From My Window in Staten Island

by Friederike Windel








From my window in Staten Island, I have learned to be in community with my neighborhood
and sit with the pains and joys of 2020. Lockdown in NYC happened in the beginning of spring and I remember the mornings waking up to see the sunlight on the plants of my window. In one of my afternoon walks, I was feeling this deeply:


“Can you see my smiling eyes?
The golden hour shine?
You’re here with me, friend.”

Reflecting on how I am doing and inviting others to process became important. Eyes behind masks became an identifier I could use to read people, read myself. I started thinking about this question



“can you see my smiling eyes” and noting that often others and I have not been smiling, had no reason to smile. “Eyes don’t always smile” became a reminder of the impact of the pandemic. I put these two self-portraits next to each other because it holds both the sorrows and joys of this year.










From my window, I have lost loved ones, three too many this year; I have accompanied others whose loved ones became ancestors.


“You are here with us Luisli Götti, Ron, and Mohammad Ali.”

From my window, I witnessed the ongoing police brutality and murders of Black people.

“You are here with us Breanna Taylor, George Floyd, Tony McDade, and many others.”


In the midst of the lockdown and feelings of grief and anxiety, making knotted bracelets gave me a sense of groundedness. This practice moved anxiety and grief to my hands and helped me return to some sense of centering. It also helped me remember my community, sending these bracelets to loved ones in NYC, within and outside the US. As a graduate student I had not paused much before to engage with my hands beyond the typing on my laptop or my cooking. The pandemic urged me to honor other practices of making sense of and being in the world. I felt this joy when I could make bracelets while being on a zoom call, while talking with friends and family and taking moments of pause with my part




 Friederike M. Windel was a Phd from the Critical Social/Personality Psychology Program at The Graduate Center, CUNY, and is now a Instructor at the Department of Psychology, Health, and Gender at The American University of Paris. In 2020, she use her application to the project “From my window and … other places” to interrogate the impacts of the use of masks in our ability to recognize each other's emotions.