They claim this mother of ours, the Earth, for their own use, and fence their neighbors away from her, and deface her with their buildings and their refuse. --Sitting Bull
My living room windows face east. For years, my desk has been in the corner where I am fortunate enough to have two windows, one facing east, the other south. (Yes, the coveted southern exposure.) I sit there for hours and hours on end and have done so for years, writing mainly. David, my ex-husband of sorts, and I published our paper out of that room and would work for very long stretches without leaving the apartment. I was able to do that because of the light. I am absolutely flooded in sunlight here and it has always made me happy. When I count my blessings, which I do, that is always up there among them: I have a cheap apartment that is full of sunlight. In other words, a place where I can live happily and make a home.
It's not much of a view, mind you. I look out on the roof of the Stern Residence of the Jewish Home and Hospital (a nursing home), built to house their staff and retirees. By the looks of it, it went up sometime in the '60s; it's pretty ugly. And I can only see about 20 feet and then I am blocked by towers of some sort on their roof. But it's not about the view; it's about the sunlight.
A view is a luxury; sunlight is a necessity to human beings.
My apartment is on the top floor of my building and the apartments below mine on the same track look out onto a brick wall. They are blocked all the way around, with only one window providing any sunlight at all. I am friends with the man who lives in my track on the 3rd floor and his apartment feels nothing at all like mine. It's not a place where I could work for hours and hours without leaving the apartment. He, also a writer, in fact doesn't. He spends much time at the library because to stay inside that apartment all day would make a person crazy--crazier than those of us that choose to spend hours on end inside writing already are. His apartment is also not a place to raise a child. My son and I are able to stay inside on cold New York winter days and only get slightly agitated. It's the sunlight that makes it possible.
It wakes you up if you sleep in that room and I have to remind myself when I do, or when I have a guest, to pull down my dilapidated blinds. Otherwise, they are always open. David had never put up any kind of window coverings and I agreed with him. The light was just too pretty to block. But we finally put up blinds one hot summer and I even put sheer curtains in the bedroom. They blow in the breeze from the open windows and remind me of rooms in the old southern homes of my childhood.
But I spend most of my time in the living room, or the front room as I think of it, although the apartment is in the back. For years it was an office, and even now feels more like some other kind of room to me than a living room. But it is where I live. Where I write, eat, entertain, play games with my son, talk on the phone, play my guitar. It's all in the front room; in the back room, I sleep.
Carlos Casteneda, in his Don Juan books, writes of "finding one's spot". The apprentice character is instructed by Don Juan to find his spot on the porch and he spends hours doing so. It is supposedly a place where a person is safe and one needs to always find it wherever you go. Other spots can be deadly.
I found my spot; it is in front of those two windows. And now it is being threatened.
The Jewish Home and Hospital (which owns most of the block) plans to demolish all of their existing structures, sell half of their property to a private developer, and build a 16-story tower outside of my windows.
They will take away my sunlight. Think about that: they will take away the sun.
The Native Americans could not understand how the white man felt he had the right to own the land. That was (literally) a foreign concept to them. But now we have extended our ideas of ownership; we now believe that we can own the light and the air.
So, OK, I know, we're not Native Americans, we're Americans and we won that war. Besides, if God had been on their side, he wouldn't have let them die off, would he? So, we are thoroughly steeped and divinely guided in the idea of private property. How do you then justify taking away something of value from someone else with no compensation? The sunlight is valuable. Ask any doctor: better to live in a dark place with no natural sunlight, or one flooded with same? I have something of value, and they can take it from me for nothing. Free. Take away the sun. Why does this make sense? It should be one way or the other, right?
To what absurdity can we extend our idea of ownership next?
I keep hearing in my head a '70s pop song that goes, " All I need is the air that I breathe and to love you..." Only in my version, the guy starts making choking noises and suffocates in the middle of the chorus. Ooops, there went the air. What about the love? Can we own that too?
So, I think now I am beginning to understand some of the resentment I felt from my neighbors when I first came here more than fifteen years ago. "White people make the rent go up." David used to say. Yes, we do. We have a long history of doing so.
Liza Case
Copyright 2007
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