Fragment: The opposite of cities

Yesterday I wrote just a little about my fascination with a world that is not my own; the world of the slowly churning beasts called cities. Today, I want to explore my own world, just a little more.

You see, I live surrounded by green and blue. There are paddocks that go forever; some are in orderly rows, neatly trimmed and maintained, others are more dishevelled, the rusty barbed wire just barely holding it all back, keeping it in place.

Just beyond, there is the sea; always the sea. Sometimes, lying in bed at night, I can hear its relentless roar. Other times, its rhythms are soothing, steady as a heartbeat.

And above both, there are skies – the biggest, most unbelievably blue skies, clouds overlaid like a map, charting a path to where knows where. Lately it’s been all boiling clouds and ice-tipped lashings of wind, breathing at us with snow in its throat.

It’s hard to experience  all of that, and see the shards of light piercing the blanket of soft grey for just moments, seconds really, lighting earth and sea like beacons, without knowing a little more about your place in the universe.

And that place is small.

These clouds have been rolling, these fields have been striving, these waves have been reaching, for longer than me, longer than you, longer than us. Oh sure, we can close our curtains to the sun, put fences around the fields, replace gentle sands with concrete and stone, but all of that will fade, rust, crumble.

The world has far more time than we can imagine; it has the patience to allow us, and the persistence to teach us.

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