A window view

Nothing so special about the window view which I have been painting in my solitude state alone by myself in my empty house today. It was cloudy with drizzle of rain every now and then just like the past few days. There is a repressive monotonousness about the view which was occasionally broken by the sudden appearance of a young lady in red walking her dog, and by the sudden switch on of the light at the house across the street. I have been painting the same window views counter less times over the past 10 years day after day season after season and year after year. The view was not getting more exciting as the years are gone by, no, and as a matter of fact it was getting less and less exciting to the viewers, especially after the July 6 strong storm which decimated most of the big trees in our Balmoral Bay neighborhood. Looking out of the window now, you do not see my 10 year old Ford Taurus car parking there anymore. It was crushed by a fallen tree over the hedges on that night. Instead, you see our new Honda Civic taking the front stage. You do not see the juniper brushes any more they are dead and had to be cleared out. Instead, you see the dark patches of dirt where they used to stand. You do not see the big ash tree anymore which we had to cut it down due to the damage by the wind and storm, instead, you see a small mountain ash tree start to grow. I ask myself why, despite of its not so exciting appearance, am I still so attracted to the view with my brush ready and French easel set up. I have no answer. However, deep in me I can feel the view is a sort of metaphor: a view rolling out your own passage of life for you to review and to contemplate, perhaps. You can reminiscent about your past, watch passively the stream of your life flowing past right in front of you, and also speculate about your future. Each time as my brush moves across the canvas with my eyes locked onto the view, I frequently find my mind would drift away, far away. In the far northwestern China, facing my childhood bedroom window, was the view of the distant snow capped Altay Mountains. During the turbulent years of China’s Cultural Revolution in the 60s, the never changing view of Altay Mountain was such a comfort to me as a child. I remember picking up paint brush doing water color sketch of the view so many times. Maybe, the  sense of  geographical isolation compounded by the sense of political repression  in my teen years prompted me to seek a new distant view for my life : I did not know why on that particular dreary day, I drifted into a local book store, and bought an English language text book. That was a spring day in the year of 1978.  On that day I gave up my paint brushes, and instead I picked up the task of teaching myself English in a place where no one understood a word of English.   You would not believe it how hard I worked at it, and how impossible you could teach yourself English in that kind of environment. However, only after a few years I found myself start to read Charles Dickens , charlotte and  Emily Bronte, Thomas  Hardy, Jane Austin, and even Shakespeare!  all in English originals. Armed with a new language, I found the course of my life started to change so dramatically. A new horizon appeared which eventually lead me through the narrow valley of my birthplace across the Gobi desert of Northwestern China. I never would dream that one day, I would eventually find myself in Canada Starting a new life with ever changing window views.  So in the summer of 2003 looking out of the window of a cottage near the Lake of the Woods in Western Ontario , I picked up my paint brushes again.