CLOUDS OF SILVER

The skies were phenomenal today. At one point, silver clouds rose majestically across the sun, and wisps of purple caught the wind, high in their orbit, like sails blustering along on a magnificent ocean.

I stood and watched in the park.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the past recently. I suppose the fragility of life does that to you. Then there’s the terrible situation in the Middle East and the uncertainty it brings to all our futures. The silver-skied past seems much more appealing.

Yet deep within, I don’t think I can escape the need to feel alive. There’s such a beautiful world out there  beyond my desk and my computer. I wish I could describe it, explore it, find wonder and freedom again. I used to say I’d like to make music for my job, or perhaps be left alone to write novels that make people laugh. But I wonder really whether my dream job would actually be as a travel writer - adventuring and reporting on strange and dangerous tides, windswept mountain peaks, and crowded markets.

I can’t do that job though.

For one thing, those people aren’t called travel writers anymore; they’re influencers. And they don’t write anywhere near as much as they film and grin and pose. And that cannot be me.

For seconds, the world is messy these days. It’s pimpled with hot spots. Danger seems to fall through the atmosphere, and I am a man with knees, a digestive system, and most importantly, a wife who won’t travel. And that’s all okay! We are allotted that which we are allotted - a thought that I repeated to myself as I walked back home from the park.

Yet perhaps there are tweaks we can make. Perhaps there’s hope for the adventurous, restless types stuck in a world of computers?

In unrelated, yet strangely connected news, I think I’m hitting yet another inflection point with social media. It really does feel as though the world was far nicer without it.

Sigh. There I go again, staring at the silver clouds looking for the past. It won’t do, Matt. It won’t do.