TARP

For the past three years, the view outside my window has been the same. Since I moved in here, my second-floor flat has been engaged in a staring contest with a huge sheet of white tarp shrouding a construction site across the street. I call it a construction site despite never hearing the clamorous symphony of power tools. I’ve seen skyscrapers built faster than whatever it is they’re doing. By no means is it deserted either as I’ve seen people enter and exit the place – rarely in construction gear.

I’m convinced no actual construction is happening. It’s all just a front; but for what? My mind strains itself to imagine what’s happening on the other side. Odd how obscurity inflames one’s curiosity while clarity totally smothers it. The leading theory is that illegal chicken fighting is going on under the cover of this tarp. It's not hard to imagine the drunk and dispossessed of Camden waving their money around while howling at two abused chickens tearing each other to bloody feathers.

Every glance out the window is blindfolded by this oppressive white tarp. All manner of beautiful scenes are denied me because of it; fireworks, sunsets, the moon… What kind of punishment is this? I hate the way it flaps tauntingly in the wind. I detest the unnatural way it absorbs sunlight, consuming the poor photons. I despise how much of it there is.

I’m embarrassed to admit the number of hours I’ve spent staring at it. I could throw an egg at it from my window and it’d crack upon its pale white face. It seems the more I stare at it, the closer it gets; as if the street itself is narrowing. Details previously missed start making themselves known. I trace the scaffolding underneath it, like the skeleton of a malnourished person. What nourishment is it lacking? Construction for a start… Gazing intently at the folds in its surface, I see shapes. God I’m bored. But I’m happy. I’m trying to figure out how the tarp is held together (lots and lots of nails). I want to know all its secrets. Even during the winter I leave the windows open at night so I can hear its whispering on my sleep. Upon waking one morning I’m consumed by an indefinable rage when I find someone has graffiti tagged my tarp. ACAB is sprayed in clumsy lettering near the top. I agree, but couldn’t you have done this elsewhere?! I feel compassion for the ruined monotony of my tarp, the same monotony I was complaining about for months.

Every day I have tea by my window with my silent companion across the street. I want to be wrapped in its coarse, plasticky embrace. One loathsome day I awoke to find a drastic transformation in the scene that had remained static out my window for three years. My tarp is gone! Gone also are the fighting chickens and the hordes of sinister folk betting on which one’s going to win. All that remains is a huge hole in the ground where the building across the street once was. I can see clear through to the other side now, the back of a housing block a couple of streets down. One of the lights is flickering – has it been so this whole time? People slide across the walkways to their flats and I catch the blurred shapes of their lives through the frosted windows. Nothing can explain the hellish pit that’s opened up opposite my flat. By all accounts this is objectively a far more interesting scene to behold through my window. Then why is it that I feel my heart tugged by yearning for what’s no longer there. I close my eyes in protest. No longer do I care about what’s behind it, I’m simply content to picture the blank, featureless beauty of my tarp.