern, luxurious kitchen is a facsimile / pastiche of the interior of my friend's penthouse apartment down the road. And even my fondness for the bright fluorescent lights can be traced back to my paternal grandmother's house in SS2. An old terrace house with a massive mango tree in front of it, which has since been chopped down. Its great blinding unmoderated light colouring the memory of simpler times, raucous laughter, brash cousins and indecipherable dialects, funerals rites, a thousand relatives and mosquito bites. Everything I know of other people is plagiarised from past experience - a chopped up, flipped around and shoddily reassembled projection of my own life. But maybe this is the only way I know how to connect. Maybe the only way to understand other people is to amass a wealth of experience, a diverse catalogue of anecdotes and acquaintances, a personal library of blessings and regrets. For fiction to resemble fact you have to know a lot of facts.


But it's not just the light that matters. It's the darkness in between that makes it precious. This expanse of profound, unbroken nothingness. Except for the occasional pair of headlights cruising noiselessly along the main road - something distinctly asteroid-esque about its weary trajectory and pace - everything else is still, in a repose that seems to have lasted eons and does not appear to be ending any time soon. The inky absence of light feels like a kind of infinity. It makes the sun seem like something you've only heard of, something you've read about and maybe seen on tv once or twice, something made up. There are no stars tonight and the moon is nowhere to be seen, but the multicoloured glow of condo windows faraway and little orbs of electric light dotting the carpark and guardhouse and poolside are scattered and clustered below like a small galaxy. Pitch black silhouettes of trees interrupt your view of the continuous orange glare of streetlights down below, a river the colour of persimmon and aged cheddar guiding cars back home from a night out or on their late night commute, office workers who work in the city and are the last to leave the office at 11pm navigating the empty chairs and cubicles and blinking LEDs to get to a house where only the kitchen light is on and the family is already fast asleep.


It makes me feel less alone to think this way - to think that we could be tiny beacons of light and hope and warmth waving to each other from across the universe. To believe that given the right circumstances, even the tiniest peek into somebody's living room, or the colour of someone's sofa, or noticing the kind of light bulbs they've installed can conjure up memories of dead relatives and childhood, can tell us something of historical importance about other people and ourselves. The idea that when we allow people enough room to be themselves, and when we're willing to do the work of trying to see people for who they are, we find that what we have in common surpasses our differences by a magnitude of millions. We discover that we are so alike as to be almost identical. That we're all isolated in our little light-filled boxes, and it's good to let each other in once in a while. I don't know if any of this is actually true, by the way. Maybe it's all in my head. All I know is that when I look out my window on nights like this, for once it feels like a peaceful world.