FROM MY WINDOW

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21414, 11 February 1933, Page 1 (Supplement)

FROM MY WINDOW

BY GEOFFREY POLLETT

WATCHING THE WORLD WAKE

A lonely man's window is very different from the windows one will meet with in a home where is also a family. Not that you might guess as much from the most careful examination of the glass irf either: unless that belonging to the lonely one, whom we will presume to be a bachelor, is somewhat clouded with neglect. Nonetheless, there is this considerable difference: that the "family window," be it ever so polished, is but a conveniently transparent portion of wall—of that rampart behind which every family confronts the outer world. Whereas the lonely man's window is much more like a sort of extra-large keyhole through which he is prepared, nay, eager, to play Peeping Tom at all the world. For lonely souls are nothing if not curious. Not in the vulgar, shrewish way of some women about their neighbours; but in the proper and somewhat winning manner of children, who are not content to know, but must also know " why." For the lonely, having only themselves to fall back upon for company and amusement, understand the value of preserving the child's outlook on life. To meet life with a simple, questioning gaze—so readily transformed into a pleasant smile—that is the mark of a wise man. Not to snub it like the blase; or offer it a wry, insincere mask of a grin, in the manner of the cynic: both of which attitudes are the best sophistication can effect for us. Bather, surely, be a gaping idiot, a harmless and not unhappy village leaf, than a human edition of Mr. Galsworthy's " White Monkey " —that wretched creature that has squeezed life until " all is dry, as a parched skin of orange." Early Risers The sun has not yet risen—probably slept in again, and presently will come hurrying through the trees across the park all red and bothered. Or maybe it is in Bulky mood, will lie late, and give the morning over to these even angrierfrowning clouds. At any rate, some of us are up already! One thrush is performing his matutinal vocal exercises just beyond the park railings. I fancy it is always the same thrush, this early riser: for he is ever perched upon the same branch, and is assiduous in never varying his scales from one morning to the next. Such unremitting diligence will surely make of him a great singer one day! Tl* next up are the milkman and the cat. Which is actually first I am not prepared to say. It always seems to my watchful scrutiny that they arrive simultaneously—in a dead heat. But possibly credit should be awarded the milkman who, presumably, has had to arise somewhat previously in order to fulfil his engagement here; whereas Brother Cat boards just across the way and, despite this residential advantage, seems not to have finished his final ablutions even yet. They are good friends, the cat and the milkman. The former, doubtless, considers friendship politic (although I am prepared to argue with those who hold that the feline tribe obeys no higher motive than that dictated by its instinct for comfort). The milkman, on the other hand, like all lonely men—and he who works while others sleep is condemned to lifelong loneliness—seeks. friendship for its own sake. It comes naturally and easily to such. Those of us who are wont, or have perforce, to spend much Mme alone become less suspicious of our fellows, demanding fewer credentials from any with whom we would establish an understanding relationship. That, surely, is to be felt among country folk, who are all lonelier than their town cousins; and even more marked is this instinct of deep friendliness in all who dwell among the hills. Such, accustomed as they are to scanning distant horizons, grow likewise adept at fastening upon the soul's horizon of their fellow men, rather than the middle-distance of personality, or the sharper foreground of habit. For, as a wise Chinese once said, " Men's natures are alike; it is their habits that carry them far apart." A Great Actor But now our milkman has departed, and cat. already sensuously conscious of the early sun-warmth tickling the delicate fur of his spine, has prowled beyond the park palings, where one may glimpse him glossily stretched out beneath my thrush's tree. There, with " fair round face and snowy beard " uptilted, and wearing a bland smile of benignity, he affects an indifference to his surroundings that would be touching were not those half-hidden emeralds, his eyes, fastened upon the branch above him. He, as all his tribe, is one of Nature's consummate actors: yet he deceives neither ourselves nor thrush, who, beating his wings with emotion, gives vent to his strident alarm cry—for all the world like a pair of immense scissors snipping in the grasp of a Gargantua. And now, from somewhere beneath us, a piano commences to tinkle. " Tinkle," indeed! Into what vacuity a trite phrase may lead us! For the piano is weaving into the early stillness all the tender wistfulness of a Chopin valse. Is Chopin your favourite, as lie is mine ? What lovelier accompaniment to the mysterious pageantry of the stars vM .ever, or ever shall be, fashioned than his delicately, yet deeply wrought nocturnes ? For the chords he played upon were those of his own heart, and his cadences wrung from his tormented spirit. He remains the type of all spiritual nostalgia, and though his music may never satisfy, as beauty never can satisfy, it will continue to thrill and question, and plead, even as the sublimer verse of Shelley. Not Altogether Lonely This comparison of poets with composers has its fascination for me. I have always delighted in pairing them off, regarding their different—not so vastly different, after all—arts as the expression 'of similar emotions. Beethoven with Wordsworth (again, we think of the poet at his greatest—not of Simon Lee and his swollen ankles!); Schubert with Tennyson (Heavens! not in their personality, which only proves again what we have quoted Confucius as saying about men's habits, and not their natures, dividing them); and, what one read only the other day in a clever appreciation, Debussy with T. S. Eliot. But whilst we still wander speculatively, the Chopin valse has become a Brahms rhapsody. The " G Minor," which always sweeps by, and through, one like a full wind across fir trees on a hilltop. This rhapsody of Brahms has. for me, at least, a strangely clear picture: a vision of high hills, wind swept; tall, upstanding trees blackening against the sunset; and somewhere, somewhere rather vague and distant, yet certainly in the background, the sea. Beauty, alas! (or shall we give praise that it is better so?) is fragmentary. Not Brahms, not Chopin may charm us for ever. Somewhere closer at hand, a gramophone has taken charge, seized the whole wakeful morning in its raucous embrace, and is jazzing with it hither and thither, but more especially immediately beneath my window. " Somebody loves you, s-o-m-e-b-o-d-y loves you!" it cries. Very well. That, at least, is comforting news. And I shut my window, knowing that I am not completely alone after all. I