The best thing about having an apartment in the middle of the city is that I can put on a show for the many, many commuters passing by below. I’m only three floors up, so very much visible, and I work from home as a highly successful adult tricycle designer, so I don’t have to go to work.
If the weather is nice, I make one of those cafe brunches that you see on Instant-Gram and sit outside in all my summer finery, making a big show of leaning over the balcony and slowly enjoying my mustard seed and gruyere miniature bruffins. If the weather isn’t good, that’s why I got the best window frame installation Melbourne has to offer. It’s a very large window, framed with timber, ostentatious and plain at the same time. It looks out over the commuters, floor-to-ceiling, giving me the perfect stage.
Usually I like to stand there in my trendiest outfit that looks like I’m about to start my shift at the trendy clothing shop for trendy middle-aged ladies, in that one pose that exudes beauty and grace: one hand resting on the frame just above head height, the other on my hip. I stay that way for up to half an hour, sometimes…just gazing. Gazing, gazing, gazing downward at the surging crowd below, showing them my splendour and wonderful window frame taste. Sometimes I think that my posing, early-morning brunching and exquisite windows may be the only joy they get in their dreary days. I see them wrapped up in the trappings of office-wear, sad faces gazing at the world as if silently asking the question: is anything worth it? Truly, deeply, in the end?
I understand that question. It’s why I got out of the commute and started my adult tricycle design business, and why I used the proceeds to construct a fabulous viewing window, with the most wonderful timber window replacement Melbourne could possibly offer.
All gaze upon my majesty with jealousy and wonder. Or at least, they should be. It does so irritate me greatly that they’d rather stare at their phones, or in front of them, instead of up at me.
-Jacinta Regalia