Scary

My writing space is the scariest fucking room in my apartment.

The street light hangs at shoulder height, hovering like some mechanical all-seeing eye outside my second floor window.

The closed curtains hang unevenly, a jagged crevice of cloth allowing only a sliver of light, as if peaking through a cracked door (like Poe's deranged tenant in the Tell Tale Heart).

Even during the darkest hour of a man's soul (it is currently 3:36 am) you can still hear the comings and goings of people as far as a half-mile away. If the breeze is right I can hear the elevated Red Line stop at Loyola and the robotic voice of the conductor, "Doors closing, Granville is next," in that menacing monotone.

It's alarming to know that there are people moving through the city at this late hour. Cars, trucks, the occasionally cranky motorcycle, roll within yards of where I sit. (I can't imagine how close they must feel to people living on the first floor.) No wonder the impulse to climb mountains or the increase in rent as you ascend (the penthouse always costs more than the first floor), the higher up you are the less you hear, and the safer you feel.

If I can hear them, see them, hell, sometimes smell them (or at least I can smell whatever they're smoking) then they can just as easily observe me.

I'm exposed up here in my glass bubble. We've hung no curtains or blinds. Each window is as wide open as a field with nothing to keep someone from watching me closely with even the cheapest binoculars.

It's scary up here. I've never felt so exposed in my life.