"Photography is nothing—it's life that interests me. I'm interested in what's happening in front of my eyes, what's happening in the world, and I want to communicate that with others. Photography is just the means to see clearly and to convey that seeing." — Henri Cartier-Bresson
Intersections
The snow fell that winter like memories—soft, accumulating, transforming the familiar into something both strange and beautiful. From my window on the fifth floor, I watched them all, day after day. The cyclist who always wore the dark coat, leaning slightly forward as if racing against something invisible. The hurried pedestrians crossing at predictable angles. The solitary figure who paused sometimes beneath the birch tree, looking upward as if sensing my gaze.
I had been there three months. The doctors called it recovery. I called it exile.
"You should keep a journal," Dr. Winters had suggested during my last session, her voice gentle but firm. "Document what you see. It might help anchor you."
So I began watching more deliberately. The patterns emerged slowly—the morning rush that started with the elderly man walking his invisible dog (the pet had died in autumn, but the ritual remained), followed by the school children with their colorful backpacks that stood out against the monochrome landscape. Then came the office workers, the late risers, the delivery people.
I assigned them names, histories, destinations. The cyclist became Thomas, a widower who taught philosophy at the community college. The woman who always paused beneath the tree was Elena, who had lost a child years ago and found comfort in momentary stillness.
It was Elena who first looked up. Our eyes met across the distance, and I pulled back from the window, heart racing. The next day, she was there again, this time with a small paper in her hand. She taped it to the tree and walked away, not looking back.
Hours passed before curiosity overcame anxiety. I bundled up and ventured outside for the first time in weeks, my legs unsteady, breath clouding around me. The note was simple: "The watcher is also being watched. Coffee? Library café, 2 pm Thursday."
What began as observation became conversation. Elena was not Elena but Marion, and she had not lost a child but had been one—raised in foster care, now working as a social worker. The cyclist was not a widower but a divorced father who cycled to see his daughter three neighborhoods away every morning before work.
"We're all living parallel lives," Marion said during our third meeting. "Moving alongside each other, rarely intersecting. Until we do."
My window still frames that intersection of paths most mornings, but now I know what I'm seeing isn't just movement, but stories in motion—including my own, finally moving forward again, no longer just watching life but beginning to live it.