a room with a view

Call me crazy. But it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in occupying a good room must be in want for postcard views.

Yet, many years later, as i now sit staring at the mountains, i am to remember that time when first my father took me to discover the mountains. It was a bright cold day in December and the clocks were striking five, even as the mountains loomed over us with snow sparkling like diamond. My father gave me some advice that i've been turning over in my mind ever since.

“You don’t know about life without you having walked up and down them, but that ain't no matter.”

Something must have troubled my father; for that morning, without having done anything at all, i was commanded out of my bed.

The sun shone, having no alternative, on the brand new snow. Whether i shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by him, he wanted to test.

“Where now? How now? When now?” I asked of him. He seemed lost, distant even like the shadow of a waxwing slain. For a long time he went to bed early only to wake up in wee hours anxious and red-eyed.

“To be born again,” he said, “first you must conquer the mountain.”

“Born again?” i asked incredulously. He roared with laughter that echoed in the valley. He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. i believe now i inherited that more than anything.

“What’s it going to be then, eh?” he asked. i shrugged.

“If you’re interested in passing through life without any pains, you would be better off lounging on some beach,” he snorted.

i decided then that all men, except one, never grew up.

My father was born in the plains… once upon a time. He was born twice: first, as a youngest of seven siblings in a family that ate once and hand-me-downs were heirlooms treasured. Then again, when as a young man, he ran away from home to roam the highlands.

i could sense Father was beginning to get very tired of me sitting around and of having nothing to do.

“The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.” he whispered.

The most merciful thing in the world was the inability of my father to fashion me in his mould. i did not want to go out to conquer any mountain; but for him it was love at first sight. The first time he had seen them he had fallen madly in love.

“To get what i am hinting at”, he said, “you have to follow that trail, go north by north-east till it merges into the mountains.”

"Perhaps there you'll know that life is all it is or ever was or ever will be."

Like conventions, his stories had a way of surviving. i knew his story, bit by bit, from him. But as it so happened with me, each time was a different version.

i still carry a handful of these although it’s been long since he’s been gone. For a man of his age and disposition, he did, to his mind, solve the problem of man’s infinitesimal existence and equated it with his sojourns in the mountains.

The beginning of his stories was simple to mark. Yet, arbitrarily, that morning, he chose the moment from his experience from which he neither looked back nor ahead.

What about that morning you ask? The sun rose slowly, as if it wasn't sure it was worth the effort. i didn't know it then, but the old man was dying. There was no possibility of taking on the mountains that day.

He hung around looking out the window at the mountaintops nostalgia heavy in his eyes.

His smile hung oppressively low on his face; and at length, i found him slipping as the shades of the evening drew on. He passed all those years ago when i needed him most.

He passed within view of the melancholy of the mountains, his true love.

Sitting at the same window, i see myself staring at the same view.

i sense i am he.

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Originally published Jan 14, 2015. a room with a view

Image: Caspar David Friedrich, Public Domain, via Wikimedia