tmbt: matching weather

It is gray today. It is gray and the gray is hanging heavy over our heads. It is weather. It is only weather. And the beauty of weather is that it changes. Out in the distance, northwest of the next building, I can see it; a reminder below and beyond it all, a smattering a blue and a few whisks of gold on the clouds there. The weather will change, because it always changes. The next burst of joy is always right around the corner. But here, in the clouds of my mind I hold my own little joy.

There’s an odd satisfaction that comes of a perfectly matched sky to my emotional landscape. I’m sure we all experience this. It’s weird when the world seems like it’s crashing in and the sun couldn’t be shining any brighter. It’s odd to get married when it is raining. We have such a profound connection to the weather. I certainly do.

I have often thought I’d love living on the ocean, particularly the Pacific Northwest or Eastern Seaboard where the clouds hang heavy. Or maybe London. Perhaps Halifax. Thinking about that today, it feels like it is a simple longing to live in a place that reflects that little melancholic streak in me. That little streak is certainly slipping itself around my skin today in a poignant and, dare I say beautiful, way.

Living in Boulder where the sun shines 360 days of the year, the skies are more often like photoshopped images than real skies, and the living is so so easy, I feel a little too guilty for my sadness. One would think the juxtaposition might be good for me, but I’m not so sure. I have so much to be thankful for, and yet there it is. There it always has been.

A few years ago, I traveled to Seattle for the first time. I was there on business and felt so refreshed and revived by the climate. It occurred to me then that it was a more industrial town than the little lefty smarty-pants mountain town I was in, and that my creativity missed the push from the tension more inherent in that environment. Then I thought that perhaps the gloom on the outside made the sun on the inside more apparent, much like the way I feel more at peace in Time Square than in a wide open and vacant field. Today, I think it may just be the sense of comradery that I miss much of the time here and that feeds me in a funny, reassuring way.

I am not always a sad person. In fact many of my friends remark at how joyful I am. But under it all, I may always be that sad little girl I grew up as and the weather, a bosom buddy in the right climate. I may just need to rethink my city or vacation in Poland really soon!

Photo by Zozma found at The Best of Lonely Tree.

~ by HeatherArtLife on December 9, 2008.