its late on a saturday afternoon. the sun is out and there are multicoloured children and dogs everywhere. everyone is happy and playful and contented. every now and then a new kind of bird comes along and hops around, before it flies away again. overhead the trees wave filigree fans in the soft breeze. the grass is dotted with little flowers. the sun is bright and beautiful, and just right. the sky that it bears the sun is soft and blue and bright and everything is perfection. if there are clouds, they are so far, that you cant really see.
so i sit here in this beautiful corner of the park, watching the strange sunlight fall all around me. like pan the mad god, he changes and moves with every minute. the light tumbles down, on the grass, in the tree's, on the hills. its easy to feel like it will stay, like the sun itself is falling. but the sun never falls, really. nor stays in one place forever. however beautiful the place is. after a few glorious days of sunshine, its easy to fall in love with the warmth; to resentfully miss it, when it moves, yet again. the park corner gets a shade colder and darker. and a little lonelier, even with the hordes of smiling friendly people.
there's nothing to say really, when you dont want to give it away. everything general, oblique and carefully cryptically secretly profound, has been said already. keeping secrets tires me. what if we just told the truth? maybe we could if we knew it ... today, i miss you both. one who is far away and one who is so distant. i dont know what i would do with it if the distance melted, but i for now, i miss it.
the movie last night had a reference to "follow your bliss". obedient to the recalled instructions, i close my eyes and remember my last 'bliss', but resurface with a random one. it was a while ago, walking in old lanes, very near here, back warm with the sun. thinking nothing really, but nice thoughts cushioning the moment, somewhere around in the head.
this line from 'in the mood for love' stayed with me. 'we will not be like them'; and like good resident lines, it keeps coming back in different contexts. i dont want to be like them. i dont want to mourn the most glorious thing i ever felt, to complain, find faults, bargain, measure and cry over. i am happy with having found one source for all things bright and beautiful. you would be happy with what you get, if you expected nothing.
yet the irony that underlies all things makes a sharp edge to tread the walk of life on. however vaguely friendly and lukewarmly impersonally the sun shines down on you, its nice to have it within your horizon somewhere, even when it is not in your eye. when it goes away, carried by the wind, the moon, even if there is no rain, dews a slight coat of moist down on the world, which slowly over time freezes to frost. but another tomorrow, there will be another day, with the same sun, till such time that time and change dont take it away. i am glad i know that, for me, this is the final destination, the one. or so it seems for now. it feels good to be back home in edinburgh.
i used to love this song. i think it was written by dylan (not dylan thomas, whoever he was), but i'm not sure. i first heard it in 'hope floats'. this is an awful version, but the only one i found online!
