The View From My Apartment

I can read for hours in my apartment’s living room, never noticing how much time goes by. The room itself isn’t that spectacular: white walls, cheaply framed abstract art, a table, some chairs, two couches, and a TV in the corner. The light always stays the same, reflecting off the walls and keeping everything moderately bright. That is, until sunset, which is when the latestness of the hour finally makes itself known.

It’s amazing. All throughout the day cars honk their horns, construction on the street corner continues to make a giant hole grow, ambulances seemingly drive in circles around the street, people yell at each other at the top of their lungs, and just when I don’t think I can take anymore of it a warm orange glow fills the room. Silence falls over the street as pink clouds sift past my window. It really does happen in an instant. One moment I’m reading over my homework, and suddenly I can’t see the words clearly as the room becomes dark and gray.

The glow doesn’t last for long, and if you run to get a camera you miss it. That said, I had my camera with me this time, but it still couldn’t capture the warm look of the room. Outside the sun raced toward the Americas as I snapped a couple photos. San Giovanni in Laterano changed from tan to pink to orange to gray in the span of five minutes and the moment I leaned out my window towards the left I was in awe. I think I stopped breathing for a second as I stared at the horizon, camera forgotten. These are the moments when I remember I’m in Italy. The rest of the day I’m just in another city, quickly navigating through crowds, doing homework in my apartment, impatiently waiting for the metro to arrive. The language barrier isn’t even an issue for me anymore, since I rarely pay attention to what people are saying at home. Instead it’s moments like these, when I can’t even begin to imagine how all those Renaissance painters could even begin painting when they had that impossible view as their guide. I glance at my camera’s screen. It’s a nice image, but it’s just a tiny part of the sky that is surrounding me, making silence golden, and time slow down. And by the time I look up again, it’s all gone. The streetlights are on, the sky has darkened, and clouds blow in for tonight’s storm. It’s just a normal cityscape again as I shut the window on the ambulance that drives by and turn on a light.