#window-seat

window-seat submitted to hunterxhell:

In planes, in trains, in buses; in vans, in trams, in pickups, Rebecca Black's tired question has never struck me as a difficult one. For the window seat, that shining throne of contemplative real estate, has never failed to draw me to its comforting recesses.

I'm a people-watcher, a landscape-gazer, a wide-eyed purveyor of all that passes by my perch. I'll judge, sometimes, maybe send a snarky text, but mostly I'm content to observe the throngs pass in and out of my circle of influence, entirely consumed by their own quotidian minutiae. I've always been this way, and probably always will be. It's the reason I love public transportation, and the reason I fight tooth and claw for a spot on the daybed.

There is something innately calming about catching a glimpse of another's momentary unguardedness or contemplation. It's the assurance that everyone is as normal and as not-normal as we are; it's the curiosities, perfections, and imperfections that stand alike and apart from our own, that we weigh ourselves against; it's the reason we all come back here to read what the others have written, isn't it?

But what's really special about the window seat is that it provides, in one fell swoop, both this exceptionally personal glimpse and its complete opposite: we hear, feel, and coexist with the people within our shared inside space, yet stand completely apart from the other-worldly environment we see beyond the glass. From worn cushions we watch scrubby brush flying by on the commuter rail, bustling streets careening on the other side of the cab seat, vast skies beyond the airplane wing, or harried mirror-images looking through the glass as they wait to board the packed subway during rush hour.

With practice, I've become pretty skilled at staring. Aisle seats admittedly afford the best overt vantage points, for anyone into gawking and rubber-necking at close range. Window seats, however, belong to the experts. Tucked away from the immediate action, yet still privy to the sound and slightly less-direct visual field of the action, a window seat provides an all-around sensory experience with which the aisle's exposed location cannot hope to compete. To boot, the seat comes equipped with a Plan B: the option to glance out the window to that other world. Indeed, pointedly staring in the opposite direction a subject's gaze begins to swivel is one of the best deflection techniques around--particularly since the window reflection provides continuous B-reel footage. Tried and true.

Let me clarify, for a moment: I'm not a stalker-chick. Not completely. In fact, a window-seater can rarely be nabbed with such a damning epithet, as her escape route is necessarily blocked by her aisle-sitting neighbor. She doesn't get to spring out of the subway to strut after a particularly attractive subject, nor does she have the luxury of unlimited trips to the lavatory on the plane. But what the window-seater loses in spontaneous mobility, I argue, she gains in vision.

The question most ask, of course, is how this world-watching manifests itself when we've left our window seats. I think it's vision. I like to think of it as empathic conditioning--conditioning that makes us better at mutually interacting with each other rather than shouting our own agendas, better at genuinely understanding each others' motives and mechanisms. My mother calls my inclination to make friends with any cashier behind the counter my "plebeian side"--(shouldn't we all have one of those?)--but I think that's her aisle-seatness talking. It's not that I'm different from everyone else, it's that my people-watching has made me realize I'm, well, surrounded by people. Not "plebes," not "others," not "some barista brewing my coffee"--other people who sit in seats like me.

I've begun to see other spin-off effects of this world-watching elsewhere. My brain seeks the quiet space the window seat conjures for me in new manifestations each day. I have a mysterious knack for sizing up places to sling my hammock, for example: parachute material and carabiners in hand, my mind assumes this special spatial mapping capacity, finding shady, breezy spots with just enough proximity to a public walkway with satellite-accuracy. This world-watching part of my brain also works more abstractly: I've started taking photos recently, and am surprised to find I'm good at it. Turns out seeing the world takes practice, and my experience watching it has given me a leg up.

Advocating this world-watcher mentality does have the potential to go awry, I realize. It can sour into slothfulness or escalate into excessive voyeurism--we're familiar with both, and neither particularly defends the sanctity of the Window-Seat. So if you're new to the window seat, or looking to give it a go, take it slow at first. It's a complex throne whose filling takes some serious practice.

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