I live across the Melbourne Assessment prison. They put people there who’ve just been caught and are waiting for their trial to be then stowed away in some more remote prison where escaping equals certain death. When the sun has set, it is possible to see lights in different cells, people watching television like I could be doing. I could notice from the colours of a TV set that one was watching a documentary with me tonight on Clipperton Island, a deserted island somewhere in the Pacific between New Zealand and Chili, as remote as you can be from any world that imposes you to live in a tiny cell for a number of years. I understood why he watched it. There was some movement in his cell when the story was told of the last inhabitants of Clipperton Island, a Mexican contingent that were forgotten about because of some government unrest in mainland Mexico. Without supplies or awareness of the world, the lighthouse keeper proclaimed himself emperor of Clipperton Island, went mad and enslaved the women of the rest of the Mexicans. He must have killed the men, I presume. The women were rescued by a passing American ship and the lighthouse keeper was left by himself, the emperor of a million birds, five million crabs and a big rock upon which his lighthouse palace stood. I think my neighbour liked the story too, both smiling at it from our different cells. For the same reasons, too.
Neighbours though we are, there is no contact between us. He must be able to look inside my apartment, as my blinds are always horizontal, never up or down. I allow him to watch me. Not because being observed is something I draw a fetishistic exitement from (which I do, but that’s something else), but because I shouldn’t prevent him from having something to watch besides his television life. Something tangible. He might have caught me drunk, dancing around, preparing dinner for a friend, watched me outside with my groceries, watching me unload my groceries, kissing a boy, showering, taking a bath, etc…
Maybe it eases his mind to have something to observe, something he can be sure of. I have spent a night in a prison cell and I realised I would go mad very soon if there was nothing livable to be seen, if it was just me and my thoughts in a confined space of semi-darkness.
Tonight we’ll both conquer Clipperton Island.
Tim van den Oudenhoven 