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[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

A COMPUTER WITH A VIEW

When sitting at the computer I have only to look slightly left to see  
a substantial part of my rural kingdom. The view is through a window  
original to the house, double-hung, a single pane below and the top  
with two mullions, a three-over-one, one would say pretentiously.

The bottom half of the bottom sash is blocked by my “desk,” an  
assembly of cherry boards held up by various sticks and crosspieces.  
The ell-shape creates a deep corner; my computers have lived on this  
temporary stage for twenty years.

The little house was built with four rooms only: girls and boys  
separated by a wall upstairs, parents in the smaller of the  
downstairs rooms. This room was the main space with a fireplace with  
which to cook, eat and stay warm, the design of a great room, but too  
modest in size for that appellation. It is the only room in this  
humble hut that has been citified. Which is to say transformed by  
sheetrock. This blasphemous condition happened because back in the  
early days of desktop publishing and writing we purchased a laser  
printer, an outrageously expensive item to our modest income, which  
toner would clog and refuse to print due to humidity. So the room was  
gutted to the balloon-framed studs and ceiling joists, insulation  
implanted, then vapor barrier, then the out-of-place sheetrock which  
I skip-textured and Chris painted a so-light blue that it looks  
merely off-white. A small window air-conditioner reduced humidity and  
made summer with closed doors bearable. Above the view window is an  
early laser-printer output, a quotation from Philip Roth: “Nothing  
bad can happen to a writer. Everything is material.” It has served to  
sustain.

As the computer faces the corner directly, the look left to the  
window is but a slight turn of the head. This is a position to which  
I have become so attuned that any future studio will have the same  
design.

The view is the thing. A writer’s muse is beyond gold. When observed  
gazing for long periods at wall, ceiling or sky, a writer is in fact  
hard at work. Writing appears to take place with scrawls on paper or  
taps on keyboard but the real work happens while the mind is playing.  
Such play is enhanced with a stimulating view.

The view is south, through the screened porch, across the front yard,  
down to the stream, onto the hill beyond and the sky above. Its  
particulars include various weeds and grasses delusionally named  
lawn, two lilac bushes, two heartnut trees, a cedar, various oaks, a  
young mulberry Chris disclosed last summer through heroic brush  
removal, big walnuts, a butternut and several sycamores at the stream  
(now within the beaver pond, so doomed), then up to an unending  
panorama of oaks and pines and finally the sky. The new stream  
crossing destined to become a dam is far left while the largest white  
oak on the place dominates on the right.

Nature never rests; the scene is always alive. Seasons prepare then  
burst into view. When door or window are open the earthy smell of  
growth and decay flows in. Bluebirds, cardinals, crows, bluejays,  
finches, woodpeckers, phoebes, wrens feed, mate and rear, turkey  
vultures soar on updrafts, kingfishers splat the water for minnows,  
squirrels stash and retrieve. Occasionally a deer appears across the  
stream, ears and tail flicking. If Benny, the napoleonic Aussie spots  
it, it is gone in a bound; outraged snorts track it up the forested  
hill. Turkeys appear and they, too, are routed from his territory, as  
happened minutes ago.

If all the critters are quiescent then there is always something else  
at work: morning fog, breeze or wind or cloud movement, water  
sparkles and reflections, constantly migrating shadows, raindrops on  
leaves, as is happening now.

This is the value: nature soothes; movement inspires.