(Based on a true story.)
I woke up in a different life.
Some light was coming in on the sides of the curtains, but the room still became surprisingly bright when I raised them. I guess windows from floor to ceiling tend to do that. The day was grey, overcast and with the odd drop of rain drifting in the wind.
I laid back again, the mundane view of a street under cloudy skies made amazing by the size of the window and the height of the apartment. I imagined the camera detaching from my eyes, flying out through the window and oribiting the building still focused on my window. I felt real life and an expensive CGI model would be on par with each other for cool impression given.
Out in the kitchen, coffee was being made. The machine built into the wall above the oven humming and whirring expensively as it ground beans, poured coffee, and frothed milk.
The last part was of particular interest to the two cats who let us humans live with them. As I sat down to enjoy my coffe, the cats each got a plate of frothed lactose-free milk, which they finished faster than you could think "caffeine addiction". The living room and kitchen had another widescreen view of intricate city and massive clouds stretching out above and beyond a spacious balcony. We humans leaned back in couches and started on a long breakfast, talking about any small thing while the world calmly revolved around us.
Everything felt taken straight out of a movie, the kind of movie I would love to be in. I should have pinched myself just to make sure I was not actually dreaming this particular movie. I can actually drift into a morning like this, in a place like this, with friends like this. And I can notice the greatness of it while it happens.
We would spend a few hours on the couches, finishing another pot of tea, talking and enjoying short opportunities to pet the cats as the nonchalantly walked by. I would go to bed in the evening, drawing the tall curtains again, falling asleep and waking up to another calm morning of coffee and work preparations. Work would be an elevator ride, a short walk and a trip on the bus away, in some renovated factory building, near seaside walks and lunch places serving miso soup.
This could be every day.
The apartment will be gone next time. But the friends and cats will remain, and I know the magic can happen with other views too.
(I really needed it. I came back home and was, gently but firmly, hit in the face with … various things. Everything. Sorting, sorting …)