OPEN-SKY AROMA

I went for a walk this morning. I do this most days. Sammy goes to work; I leave at the same time to make it feel much more like a work day and not just some skyless pyjama day when I can lounge in front of my laptop.

I went round the block as usual.

It’s the first day of Spring today. Well, what I mean is that we’re past the vernal equinox, which means from now on things ought to start to warm up and dry out. Already a few flowers are poking up. The weather though, is only hinting at it. The sky is grey, there’s cold rain in the air and this morning the trees were dripping onto the wet concrete.

I don’t know if I can explain it, but every now and then I get a whiff of the fragrance of life. I mean it - it’s the smell of being ‘alive’, open to the huge wide sky, living big. It’s as though a window’s suddenly been opened on my boxed-in idea of what my life is, and the smell of the real thing rushes in - freshly cut grass, or hot bread, or sun-cream or lemonade, or even a thousand other summery fragrances. For the briefest of moments, I’m remembering something very real about being truly alive.

That happened this morning, just by the trees next to the horse-field. It only lasted a moment but it was all things hopeful and free, like a memory of being young and not having a phone or an email account or a job or a to-do list or social media. As though everything that happened prior to about 2006 was pure and wonderful, and every now and then the under-fabric shows beneath the modern blanket.

I suspect it’s a bit more complicated than that. I don’t think abstaining from the modern world would fix it entirely, though I’ve got the sneakiest of suspicions that it might help.

I gripped the inside of my pockets and walked on. Kids were on bikes heading for school, cars swooshed by through the collected puddles, and birds sang in the trees above. It might just be as simple as taking the time to actually be outside. But again, I think these things can only help, not necessarily solve the problem of not really feeling alive.

When spring picks up over the next few weeks, I do hope we’ll get more chance to do that. There’s so much life beneath the earth, waiting for sunnier days, for warmth, light and freedom.