‘Staring Straight Into The Shining Sun…’
One of my favourite authors, Barbara Delinsky, has written a book called ‘Coast Road’, which I love inordinately. One of the last chapters mentions a phenomenon called ‘fog feet’, when a gathering fog sounds like feet stepping over the undergrowth.
It felt like that today.
The whole of the Park we walk in, is carpeted with dry, crisp, withered leaves. It began to drizzle softly, softly, softly quite early in the morning: but the gentleman who lives with me insisted that the water droplets on our car was because the man who cleaned the car, had sprinkled it with water, and had not wiped it well. When I showed him the droplets of water on the windshield of the other cars within the complex, he relapsed into a glowering, resentful silence.
The droplets that fell were too tiny to be called ‘droplets’, but the leaves recognised them and rustled welcomingly. All around the Park, every step of the way, there were quiet rustles, softly, softly, softly. I know now what the peacock feels when it rains, I almost said. But didn’t. But I was grinning, turning my face to the sky, swaying from side to side occasionally, with joy more than my heart could hold. The man who lives with me looked at me narrowly from time to time. He distrusted unbridled joy, and he thinks that without reason or logic, one must not give in to such transports of ecstasy. (The rational part of him, he gifted to one son, the logical, to another.)
He gives me a wide berth, especially when he sees me lift up my arms to the sky, touch the trunks of trees, or stop walking to listen, grinning like the Cheshire Cat.
You know that song about believing you can fly? That’s what I felt like. One with the earth and the sky and the trees and the breeze, the rain and the sun and the soil they churn. Everything.
Crazy, probably.
Well, that’s the way I am. Always in love with something or the other, always high.
