If you are a creature known to browse the internet in your spare time, identifying (web)surfing as a hobby, there is a good chance that you have come across this picture- ”Lunch atop a skyscraper.”
For those who haven’t, fret not; I used to be the same as you until a year ago. Why that does/doesn’t matter will soon be revealed.
Familiarity breeds contempt, they say. What they don’t say is how fast it does that.
Unfortunately for me, this has meant moving from one apartment to another n times in as many years – approximately for six months every year, you will find me looking for apartments. I try to limit this exploration to a 6-block radius of my current dwelling.
During one such apartment viewing, I saw the picture for the first time. Fortunately for me, the landlord and his tenants were very kind and patient. They showed me around the apartment. The tour was pretty uneventful (which is precisely how you want an apartment viewing to go) until I saw the painting in the bedroom.
The picture is unforgettable- and for the calmer, mellow ones out there – a head-turner.
There is something dangerously exciting about it. It makes me dizzy just to look at it, and I am not even acrophobic. A bunch of guys having lunch legs dangling – only on a beam 260 meters above the ground.
All of them seem pretty chill, some even laughing and smoking- seemingly with no awareness of the risk they are taking. It won’t come as a surprise then that Time magazine featured this image as one of the top 100 most influential pictures of all time.
All of them seem pretty chill, some even laughing and smoking- seemingly unaware of their risk. It won’t come as a surprise then that Time magazine featured this image as one of the top 100 most influential pictures of all time.
I must have started at the picture of what feels like an eternity in hindsight until the muffled conversations of my imagination turned out to be my host saying – “…this concludes the tour. Do you have any questions?”
I had many- but none of them related to the apartment, so I reined in my ego and superego, avoided any foot-in-mouth conversations, and politely took my leave.
The painting consumed me, but more so the location of it. For the ten minutes, it took me to walk back to my apartment, I was wondering where I would put this picture in my apartment.
Kitchen?
That would kinda mean I celebrate risk-taking when it comes to food. But that would be a lie. I like my staples and don’t meddle with them much. I certainly don’t want to give anybody the impression that I know what I do in the kitchen- which usually means burning something or the other.
Living room?
Maybe, if one day I can make space for it there OR have the courage to throw away one of the 200 to-do calendars I like to hang on the walls. And a big blank white chart with all the Netflix recommendations from friends, family, or anyone really that cared to share, lest I run out of shows to watch.
So I find the only available space in my tiny apartment – the screensaver on my work laptop.
It seems like the perfect spot, doesn’t it? Hidden from the world, yet in plain sight. I feel proud that I have found the ideal solution for my world
- Prompting myself to take more risks at work, to keep turning into a zombie on remote
- Avoiding having to explain to a lunatic/dazed future tenant gawping at the picture hanging on my bedroom wall
Adrenaline or not, this picture saves lives.
Friends of Words 