into the heavens, away from my own inflated sense of self, towards higher atmospheric strata, into worlds of blue hues, floating cloud formations, and of course miniature airplanes trailing plumes of white smoke, stretching into straight lines, often curved, seldom unbroken.
Knowing what I know about the damage each of these flying machines is inflicting on our planet, I should be cringing, or at least shaking my head, but instead there is a silly grin on my face, as I struggle to peal my eyes from the vastness above, if only to keep up with the morning traffic.
Yes, airplanes are heavy polluters, definitely not built to fix our ozone problem, and therefore, as one ill tends to lead to another, our kind's newly acquired hyper-sensitivity to the sun, reflected in a steep rise in the number of skin cancer casualties -something else to fear and worry about.
Yet, gazing upwards, I find beauty in the way those trails of exhaust fumes seem to cross each other, at least from my vintage point, bisecting the sky as if it were the surface of an abstract painting in the making. Perhaps, the beauty I perceive has something to do with the fact that the canvas will never seize to change, that every line, along with every cloud, will eventually dissolve.
Every line is unique, an imprint of our human imperfection, and callousness towards nature, and therefore ourselves. Temporal, the white strips converge, some as thick as a feather, some as thin as hair, some warped by the wind, some set ablaze by the sun, some curved like a scimitar, and others as straight as a Spanish fencing blade.
The imagery leads me to the subject of swords, swords forged with skill and great care, beautiful works of arts, yet instruments of death. And for a moment, I wonder why is it that beauty moves so closely to death. Then again, I remember that each breath leads to the undoing of life. There is no life without its opposite, no matter how we suppress that fact.
Like those lines, we are temporal. Like those lines, we are, with all our imperfections, beautiful imprints of something deeper than what we could ever grasp from our lowly vintage points. Perhaps, we too can learn to fade and let go with as much grace as smoke seems to display.
Driving, I grin.
Be well.
Learning to be as light as a cloud
