Head in the clouds

I lift my head and escape from the salvaged round table by the courtyard, a majestic thing in itself. Found it on one of our Boris walks. We weren’t even a minute or two out of the house and we were in love with it. A person can almost find that kind of a situation a ridiculous inconvenience to their plans. Forsaking the good and the lovely with a comedic demand for reason and ‘why now?’ Why this beauty now that I’m unable to contribute to it? Perhaps that’s the case – we ought not contribute to beauty, as if plucking the flower is better than planting it. I saw the bamboo coming together in a holy pillar, to enthrone this marbled top, and it did it for me in a moment. We managed to fit it through our tiny hallway out back, which it just shouldn’t have been able to - a miracle table, no less. Of course we are well accustomed to finding and squeezing all manner of antiquities that hobble out front of some unforgiving strangers house. Helping old furniture become somewhat familiar with the implacable and inimitable odour of those big old council bins. The ones that act like your worst idea of a microwave in the heat of summer, with their big black plastic absorbing the suns rays and coaxing every fatally foul sack of stench out into the air, alleviating us of the mystery of what they contain. With that said, I do tend to find my misplaced treasures before they get too well acquainted with the aroma arabella party. It’s a skill I suppose, or so I’m told. I don’t particularly feel all that skilful when I'm at it. Can you say that luck is a skill? My kin would call it 'jammy'. You know the sort. The kind of person who puts all their eggs into one basket and happens to not need any others, while the rest of us come up short or hard done by. That’s jammy. Well, that table was nice and it didn’t have a stench. Just believe me. I reckon it might have even been copped within the golden hour of replacement, sitting on gravel and tarmac long enough to forget it had a home, so by the time I’m picking it up and givin’ it all that it can see it for favour.

I forget for a moment about the spider I’ve seen edging his way to my hand, upon said table, and I make a mental dash for the pass between the towering houses that frame this motion picture for me and me alone. With my upturned head drifting into the expanse past the bay window – neatly stacked panes of single glaze glass of an old shop front acting as my only barrier – or perhaps creating a daily spectacle of me, I imagine that if I had a son I’d tell him ‘If you ever need to slow down, then look up at the clouds - they do not know how to rush.’ But, of course he’d probably already be telling me to look, and I’d be feeling a type of remorse about letting wonder dwindle in the midst of the rest of my dead attributes, that becoming an adult tends to accomplish for itself. Meanwhile, these cathedrals in the sky glaze over the clearing between the two rooftops, conducting the million particles of water as their own orchestra. If you look long enough into them, I think you might see your own soul. Or, at least you might see the silent choirs that dwell in their covering. Silent for the benefit of not blowing our minds with the sound they make, in truth. I think that’s why the best things are quiet: because they speak the soul's language. The soul that longs for silence isn’t looking for absence of sound but the presence of silence. The difference being, I hope, obvious enough. Like how darkness isn’t a presence but it’s the effect of light being absent. Well now take that and turn it upside down and I think we have the fact that noise is the absence of silence. Silence is content with itself, able to speak in creation. Noise is what we like to be cut off from. Noise cancelling headphones are received with gladness but a silence-cancelling-anything seems somewhat scandalous, doesn’t it?