I am late.
But I simply can’t seem to stir.
It’s all quiet here at Shrewsday Mansions. The calm before the storm.
I’m sitting in bed with a day before me, filled with tidying and packing and last-minute celebrations and shorthand transcriptions and rather a lot of writing.
But I’m looking out of my window at a tall green forest which is glittering because, after torrential rain yesterday, sunlight is glittering on every leaf.
Mine is a towering three storey house but the birches dwarf it. So the window is the most exquisite framed piece, a work of emerald stature, with all the depth a forest can bring.
What a picture to wake up to.
It is made all the more poignant because there is a sofa underneath the window, and on it sleeps a young girl who has not yet ceded to consciousness. Is there anything more beautiful than a content child asleep?
When I look out of this window and the weather is sunny, I always remember a scene from a Hollywood trilogy. Its idea was not new, but it was treated rather well.
The ‘Back To The Future’ series was one great big What If. What would happen if we were able to travel around in time, and just suppose one really could change its path to alter not just future events, but those of the present?
Teen hero, Marti, gets to see, courtesy of a mad scientist who fuels his time machine on rubbish, that his extended family becomes a total disaster.
There’s a scene where he observes his house, now fitted with all the conveniences the future can provide. And this includes a picture window.
Except that it’s not a window. It doesn’t let natural light in. It’s a great screen, projecting peaceful scenes of green tranquility.
It’s on the blink, it seems, and the remote can’t get quite the quality one would hope for.
Just think of the possibilities: one day one could have a desert view, the next Niagra Falls.
But it feels desolate to watch: the epitome of the worst taste possible, because a view from a window is about more than a flat screen image.
It’s a problem digital cameras are still grappling with. They lack the ability to provide the depth of the images we see, using tiny little miracles called our lenses.
The camera industry has made strides in the right direction, though, with their digital single-lens reflex cameras.
They use a mirror to reflect the light coming from a lens onto a beautiful little reflector called a pentaprism: a five-sided prism which changes the direction of the light twice. It has a complicated set of shutter mechanisms which means that the light from the lens stays on the image sensor- itself bigger than your average digital point-and-shoot – for longer.
One of the great strengths of this complex little piece of machinery is that it shows depth of field very well indeed.
To me, an amateur, the evidence of my eye speaks volumes. The pictures taken by this new generation of cameras has a depth and definition I could never get before. Now my little point-and-shoot seems one-dimensional. Depth is all.
But the DSLR camera can only provide so much.
As I gaze out of my window I can hear the birds and other companionable noises. I can smell the damp forest, picking itself up after yesterday’s torrential deluge. The luxury of my view is endless. It affords me a multi-sensory ‘peace,’ as someone once wrote, ‘beyond all understanding’; most of all, because it is familiar. It is what I know.
And so, it seems to me that to Charlotte Bartlett, in EM Forster’s classic A Room With A View, that view out over the city of Florence was a seminal point in her life: a rite of passage, a surrender to something no man-made device can possibly mimic.
That moment when she leans out of the window at the hotel has always stayed with me. “…when she reached her own room”, writes Forster, “she opened her window and breathed in the clean night air, thinking of the kind old man who had enabled her to see the lights dancing in the Arno and the cypresses of San Miniato, and the foothills of the Appenines, black against the rising moon.”
It’s a solitary, private moment we all know. Each of us has a different room and a different view: but tonight, as every night, perhaps you will lean out to see and smell and feel your countryside ,or city, your desert, or forest, your suburbia or solitary retreat: and think of all the windows with all the views across the globe.
Because views are universal: all of us have a room with a view.
Kate Shrewsday 
Relish it!
Will do!
I wake up to my Dad’s flower garden and birds. Beautiful. I don’t start my day appreciating it enough, thank you for the reminder, Kate.
It sounds really lovely, Sharon 🙂
Thanks Kate, for the reminder to take in and appreciate the view, whatever it might be.
It’s the simple things in life, isn’t it, Patti?
What a beautiful write, and photo! This is how I feel about the place I’ve lived in for the past ten years – especially this particular room where I spend most of my waking at-home time. A room with a view that has changed much as a result of what they call progress… ‘back to the future’ seems more like it. {sigh}
Ruth, I still remember the description of the scene outside your window. It sounds rather a wonderful place. I lived in Cornwall for a while and for a townie the scenery outside could be really quite desolate. I love a bit of life: change, though: that I find much, much harder….
Absolutely gorgeous, Kate – image and words! You are indeed blessed with that beautiful view 🙂 I also often marvel at the magic of creation – and how technology falls so incredibly short, in cameras and hearing aids (which Dave battles with), for example. Man just cannot come close to matching nature!
That’s so true, Naomi. I do envy you those stunning South African views….
A beautiful piece of writing Kate. I live 700ft up on a hill, and as I write I have my eye on the window ahead. This evening it is full of delicious candyfloss clouds floating in a perfect blue sky.
Sounds just perfect. Hills make for the most spectacular views 🙂
Love it! Your room with a view promotes reclining in bed (and on window seats), and inclining out the window. A Room With A View is marvelous too ~ a bit of time travel, eh?
Time and space, Nancy: I’ve never been to Florence and I’d love to: think it might have to wait a year or two, though…
oh, Kate, what a beautiful write to accompany such a lovely picture. I could smell the damp from the forest (or at least my Stateside version). I wish to live from your window seat for just a while… sigh, but I am glad (and fortunate) to afford my own room with a view ~
….most views have their charm, Angela 🙂 Sometimes just because they are the thing we see out of the window every day…glad you have a room with a view.
Windows: eyes for the soul seeking beauty
Absolutely true, what a beautiful angle, Pseu 🙂
Kate, Katie? I found your gravitar on my most recent post today. I thought I’d stop by to see your site and give you a quick thank you. Very mush enjoyed your writing and will certainly return in the now and again. AJ.
Hi AJ, thanks for coming over to take a look! Your post was really touching, and I loved the way the shopping trip put death in its place. The wonders of blogging is that to us who read, we draw our conclusions not from age but from the words we write. And your writing is ageless 🙂
This is such a wonderful and thought provoking piece, Kate. When I awake, I see the sky through an eyebrow window that has a Tiffany (copy) mermaid floating in. Below is the green of trees and plants and a wandering deer or two or ten. I’ll think about your blog when I awake to it in 10 hours or so.
You’ll never get what we are watching on television right now. Go ahead, take a guess. You guessed. Back to the Future! The Scene? Marti’s future house with the screen.
Gracious! There’s a coincidence! It’s years since I watched it but that screen has haunted me ever since.
You view sounds typically wonderful and very Cutoff, Penny…
I too have a green view from my upstairs bedroom window. not a good sized forest, but my garden trees, gaps to the trees on the spruit (stream) and their variety, inhabitants, shades of green and brown. my room with a view of heaven
It sounds that way, Sidey, and you have a stream! I’m envious now! I know your garden is close to your heart: must be lovely to glimpse changes through that window.
Lovely post. It makes me homesick for my country view: queen’s crown vine, lavender bush, pecan and sycamore trees. It was nothing like your forest–that’s gorgeous–but it was green and open and peaceful. You’ve also reminded me both to remember and to look through the window I have now.
That country view does sound wonderful, Kathy 🙂
I dream of a view from a mystical mountain-top in rural China or a sunwashed stone villa in Portafino – one day…
Oooh, yes, Portafino! what a wonderful view that will be….
What a fabulous view! I’ve never had a view 😦
It is the nicest thing about a very humble house, Tilly 🙂 But there must be something of note outside that window….my front window looks out on a car park and a green where all the children play. Much more mundane, but just as nice in a different way.
Beautiful and deep insight into a view.
I remebered the book “Getting out of the Box” which shows that all of us have our own small box and our own thought.Getting out of the box is important to see the scene through an objective perspective.
I could understand what you said. We can see the beautiful things through our own view.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Leadership-Self-Deception-Getting-out-ebook/dp/B0035ZDP0Y/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1313848348&sr=8-2
By the way, “Back To The Future” was one of the best movies when I was a child.
Thanks, Cocomino 🙂 our view is always colored by who we are…