We do this dance, I imagine. My subjects and me. We clutch each other. Kindred souls in the embrace of the darkness of anonymity. Afraid that, without the other, the light of knowing, or the true world, would come tumbling in, separating us forever.

I feel like an omniscient maestro of these people’s lives. A puppeteer or warden in a Benthamian panopticon – watching the prisoners of my creation, moving strings and giving them life.

Then, by chance, I walked passed the window. It must have been over a year of voyeuristic intrusion and puppeteering on my part. My ego was huge. Perhaps, the hobby was bigger.

Eyes connect in a moment that is defined by acknowledgment. She looks across the divide of tar and air – electric.

I see her, and then see everything as it is.

I look at all the windows and I see souls.

I see them seeing me.

The realization reels me back a couple of steps. I am stumped by the obviousness of it.

I see the situation as it really is. I have let myself believe I am the master, the creator of life, without knowing the truth.

It’s the seduction of the ego and ergo: the watcher has become the watched.