When I drive down a city street at night, I confess that I often peek into the windows of other peoples’ houses just because. I do the same thing when I walk home at night from the bus. Oh I don’t stop the car, I don’t run up to windows but as I walk past I often give a sideways glance and look in. Its not that I’m hoping to see nekkid people doing heaven knows what, its just that looking into other peoples lives sparks my imagination. Some times, I walk by a house and its all cozy and nice and I practically want to knock on the door and make friends. Some times, I drive by a house and look up through the window and are awed to find a second floor chandeler or even a ballroom. Its possible that the habit originated in the words of the Peter, Paul and Mary song, “Christmas Dinner.” Whatever the motivator, I’ve been doing it all my life. I like to see the colors people paint their living rooms, their choices in sofas and the stuff they hang on the walls, the curious way they take down walls so that houses nearly identical on the outside are made completely different on the inside. I like to imagine that I too live in a neat tidy organized well decorated sort of place.
In my second Cleveland apartment, there was a dancer living across the alley. She had a dancer body and she walked like a dancer floating around her apartment and while my apartment was a messy student dwelling with mismatched everything, the apartment across the way came straight from a magazine. One weekend, she painted her entire 5 room apartment different charming pastel colors in a single day and then had a big party to celebrate —from paint and rollers and drop cloths to full bore party with interesting people drinking things in glasses (and not just the cheapest beer in cans) in less than a day. The line-up of our windows across the alleyway later led to discovering, that despite a reticience to hang curtains, she and her boyfriend preferred to wander their pastel apartment in the nude which eventually led to male students sitting on the stoop across the street from her apartment hoping to get an eyeful.
One never knows what one will see in that instant of peeking. And really, when someone doesn’t put curtains on their windows, should they not expect passersby to peek just a bit? Haven’t the curtainless waived the right to object? and is it really that different from perusing a copy of “Natural Home” or “Architectural Digest”? I think not.
But now I have discovered the lovely photos on airbnb. Not only can I peruse the living spaces of Other Peoples in my own city but I can peek into apartments all over the world! I can compare decorating style in Stockholm to style in Seattle to style in Portland or even Tokyo. I can evaluate kitchen layout and rate the fold away sofa. I can see what colors (or lack of) are popular in which country. Without airbnb would I have ever really known that people in Stockholm really do decorate houses in yellow and black, that the combination is not simply an IKEA creation? Or would I have ever guessed that significant numbers of people in Paris really do have apartments that are spare and neutral except for splashes of red. Would I have ever realized what amazing space hogs we Americans are or how amazingly efficient a small place can be?
Thanks to airbnb, I realize I have been looking at retiring in a foreign country completely the wrong way. In fact, it might actually be possible to afford a flat for two or even three in London once I pare down the Stuff. The excitement is debilitating–I can hardly focus on anything else.
In the right-now momment, however, there’s the terrible downside of realizing that our residence looks, well, dreadful. I now want desperately to redecorate our whole house or at least the parts that can be seen from the street. Okay well maybe “decorate” is a more honest word to use since if I’m being perfectly honest, all we really did was throw all our belongings in and start living our lives in a new location. Unfortunately life seems to eat up all the spare time that might be devoted to decorating. So I shall continue to peek and surf and dream.
