Anticyclonic Gloom

Last Wednesday was a lemon-lavender day, and plumbline still.  Even birds seemed becalmed, perched along the rooftops, shushed by a somnolent sea.  It was as if the wind and sea had agreed to just stop.  Take a pause.  As if some ancient mariner held us all “with his glittering eye”.  Cormorants perched on rocks, staring.  Wagtail along the pier, peeping.  Oystercatcher on the breakwater, fussing. 

Crow that watches.

Crow that stops.  

Went the Virginia Woolf walk, castle grounds, lighthouse, then back around the harbour.  Geese overhead, the only sound.  But there was pressure.  Air?  Atmospheric?  Something is coming, calm before the storm pressure.  Bad news everywhere pressure.  Something, too mild for this time of year.  Beautifully weird day.

Reading Alan Garner puts me in a funny mood.  Imagining timeslips everywhere.  Ancient energies, sentient landscapes, something impending in the stillness.  Pathetic fallacy of stuck cloud colours, pressure building, like heartache, longing for the beauty, at the fading of the light.  From lavender to lemon-crested mauve. 

Time to go home, drink tea, get grounded. 

Since the café, have felt a bit lonely.  I wasn’t before.  Beauty isn’t any less for being solo, and have been in relationships that roasted my heart, I know fine well what I am not missing.  Also, the shit up with which I will not put.  Still, sometimes a something happens and I feel it. 

It’s just a feeling, not a personality trait.

Then, bumped into someone I haven’t seen for years, as was busy with work and honestly, they drive me bananas.  Stupid notions, doesn’t understand when to stop talking.  Can’t bear listening.  But can’t pass-by politely either, so we 'hello', then rant about the government, weird weather, lack of dolphin sightings.  Pretty soon, am being talked at by them, and remember; I thrive on being alone.

Images for this journal have been posted on Insta @purplehaze_journal

Credit: ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 1834 https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43997/the-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner-text-of-1834