The eye is the lamp of the body

A geranium finally blooming in my window. This is something I get from my dad - having geraniums around all the time, even if they're straggly and awful-looking.

A begonia grown from a cutting my friend, d, found in a greenhouse
in Massachusetts, where she was working.

These are some housemates who live in my windows. My little apartment-sized intentional community? I love plants. I've collected them from friends, from the law office where I used to work (where they were just going to throw them away!), and from grocery stores. I tried to grow mint in a pot, taken from some thickets of it growing in the community garden where my dad and I had a plot last year. It didn't work.

I look out of my windows a lot, so I was thinking I would share some things that I see from them. Back in January, I took pictures of the view. It's not very pretty now, grey and muddy and overcast. I took this today:

Grey grey grey. The plants are prettier.

I like to sit on my couch in the morning, look out the window, and just be for a while. I think I'm praying, but I'm not always sure. Sometimes it's still dark, and I have to move my little icon of Joan of Arc around to keep some of the streetlights from blinding me. From the third floor, I can't see the parking lot - just the sky, the steeple, and the third floor of the library (where there's old books, a bunch of Egyptian pottery and a small mummy, but more on her later). I can also see a few Northwestern buildings. A woman comes and turns her office light on at about 6am, in the engineering building. There are tons of cars that zip by, too, all barrelling past on their way towards the city.

It's hard to be in an apartment that never gets direct sunlight, but I'm glad there are other things to look at. But sometimes I wonder if I need harsher things to look at. I feel pretty sheltered here.

Lilith, who also likes to sit near windows. Not unlike the begonia, I found her in a shelter in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Back then, her name was "Paige."