She was all she had and it was more than enough for now

She was a survivor, living within

She gathered momentum by living within, contained by a fascination with the view

This trance, this daytime viewing, where any world awaited her arrival

She merely closed her eyes and she was a survivor. She had no choice in the matter, it just happened this way. No victims in this home

She watched her life as she would a story, absorbing the view

If she was lonely, that was merely a tragic act in a much larger drama, or was simply an aspect of character development

If she had no career, that was a forthcoming episode, written into the subsequent draft

And when there was nothing... no feeling, no access, no contact, no one, she turned the channel, chose a new view, changed the context, created her own fabrication, a unique reality

She was a survivor through no choice of her own

Her fascination with the view had begun in innocence, a bare curiosity, a form of entertainment

She'd begun to take her cues from it

She'd begun to rearrange her day to suit the view

She'd begun to refuse to leave the daytime viewing, the mid-day game plan

Her world became arranged by the view

She reduced her emotions to it an hour a day

She devoted body and soul and a grand portion of the mind to it an hour a day

The figures in the view were her best of friends for an hour a day, season upon season

And a wanting began to grow, and she fed it

The wanting was real and she kept it alive

She fed it stories from a private reservoir of imagined events and wishful ideas

Invention, she had heard, was the key to diversion, a detour to wanting

Invention, she resolved, would be a change in the view

She would create an access ramp to the world of other

Invention would be her vehicle, her form of mobility, her invisible realm of secret reward

Dreamtime became her horizon

She breathed in fog, catching glimpses of herself through misty lenses