2 weeks in

And so we are coming to the end of week 2 in the big brother house- make that big brother republic. The list of off limits sites is extending gradually, but nothing orwellian or excessively prohibitive.

So 2 weeks in and 102 to go, to reach my personal target of being in an established career of some kind. Oh how Ill look back at this little entry and laugh.

There's a woman in the next block. I think a floor lower than us, but not much more than that because I can see into one corner of one of her apartment rooms. No no, nothing like that. The corner of the room that is presented to my vista as I wash up is bare, sparsely furnished- looks kind of functional fr some reason that I cannot put my finger on. Perhaps the unfinished wood which makes up the back of a type of furniture unit, that is pressed up against the window, is giving the utilitarian feeling- but I guess most furniture looks like that from the back. It's just that usually the back of a cupboard or dresser or shelving unit has no audience other than extreme proximity to an opaque and oppressive wall. It seems strange that I am allowed to witness the nudity of the unit from my vantage point- like being backstage during a performance and seing the plywood and nails that constitute the illusion of a rolling scene or stormy sea at a theatre production. But does not seem strange for long. Why should you care who sees the back of your unit, when you are three or four floors up, and a gulf of at least 30 feet separates your apartment from another across the little mock roads that snake around the condominium? You see, the proximity of others is completely forgotten somehow when you are dimly aware that you are living high up in the air. But I digress. The perceived chink through which I witness the utilitarian room- at least utilitarian unit (should I be specific and say the utilitarian looking back of the possibly ornate and frivilous fronted cabinet?) and its accompanying room is like a little window into someone elses life- I mean their entire life and not just their life in that room. Sensing a small old woman doing something I am unable to fathom in one corner of a room, the rest of which is hidden from my view, allows my mind to ticker away for hours on the very nature of her existence, of her struggles, her aims and ambitions, of her daily routines and customs that in her mind pertain to the realisation of those dreams... Perhaps there is a reason that she wears small plastic disposable gloves whenever she is in (that corner of) that room, a reason for her economic refinement in selecting a bare floor and undecorated walls. Perhaps. The human mind, well my one at least is not entirely comfortable settling for an explanation devoid of intruige or some possibility of unknowable mysticism. I think the gloves mean something. I am sure the room and its decoration are also a key.

And I'm happiest leaving it there and knowing no more- at the moment the possibilities are boundless and the imagination limitless. She remains a mystic and a yogi to me, wrapped in ritual, ceremony and behaviour from another world altogether. And now to the dishes.