The High Life

We now live on the twelfth floor of a small building with only eleven other residents and we are the only renters. Our first taste of apartment life in thirty years. It's anonymous yet slightly claustrophobic at the same time. Everyone kind of knows who everyone else is because there are so few of us. Like living in a big cul de sac, where everyone can keep an eye on who is coming and going if they want, or retreat into their homes and ignore everyone. I see the same four people over and over and others, not at all. I probably ride the elevator with another person only twice a week. We expect to be alone in there and everyone gets startled when someone else appears.  I used to introduce myself if I found another occupant in the elevator but people seemed surprised when I did or they were visitors who didn't care who I was so I stopped. Everyone must know we are the new tenants but no one seems to want to know us. I think they like their sense of anonymity better than feeling like part of a small neighbourhood.  Okay, I'm good with that, a little personal space never hurt anyone.

When we first moved in at the end of March the weather was cool and I kept the windows closed. The apartment was eerily quiet, only the muted hum and clank of the elevator permeated the concrete walls. Sometimes it was the only sound that let me know there were other people around. I felt removed from life, sitting high above looking down but detached. Living in a house you have the constant backdrop of traffic near by, people chatting on the street, car doors slamming, dogs barking, birds singing. Twelve floors up behind double-paned windows all of that pretty much goes away. That coupled with all the windows everywhere I turned gave me the sensation that I was a lone goldfish silently swimming around in my big bowl, staring out at the world.  My husband was away on a business trip and I was so busy unpacking that I barely got outside. It was just me swimming above and the expanse of the city below and people trying not to know who I was in the elevator.

My closest neighbours.

We have been in the apartment a few months now and the warmer weather finally arrived. Windows in all rooms are open most days and the world has come roaring into the space. Rather than being a lone goldfish I now feel like I have the whole aquarium swirling around me. Horns, sirens, screeching tires, barking dogs, seagulls complaining as they drop crap on my balcony, it all floats up to me in a daily cacophony. That constant hum that comes with any city of decent size. Then there is all the humanity living around me in the other buildings. I have the advantage of not having any building right beside me, the closest is across the street so I watch the small snippets of other lives from a distance. Someone sunning themselves, the guy who always takes a smoke on his small balcony,  a few people tend their BBQs. One woman likes to water her plants without pants on.  Its all quite normal but yet fascinating to think of all those lives being lived around me. Together, yet apart.   At first I had the urge to close the blinds as it got dark every night, to shield myself from other curious eyes but I am used to it now and leave my blinds open in the living area, aware I am both the watcher and the watched.  Part of it all.

The stage lights come on and the play continues.

Life feels a bit loud at times up here, a bit too much of the world inside my space but I know come the fall I will close the windows and the world will go on mute again. Then I have only to step into the empty elevator and descend to the street for a walk to feel a part of it all. It is a street filled with more cars and more people than I am used to as this move has plunged us into a higher density area with lots of apartments rather than only family homes.The average age of the people on the street is younger as in this city the young cannot afford the houses I lived among before so they are here in apartments, like me. There is a different pulse and energy to it all.
Life is about change and this is just one more for us. I'm sure the noise will become like a companion and the ease of apartment living will overtake the loss of a garden and a patch of grass to call my own. I will adopt the nod and smile approach in the elevator and keep to myself, alone but surrounded, a city dweller.