There was no one standing in the suddenly subdued space beyond my window, and that extends, even as one thinks about it, as far as one can envisage in all directions. At the same time, the space also extends in time; it becomes eternal; it becomes timeless. A space that has always been summer with just this amount of rain, a temporary lull that is also eternally temporary. Colours redefine themselves; red is now the weaker hued red of brickwork in the distance, almost out of view, beneath a flat pale sky into which the frighteningly real chestnut tree pokes dark and multi-dimensioned tentacles.
There is no one standing beside the trellis which is now the type and form of every trellis (less warped, less intimate, more like some sort of thoroughfare, even if no one could ever pass through it). Similarly, the gravel about it, uniform as the newly fixed shadows upon it, is not so much a surface as an announcement.
Far away, though, the slanted window is still a characteristic window, more inward than outward, a triangular, mostly imaginary space defined by a great shoal of rooftiles to the fore and the slender little gable that falls away with a gasp behind it, as though hanging by its fingernails. Beyond the window, as beyond all windows, things are seldom so dim as one supposes, nor the house quite so empty, nor the staircases so long, nor the echoes so huge, nor the kitchens so bare, nor the cat so existent, nor the young boy so bored, nor the young girl so thoughtful, nor indeed anything quite so unfamiliar, out of place, historical as one imagines, looking out one's own window through the rainy space where today no one is standing.
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