La petite fenêtre

Pierre Bonnard’s little windows are as alluring as his great big windows.  The views of Normandy or the south of France are always incomparable.

I am reminded of my own penchant for photographing windows and what is reflected in the glass—that fascinating liminal space between inside and out, which allows passage, and mingling of sorts, and daydreaming, and a record of passing time (in cracks or collected cobwebs, for example) and weather (tracks of rain, late autumn sunlight).  It’s also fascinating when the glass is gone, as in ruined abbeys, and inside and out- are no longer distinguished; nature no longer recognizes the separation.

This little poem of Rilke’s might be talking about that, along with so much more.

Ah, not to be cut off,
not through the slightest partition
shut out from the law of the stars.
The inner—what is it?
if not the intensified sky,
hurled through with birds and deep
with the winds of homecoming.

—Rainer Maria Rilke,

   translated by Stephen Mitchell

images:  La petite fenêtre, Pierre Bonnard

Christie B. Cochrell, St. Mary’s Abbey arch, York