Woman By The Window

By Shu-Ling Chua

For ‘EWF X Textile Message‘ as part of the 2025 Emerging Writers’ Festival.

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Dear Woman by the Window, what do you dream of? Adventure, a lover, the past, or another life? 

Does elsewhere exist or is its elusiveness the very point? Is this life enough? 

* 

On the cusp of divorce, the narrator of Yuko Tsushima’s Territory of Light moves, with her almost-three-year-old daughter, into a light-filled apartment on the top floor of an old four-storey office building. In the opening paragraph, she recalls slipping into vacant rooms on the third floor after her daughter had fallen asleep: 

I would open the windows a fraction and enjoy a different take on the view, or walk up and down in the empty space. I felt as if I were in a secret chamber, unknown to anyone. 

I find Tsushima’s unromanticised depictions of motherhood—its joys, frustrations and tedium—reassuring. Her protagonists, often single mothers like herself, persevere. 

* 

In my favourite scene from In the Mood for Love 花樣年華, Mrs. Chan, played by Maggie Cheung Man-yuk 張曼玉, hovers at the edge of a mahjong game, then moves away. She pauses by a window, arm over stomach, and sips from a glass tumbler. Lifting her downcast eyes, she sighs. Her sky-blue, daffodil-splashed cheongsam is one of many she wears in the film. 

* 

In Gwen John’s painting La Chambre sur la Cour, a lady in a black dress sits sewing at the window, with only a sleepy cat for company. The scene is quiet: contemplative yet filled with life. A pale blue curtain shifts in the breeze. Art historian Rebecca Birrell observes: 

The room promises a solitude in which sociality is always at hand: the windows open out onto another near-identical room in the distance, the framed picture suggestive of a kindred spirit, its sounds and sights and smells a guarantee against loneliness. 

Head bent, the artist and her work become one. 

* 

Pia Johnson’s Mooramong Green is a series of self-portraits set in, and around, the former mansion home of millionaire Donald “Scobie” McKinnon and Claire Adams in the regional town of Skipton. The artist wears a dusky pink 1950s-style shirt dress. 

In A Kitchen Poem, Johnson peers out the window, one hand on the edge of the sink, one foot delicately arched, as if about to push off. The kitchen is empty yet comforting. Checkered dish cloths hang over the oven. At its centre, a pale blue dish cloth rests upon the tap. 

* 

Windows, as barrier-thresholds, enable and prevent escape. 

What do you desire, truly? 

* 

I wanted to leave Werribee and Hoppers Crossing, but I came back. 

I wanted to be a scientist, but I didn’t have the patience to conduct countless futile experiments. 

I wanted to be a translator, but I didn’t put in the effort to become fluent. 

I wanted to work on climate change policy, but I grew disillusioned. 

* 

To be a Woman by the Window is to balance dreams against practicalities. 

I still want to make a difference, to change the world, but my dreams are smaller. I still desire. 

* 

My friend Andrew invites me to read at the launch of his poetry collection Act Cute.

I write a poem inspired by ‘Act Two [you stop me at the airport and tell me that you love me]’.

For the reading, I wear an oversized sweatshirt jumper, plaid mini-skirt, tights and high boots. The jumper features Snoopy, from the Peanuts comics, hitting a home run. It is from Kmart while the skirt is from a holiday in Seoul. To complete my look, I clip a big pink bow over a high ponytail.

I wear the same outfit to visit my grandmother. I wear it to go clubbing. And I wear it on a Sunday morning drive to Richmond, on the last day of August, for a slice of hojicha and honey tart.