In the following, I`ll give short interpretations of some of the noon quilt stories. I picked authors of different age and from different countries and continents to demonstrate how different the view from a window can be: various climates in urban surroundings or settings in the countryside. Some authors described rather their emotional state than the visual view. There are 14-year-old pupils, who had to write a noon quilt story as part of their studies. Others are web designers or writers and poets who publish on the web. Some of them probably found the site surfing the internet while working. Lots of the stories describe -mostly quite depressing- views from office windows.
No matter what topic is worked on, every piece of writing gives allows us a glimpse into the interior world of the author and its subjective look out of their window.

Among the authors of the noon quilt stories there are some who wrote their story as part of their studies or job, that is not voluntarily. This is also the case with the contribution of Peter Griffith from Mumbai, India. Although it seems like he just wants to fill the space of the patch he is writing in, he gives us important information about his work circumstances, so we can imagine his situation at midday. He appears like one of the "office victims", who are surrounded by "office towers, cars, ties, filofaxes and cellphones (...)".

He is working in the stressful business of advertising. In between the pressure of producing new adverts, he hastily writes down a couple of thoughts to enlarge the noon quilt . He is not writing about having his lunch break, but "all (he sees) of noon was through the toilet window".

 

Jay Ball's text is similar to Peter Griffin's. She calls herself a "copywhore" and is working in London's "adland". She gives us a detailed description of her working environment when she writes about "gas towers rising in iron cages, smoke tinged, smog filtered, traffic weaving, stalling, screeching". It sounds like she is tired of London's fast big city life and the harsh way people treat each others because of the tension of a stressful job, pushing each others through hallways of office buildings saying: "Get out of the fucking way". We get the impression that her job makes her feel uncomfortable, worthless and unhappy when she writes: "Breathing. Choking. Deep-throat gagging. Tears shuttering down an upturned cheek." She expresses her loneliness when she writes about the " anonymous traveller travelling nowhere."

The next story brings us into a completely different world: we are now in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. The author Darrin Bird, originally from New Zealand, writes his submission in his house by the beach, which is at the same time his workplace. As he describes his reality and we can imagine that this place is where lots of us long to be while sitting in unpersonal university auditoriums or uncomfortable and cold offices with work piling up on the desk. He sees a "shaded patio that frames the garden beyond", where "plamtrees shimmer with strokes of green and yellow accented with white reflected light". He compares his "screen door" with "canvas", his garden as "a natural painting". He seems to have found what many of us are looking for: a beautifully relaxing place to live and work.

The next submission I will interprete is a poem, written by a 15-year-old girl called Sonia Budgen. She is living in Hobart, Tasmania. The poem starts as follows: "As I look out of the window, I see nothing. Not a tree, not a cloud, not a person, not a soul." The poem continues this way. She makes a list of all the things she does can't see. While reading the first lines, one might wonder what sort of place this could be, without any movement and life. It comes across like a different world. Only in the last line we discover that she is blind: "I wish I wasn't blind, but that's the way god made me." I think Sonia's poem is a very important contribution to the noon quilt. It treats a new aspect of the "view", that is that there is none. The intention of the author is probably to remind people that they should appreciate to be able to see. A piece of poetry like this should make us realise that an ugly view out of the window or discontentment about the job situation is something changeable and lies in our hands. Sonia's situation however is something she has to accept and she doesn't even really complain about her fate, which is very admirable.

 
 
 
 
 
 

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