‘’She was looking at me almost every single day of the last 1,5 years. Well... She was not really looking at me. I was inside her gaze but she was actually looking at the sky, the sun, the trees, the branches, the pine cones, the houses and the cars passing through. A very little amount of cars passing through. Once I noticed she counted the trees outside. She doubted what she counted. She was not sure if some trees were hiding behind others. 'I don’t believe in numbers' she thought. She counted them again the next day. '16. Weird. They really look less.' 

I was here the whole time, I saw her making coffee, sitting on that couch, eating breakfast, closing her eyes, listening to the birds, reading, watching movies, having sex, laughing, crying, spilling coffee, looking outside, staring at the sky… She almost never looked at me, but I knew that she knew I was here. Me and the ashtray that always sits on me. Of course she knew. She looked at me every day. Well, I was inside her gaze every day. 

One time I heard her crying. I heard her say 'I miss simple things. Simple. Very simple things. The things that we do every day without thinking about them. Going out, meeting friends, sitting on a bench in a sunny day. I feel like I lost myself. I cannot produce. I am not able to do anything. I feel like a failure, I feel like I failed.' At that moment she was looking at me. I heard the man saying 'don’t be unfair to yourself. The whole world has stopped.' As she turned her face from him, I can swear that we came eye to eye. With her red, tearful eyes, she sniffed and she pointed at me saying ‘I feel like that chair’.

Today she took a photo of me. Well… I was inside the gaze of the camera so I think I was inside the frame. Then she counted the cigarettes in the ashtray. 125. She thought 'that’s a lot of numbers for an ashtray’.''

Winner of the fourth prize of the A-Place Mapping contest "Share your experiences of domestic places" 2022

Monday, 8:22am. I go out to the streets and it is evident how the pace of the city has awakened already: the streets are full with people in their work attires, suits and dresses, and parents walking their children to school. There are various people who wake up early to get intoxicated, a few nurses with their white attires sits in the step of their hospital entrance to smoke their cigarettes.

The city is waking up, some already at full pace, some buildings just opening their eyes with their particular sound of running metal blinds: rahh…. rahh…. rahh… most residents are able to accomplish the opening it with three pullings of the cord. People in the phone talking to other awaken people on the other side, about the frenetic rhythm of life: the groceries they need to do, the architecture project they are working on, what the boss said, the meeting of this afternoon, or talking to their loved ones with a smile on their face. The rhythm is constant, fast, contagious. It is hard to find frustrated faces, they just do what they have to do, preoccupied with making it on time, don’t arriving late, and fulfilling their commitments for this busy urban morning.