free writing, windows

we're in this passage at Place-des-Arts, my friend has dragged me here to see an exhibition of lights - luminotherapie, it's called, she said, but maybe they dismantled it over the weekend. we're under the street, tiny lights sparkle from the floor beneath our feet. i say "maybe this is it", and she laughs, noooo, it's outside, it's the whole square lit up. then i see shadows moving on the wall we're passing: there are pictures of windows, projected. no, they're short films of windows. windows of montreal. we stop, fascinated. some of them are shuttered, some just shaded by curtains. in a kitchen, a girl sits at a blue table. downstairs from her, a man reads at a desk, in front of a wall-sized bookcase. the last, in the lower corner, is a couple on a sofa, with a TV set between them, both facing us instead. the TV is showing static. i say "you guys are playing a bad metaphor of distance" and at the same moment the woman sees us. she's looking straight into my eyes, with a shock that must mirror mine. all the films end at once, and they run some credits. we turn to go. right then, all the window-screens turn to films of snow, just quietly falling outside Place-des-Arts, over the black twisty streetlights. for a blink, we're sure this really just happened live, that we've looked into these people's lives, and when we get outside there's quiet, unsettling snow, but no lights show any more.