Out My Window - "Windeyes"

Angles ’n’ Attitudes by William Bothwell (Shortened version): Since the 1980s the Microsoft Corporation has partially redefined the word ‘windows’. It is now a brand name for online services and software. Some who do household cleaning say they don’t “do windows” but other millions of us do so. A new National Film Board documentary, "Out My Window" looks at multi-storey urban dwellings from other high-rise vantage points. With inquiry akin to Romeo’s famous “But soft, what light from yonder window breaks?” the NFB is watching and filming who knows whom.

After living many years in the country “right against the forest fence”, I have for the past few years lived in a town house from which the wonders of sunrise and sunset are frequent spectacles. Eastward, the seasonal progress of the rising sun from a position over Island Lake (pictured above) to one 23.45° to the south and back again accompanies the annual spectacle of seasonal change. The tilt of Earth’s axis is responsible. The mind’s sense of wonder responds. If there be no intelligent design, the accidental laws of nature are no less marvellous.

Forgetting for the moment the other, westward looking, windows through which, absent a curfew, my tallcase clock tolls the knell of parting day, I think I have the most interesting ‘windeyes’ (see below) in Dufferinshire. From the living room of what is called a raised bungalow I look out directly at no neighbouring house. Only green lawns and driveways are visible from a favourite chair. Standing, I can monitor the traffic on the in-town stretch of old Hurontario Street.

One watches with interest the couples who walk hand in hand, those who on Sundays jog past, free from week day routine, and the dogs that walk their owners at inconvenient hours. One is glad to live with a pussy cat for which two bowls and a litter box suffice. That said, I miss the corgies that lived with us in the Hockley Valley.

Our distant ancestors built ‘windeyes’ into the walls of their houses. They allowed light and fresh air in, smoke and cooking odours out. After dark they were curtained either by hides or drapery. Some had exterior shutters, locked closed from the inside. Until 300 years ago the Old English word ‘fenester’ (German ‘Fenster’) was in common use. Throwing something, or someone, out of a window is still defenestration.

In both Britain and France windows used to be taxed. The rate increased if there were more than ten in any building. A universal poll or head tax was unpopular, the cause of periodic riots. Before the 20th Century income tax was thought to be an unwarranted government intrusion into one’s private affairs. Ministers of finance resorted to window taxes with the result that many old buildings have walled-up spaces that once provided tax relief for landlords.

Although wealthy ancient Romans glazed their windows, glass was not in common domestic use in Europe until the 17th Century. Until large sheets of it could be produced there were small leaded or wooden framed panes. Today’s decorative shutters and window grills are sentimental reminders of that time.

Fragments of coloured and/or painted glass have been common in church windows since the 12th Century. Children have been known to define a saint as “somebody the light shines through”. As a youngster I sat with my parents for an hour or so most Sundays under the surveillance of Sts Matthew, Mark, Luke and John portrayed in nearby windows. I supposed their haloes to be the brims of straw hats thrown back behind their heads.

Later the glorious windows at Canterbury, York, Paris and Chartres cathedrals became familiar to me. In his 1937 book The Arts Hendrik Willem Van Loon says that the oldest such artistic fenestration is in the cathedral of Augsburg in Bavaria. The itinerant Gothic stone masons and glass workers of the Middle Ages gave Europe its first trans-national communities.

Connoisseurs of windows are conversant with the oriel, clerestory, bay, bow and many other varieties. A rooftop lantern or cupola with glass or louvred openings is familiar to those who frequent universities. Casement, sash or sliding windows are known to the multitude. The non-opening variety in high rise buildings discourages defenestration.

Evidently, I am especially satisfied with my windows which, like any self-respecting church or mosque, face east. The hills of Mono are visible in the distance. Varying scenes of the human drama are enacted below. I see mythology’s Phoebus Apollo drive his golden chariot across the sky most days. Though there is no planet named for him - after all, he already has the sun - a space programme bore his name. And now this column reaffirms it.
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During the day there is seldom a 60-second time frame in which at least one motor vehicle does not either deliver goods or carry passengers past those windows. Between the hours of 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. the mercifully quiet wheeled traffic passes at the rate of two or three a minute. Who are the people who live in the 105 houses of our crescent cul-de-sac? We co-exist but, as did Voltaire and God, we nod occasionally but do not speak. On school days I watch the back-packed students who plod dutifully and, one is sure, some unwillingly, to their classes.