Let us picture a room, or rather, the windowed side of a living room. Behind the windows are a desk, and a side cart for books. On the desk seat stacks of torn papers, a few pens in a jar, a lamp, and two potted plants. All of these, mostly from Ikea, were to (re-)create a sense familiarity to a workspace only recently domesticated. Yet the presence of a defunct fireplace, palely pasted over, spoke an odd and bygone middle-American aspiration, which a foreign renter of a Chicago greystone failed to grasp.

Now picture Ang, at the desk, wrestling with, judging from the silhouette I could only make out as, the ever-changing world right in front of the window. From the side I made notes of this scene to the best of my ability: a pen and a camera. And here they are: