Friday, June 26, 2009

Venting Ventanas


In the foothills near Fresno is a real estate subdivision called "Ventana Hills." Ventana means window in Spanish. Anyone who's ever climbed a hill or a mountain and enjoyed the vista can appreciate the monicker "window hills."

The windows in our 1912 era cabins at Lakeview Cottages are hand-poured and there are lots of waves and imperfections in the glass. They are quaint but they distort your view of the outside world. When you walk by them stationary things outside appear to move and details of things outside are sometimes obscured.

We have a friend, Chris, whose brother Scott, washes windows. Scott comes to our house once or twice a year to clean our windows. You don't really notice over time how much dirt gets on the glass and how it diminishes the light coming in and your view out. Clean windows let you see better. I clean my truck windshield every time I stop for gas.

In the same way as wavy or dirty glass, pent up emotions can cloud our view of things. William Shakespear wrote that "the eyes are the windows to the soul." Tom Hunter, a singer-songwriter from Washington state wrote a song called tears. The song includes the line: "And if it's true that eyes are the windows to the soul, then tears are what can make the windows clean."

I'm not a guy who likes to sit down and have a good cry though my eyes do water a little bit now and then. I'm not ashamed of that. Hunter's "Tears" song also expresses the thought that tears can be what we say when we don't know what to say. "When words don't come easy and neither do the thoughts, then tears can sometimes say best what we mean."

1 comment:

  1. Is not saying anything better? IF you say something, then at least they know you're thinking about them?

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