76 – Windows *

Special thanks to Tina for providing the photos. Tina is in the USA and I encourage readers to visit her blog at Travels and Trifles or her professional website. Please tell her I sent you and feel free to comment on her images here. Tina’s work is copyrighted by Tina R Schell Photography.

This post is also part of Ludwig’s Monday Window challenge and Jo’s Monday Walk.

Click the video above for 2 minutes of background waves while reading.

I like walking on the beach. It’s good for the mind, body, and soul – and refreshing on my feet.

As I walk, I look at the buildings. Regardless of the size and location, all have windows – those panes of glass providing light, views, and protection.

The windows are different sizes and orientations. The vast majority are rectangular but, the multi-sided and circular are few. However, all these windows trigger my thoughts on this day. Yes, windows – those mere openings in a wall covered by glass.

On this day, many clouds fill the sky while serving as a translucent window allowing light through while blocking what lies above. The occasional hole of blue serves as a reminder of other days while serving as a window into what lies beyond the clouds.

Even on cloudless days, the blue sky serves as a window shade to what lies beyond for night is what allows us to raise the shade to examine and dream about what lies far beyond.

My head turns away from the buildings toward the water. I spot the horizon – that line where the water meets the sky as I wonder what lies beyond that metaphoric window. I cannot imagine the thoughts of early explorers. Can you?

The water’s surface serves as a window into the beauty and history of what lies below. However, one seldom sees that aquatic underworld until passing through that window’s opening. Fortunately, photographers capture the scenes for others to see, enjoy, marvel, and wonder.

While we think of windows as a hole in the wall allowing light to pass, I think about another window – a surgical opening to provide a doctor the opportunity to examine and manipulate an inner world lacking windows.

I think of medical equipment as various scans and tests allowing medical professionals to peer through the opaque window of our skin and bones then into our interior world of normalcy and abnormality.

I think of microscopes allowing us to pass through a window into a world where our eyes cannot naturally go. I also think about telescopes taking us beyond our atmospheric window into a distant world that we try to imagine.

Our eyes give us a window into the world outside of us by providing an image that our brain transforms into a 3-D theater played in real-time complete with sound effects and smells.

I think of our eyes as windows into our personality, thoughts, and moods. For others, our eyes are windows for peering deep into the person’s soul. However, while a child’s eyes are open and honest, eyes are more difficult to read with age because one becomes more complex and complicated – just like life.

I think of other windows such as poems – a collection of the poet’s words causing us to reach deep into our soul for understanding the poet’s world – a world that the poet allows us to discover by looking through the window of their words.

I think of books as windows – both fiction and nonfiction for they expand our world by traveling through the window of knowledge and creativity with reflection, learning, and fantasy.

I think of learning as a process taking us through the window of our unknown world that works to close the window of ignorance while opening a seemingly infinite number of windows into a new world. But that also requires willingness and effort that some forego by choice.

I think of Windows operating many computers – plus the software windows containing electronic information on the screen or providing a workspace.

Our language adds another perspective about windows. We go window shopping, do window dressing, toss ideas out the window, and even tell someone that they are a better door than a window.

I think of windows as an interval of time – a span providing an opportunity – that golden hour – whether planned or by chance – that optimal moment for something to happen that could be personal or professional – a chance to grow, be enlightened, or a wonderful moment with a friend or loved one.

Windows are more than an opening in a structure with frames, sashes, panes, or rectangles treated with curtains, shades, blinds, drapes, or shutters. Windows – whether open or closed – real or a metaphor – windows are worth pondering.

Thinking about windows today has delivered a glimpse into the world of windows – but for some reason, I feel there is much more. However, it’s been a good day walking on the beach because it is good for the mind, body, and soul – and refreshing on my feet.

See what other bloggers have written about windows

• Through Wide Windows: or through the dark (poem)
• Windows with Different Shapes (photos)
• The Window (poem)
• Windows of Savannah (photos)
• A Window Stain (poem)
• Window (poem)

Next Post: Quiet – Thursday 20 March @ 1 AM (Eastern US)

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