Sitting By The Window

This photo, which I took five decades ago, captures a moment in the past. It also foretells a future that I could never have fully envisioned at that time, although subconsciously I had an idea that perhaps a similar scene awaited me one day.

Background: Five Decades Ago

After a devastating 1973, I left college in profound hurt and pain (even if I did eventually return and attend different schools). I began to explore the world in a car my mother bought for me, on several trips, sometimes with my best friend. But one day an unpredicted, stunning and terrible family event resulted in my being temporarily homeless and living in my car. During that time, I washed up at train stations downtown.

I wanted to get away from everything and restart my life elsewhere. I decided to drive from Chicago, where I grew up, to New York City, a place to which I had never been but was intensely drawn to. However, at 20 years old, I was not prepared and after I arrived, I was unable to find work fast enough.

I returned to Chicago with a deep disappointment that broke my spirit. At one point, I no longer wanted to live and I took action in that direction (there's a lot I am leaving out).

In the end, I survived. I began working in a crazy variety of jobs (taxi driver in the suburbs for a few days, dog catcher in the city, etc., etc.) I managed to move into a YMCA hotel in downtown Chicago.

At the beginning of 1974, I found much more stable work at a large company, also located downtown. Not long after, I moved into a less expensive residence YMCA (a type of housing that mostly no longer exists) in the Austin neighborhood on the West Side.

Few people saw or even knew what my life was like in those days because I didn't talk about it to coworkers or family members. But I had a camera and, ever the young photojournalist, I began to record myself and others on black and white film, including the maids and fellow residents at the Y (which became one of my most memorable photo essays).

The Man in the Chair

It was May of 1974. One day I was walking in the lobby of the Y and I saw a much older man sitting by a window, looking out at the world. He seemed to be thinking. I guessed that he must have been in his sixties. What, I wondered, were his thoughts? Often I engaged with my subjects directly and I learned their names. I became very familiar with many of the people in my pictures. In this case, I didn't know the man in the chair and I didn't want to disturb him. I didn't feel the need to capture his face which would have taken away some of the mystery and symbolism. At that moment, his being there was all that was necessary for me and my camera. The scene spoke to me. He represented any and all men who sat by a window at some point in their lives, including me, then and most likely in the future.

We were alike in a basic way. As a resident of the Y, he didn't have his own apartment, either and he was renting a room with no cooking facilities, in an all male building with a communal bathroom and shower on each floor. I wouldn't have considered myself very successful if I was still living in a YMCA at his age, not that I had any right at all to judge. But I didn't see him and the scene as representing joy and happiness. Instead, it was about reflection. What did he think about all the years he had lived, all the things he had seen, and the relatives and friends he had known? How was he viewing all of his life experiences and his memories as he looked out of the window to the street?

Could I be him, one day in the future, viewing the world while quietly thinking so many things? He must have known people who were no longer here on earth. Would I be in the same position? Would I become more aware, through loss, about death, including the certainty that mortality is the fate of everyone, including myself? How would I deal with it all? Would I accept it, while still enduring the hurt and pain that is an inevitable part of life and death?

My Turn

Now, decades later, I sit in a chair by the window, too, both figuratively and literally. I have actually taken several photos of myself, for years, which look similar to the photo of the man in the YMCA lobby. I understand and sometimes embrace reflecting on life...my life, with memories that are like an overflowing container of water that no one else ever drank or swam in, or fully experienced. I want to tell others a little bit (or a lot) of about what I have seen, felt and lived through, although few or none are available to listen to me. I now reflect on my own years of days, on the lives of those I care about, and on loss. Now I am him.

I wish I could let others see, visually and with sound, my memories, the unique days and nights I spent with others, the special family members and the close friends that are part of it, and all the episodes of hurt and pain. There are tales of wonderful good and awful bad. I think about it all a lot, every day.

There could be hundreds, thousands or even millions of us doing the same thing. Not necessarily everyone, because each of us has our own approach, our own perspective, with different kinds of chairs and windows, but I won't be alone in reflecting, even if the thoughts will be uniquely mine.

As I sit by the window.

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