It's funny, that feeling I get when I wave at a girl, or smile at a girl, or chat to a girl, and suddenly realise I'm making a much better impression than I thought I was.

It's happened a few times lately, and I've found some of those old love lyrics replaying themselves during my walks -

walks which often end here, in this blue-green tree palace.

Some trees are worth visiting because they attract the best clouds.

I hang around such trees in the hope that angels might continue to touch me in their presence.

Or perhaps I am waiting for something more earthbound, more human... a soulmate, woven in flesh and billow, drawn to the same blue beacon.

Maybe she's out there now.

But knowing how many textures it takes to weave such a beacon, knowing how many brush-strokes it takes to sketch in the details, I find it eerily frightening sometimes, when I sense she really is out there, watching me beneath the sacred trees.

Posted by John at 7:56 PM and filed in Observational Stuff | Comments (0)

Pauses.

I seem to be having a lot of them lately...

like taking a long, deep breath to prepare myself for the big leap of faith that somehow never seems to come...

or like a slow-burning sunset over the estuary.

The sunsets here have a reputation for spectacle. Sometimes the clouds start to glow, like a carpet of cotton snacks roasting on a grill...

sometimes, the sunbeams dance new colours across the horizon...

and sometimes, the twilight artists paint bright new ripples into the water.

It is a good time to watch your pauses float away, and catch some of the treasure that lives between the lines.

Posted by John at 3:10 AM and filed in Observational Stuff | Comments (0)

Wherever you go, you'll always meet somebody who's determined to outdo you...

to be more exciting, to regale you with tales of their exploits, to dazzle you with their talent...

but even if they have just bungee-jumped through the eye of a needle, hang-glided round the circumference of a rainbow or written a new literary masterpiece across the axis of a wobbling peanut, maybe that's OK.

Maybe I don't need to.

There are places I can fly. There are places I can lean into an incoming breeze and glide, just as far and as high as my soul dare stretch.

In fact, I'm soaring and swooping there now - I'm typing this post via remote peanut.

Posted by John at 2:01 PM and filed in Silly Stuff | Comments (0)

There was a storm today.

I stood in the rain, letting a sudden deluge hammer its payload through my clothing fabric, as thundery voices roared and whispered overhead.

Such downpours can be exhilarating, but it is often afterwards that their true beauty reveals itself.

The foliage looks greener, the air feels richer, textures and odours heightened by the rain. And there's something else, too...

a sense of stillness hanging between trees, carefully stitched and shaded into the air, like a web woven from their dripping branches.

It's a deep, resonant stillness, a sounding board for spirits whose voices often struggle for a hearing. I have friends in this stillness...

and I think perhaps this is why the trees are always so generous with their charms when I visit the woodland.

Posted by John at 5:34 PM and filed in Observational Stuff | Comments (1)