Ground Control

Some days - like this blog - are abstract. Sometimes you just want to relax. You release the cord connected to the capsule and you float, you simply float away, with only the earthlight to guide you. I used to float away for days, weeks, months. I called it travel but in some ways it was also introspection. I don't do that kind of thing so much now, though I will be on my travels again soon. A child's imagination is just as epic as any crenellated landscape. At one point today I am sat in the bath with an article stood on my chest like a windbreaker. It is something written about the war zone and it is getting wet. Also, my mind keeps wandering still, each thought like a grasshopper on a hot thin lawn. For the record, the three others are affectionately sat like the three monkeys on the bright red sofa watching a film. I am thinking about how I used to like writing long words on the sand with a firm stick of seaweed. Now, I am thinking about filming, directing, editing. It is curious. I have never seen the artist look so relaxed. And yet I know this is in part because she is charging her batteries for the new year onslaught. Maybe every single moment is an adventure. I like the idea of the wise man knowing nothing. When people talk about this or that landscape - political, social, creative, otherwise - being full of uncertainty, I still sometimes wonder what it is exactly that they are trying to say. Isn't everything, but our love, if we are lucky, uncertain? Our children are very excited at present about the coming festivities and it is impossible not to enjoy being caught in the slipstream of such fervour. It is enough to make you want to reconnect with the cord again. It is enough to make you want to unplug the bath water, rise from the bath, and grab a towel. But what of the article I was reading, which is now flat on the floor? What about the accompanying skewed wet images of young soldiers in uniform still shooting and being shot at? I cannot leave them behind. It is called the burden of empathy. I bend down and pick up the wet pages, almost unpeeling them, and marvel, perhaps a little guiltily, at the three figures still on the bright red sofa watching their film. Later, when the children are in bed and the artist is alone on the sofa, I listen with headphones to a song. It is about a man whose girlfriend is away. She is fighting in the war zone. The times surely are a-changing.