I have always loved to photograph or view images of the "window views" of writers, or the window out of which they look, when they glance up from their desk. This penchant may have started with a letter from Walter Farley, to a young girl, myself, when I was 10 or 12 years old. I had written him to tell him how much I loved the Black Stallion series, how I had read every book, and what it meant to me, to see the world from the viewpoint of a horse. One can imagine that a teen would have more in common with the innocence of an animal, than with many people, that is, adults. Stephen Spielberg just brought out a film, " The War Horse", which takes this perspective. He said that he learned he wanted to be a parent, when he made ET. He was frightened of horses, because he had a bad fall as a child, but now one of his daughters rides horses, in part, the source of the film version of the play originally on the stage in London. As for Walter Farley, he wrote , "I am sitting at my desk where I write, looking out on the meadow where a new filly and her mother are grazing...and that he was happy to hear from me...and then he drew a picture of the horses to end his letter to me. I hope the letter still rests in my archives somewhere, and has not been lost in all the moves, in my life. His words and his action have never left my memory.
My favorite author's window is the one of Anna Akhmatova, in the art historian's house in which she lived in St. Petersburg, and the one room, she had, in which she both slept and lived and wrote. I have the original art photos of that room's view; she looked out on a wonderful tree.
In teaching Moby Dick, here in China, I found an image of the desk and the view Herman Melville had from his desk, that of the mountains, which gave him inspiration. The sky was his sea, and he created a mountain out of a whale.
View from my writing desk, after a snowfall
Last night, as I returned from Shanghai to Nanjing, snow began to fall at the gate and this morning, here is the view from my living room area in my apartment. I like to gaze out on the architectural elements of a traditional style building, one of the few remaining at Nanjing University. Having grown up in Wisconsin, I love to see fresh snow on a winter morning in January.
Here is the chair in which I sit to write at my pc, which my lovely cat always occupied, when I was not there! Of course, as I enter 2012, as of November, she is no longer with me...like Hiroshige's wonderful print of the cat watching from the window, she used to stretch out in the window, in front of my desk, and either watch the birds in the trees, or me writing.
My favorite author's window is the one of Anna Akhmatova, in the art historian's house in which she lived in St. Petersburg, and the one room, she had, in which she both slept and lived and wrote. I have the original art photos of that room's view; she looked out on a wonderful tree.
In teaching Moby Dick, here in China, I found an image of the desk and the view Herman Melville had from his desk, that of the mountains, which gave him inspiration. The sky was his sea, and he created a mountain out of a whale.
View from my writing desk, after a snowfall
Last night, as I returned from Shanghai to Nanjing, snow began to fall at the gate and this morning, here is the view from my living room area in my apartment. I like to gaze out on the architectural elements of a traditional style building, one of the few remaining at Nanjing University. Having grown up in Wisconsin, I love to see fresh snow on a winter morning in January.
Here is the chair in which I sit to write at my pc, which my lovely cat always occupied, when I was not there! Of course, as I enter 2012, as of November, she is no longer with me...like Hiroshige's wonderful print of the cat watching from the window, she used to stretch out in the window, in front of my desk, and either watch the birds in the trees, or me writing.
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