When I sit here late at night and look at the lit up windows of the building across the courtyard from mine, I sometimes try to imagine what they see when they look into my window, and I think it is something impossibly small.  Not that anybody looks.  I don’t think, anyway.  But if they did look, I wonder what they would think looking at me, always at my desk except for when I am sleeping.  I wonder if they would imagine that I am disciplined and studious, or sad, or just strange.  I wonder if they would imagine me as some weirdo, gamer, second-life dork, or as a book nerd who doesn’t know how to dress properly or talk on the phone.  Or sometimes I wonder if they look in on my little existence and envy it for how small and contained it is, how it’s not spilling over the edges with mortgages and kids and responsibility.  I can tell which of the lights across the street are lamp lights, and which are TV lights.  In some apartments I can see bookshelves, and I like those apartments best.  Eventually the lights snap off, one by one, and they all go to bed, these people who live in the apartments that look into mine.  Then it’s just me and no people.  And eventually I will go to bed too.