Cloudscapes change completely in the space of ten minutes, true or false? Maybe the precision of ten minutes is a false accuracy, but they don't stay around for long. Waiting for the bus this morning, there was a mountain in the sky in front of us. White cloud as the shading around a blue mountain-shape, and even a few wisps of cloud in front to suggest crags and bumps and [I'm sure there's a word for what I mean]. But it was definitely a mountain.
Then the bus came and there was definitely no longer a mountain in the sky in front of us. Just bands of heavy cloud, bright horizontal cracks between them, and below, in the tractor-gap into the field, breaking the hedge, an inch, perhaps two, of horizon: the sea with the sun on it; a bright distance where no clouds were. It was dark at 6am this morning, still dark-ish at 7am, then pretty much light at 7.15. The mountains, clouds, et cetera, came into my life at, oh, 7.35, and then, at 7.45, opening up the hens, a definite, unmistakable sunrise happened behind cloud - just visible, like peeking through a horizontal curtain. I love the way sunrise changes the substance of everything.
Do we make our own lives? Imagine them into being? If so, there's a lift under construction here that has a lot of sky in it. And - reading this over - a precision about timing. Hadn't expected that. To my mind comes that eleven-year-old discovering the value of short intervals. Race, when the bell went, to the shabby, comfortable leather armchair in the far corner of the school library, behind the piano, where the only reading within reach was bound volumes of the Illustrated London News dating back to the 'Great War'. Escape from it all into black-and-white pictures.
Short intervals, not long ones. Precious time.
Then the bus came and there was definitely no longer a mountain in the sky in front of us. Just bands of heavy cloud, bright horizontal cracks between them, and below, in the tractor-gap into the field, breaking the hedge, an inch, perhaps two, of horizon: the sea with the sun on it; a bright distance where no clouds were. It was dark at 6am this morning, still dark-ish at 7am, then pretty much light at 7.15. The mountains, clouds, et cetera, came into my life at, oh, 7.35, and then, at 7.45, opening up the hens, a definite, unmistakable sunrise happened behind cloud - just visible, like peeking through a horizontal curtain. I love the way sunrise changes the substance of everything.
Do we make our own lives? Imagine them into being? If so, there's a lift under construction here that has a lot of sky in it. And - reading this over - a precision about timing. Hadn't expected that. To my mind comes that eleven-year-old discovering the value of short intervals. Race, when the bell went, to the shabby, comfortable leather armchair in the far corner of the school library, behind the piano, where the only reading within reach was bound volumes of the Illustrated London News dating back to the 'Great War'. Escape from it all into black-and-white pictures.
Short intervals, not long ones. Precious time.