Looking out of my office window I can see the tops of buildings nearest to me, with an arc of hillside rising above them. The hillside is dark and shady where the trees climb diagonally towards the crest, and lit brightly by the sporadic sunlight that escapes the clouds near the top on the other side of the hill. It's one of those scenes you can stare at forever, drifting into a dream world and noticing ever more and more detail as you do. The trees are brown and yellow, looking like sponges, or mirroring a coral reef in their complexity of form. The grand pattern of natural organic development is quite clear when you start to draw these kind of comparisons. The beauty of nature eh? It's mad innit?
Clouds are HUGE! They dwarf the landscape round here. Because I'm up in the hills, and the prevailing wind comes up the valley towards me, the clouds always seem to be passing over the top of you like a grey roof. There's a feeling of oppression about living under a cloud filled sky...you don't look to the stars as much. I wonder if this is why the Celts were obsessed with nature and the power of things around them, wheras the Greeks, Inca, Romans and co. started off on their journey of far reaching philosophical fantasy?
I think if you see an endless blue sky above you each day, you're far more likely to look into it and wonder...Short days, long winters, black forbidding skies...these things lend themselves to introspection and solitude.
Enough for today? Probably.
