Seeing Red

I watched the sky at sunset tonight. I'd been looking at the sky all day today, at different times, looking for elevation, and change. I noted the uniformity of grey at the start of the morning; it didn't look too hopeful at all. Huge, dumpy lumps of cumulo nimbus weighing in heavy on the horizon, like a great big sulk over the day to come. I'd sighed and looked away. What inspiration could I draw from that, I asked.

Then it rained, to add insult to injury. Nothing dramatic, just sky spittle, the cold stinging kind that irritates more than drenches. With that, I wrote the day off. No, there would be no transformative hope in the heavens today, I thought.

I went about my business. My wound still ached. It's been nearly a week since invasive surgery and I am still tender and sore. Of course, when the tiniest part of us hurt, it invades all other experiences and colours our existence. I attended to all my work like it was one massive ache. Ache is a lot worse than blatant pain. There's no edge to it, just a dull, hammering presence. You cannot move for aggravating it; you cannot be still because it aggravates you. Everything apart from it, looked like an open wound. If you dig holes looking for demons, boy do you find them! I drag my feet, and my shovel everywhere with me through my recent days.

I attended a meeting. Smiled without smiling too widely, mumbled through my conversation. It wasn't until I was done that I'd noticed it was warm outside. And sunny. I'd donned too many layers, because I was cold in my heart. Now everything swamped, and scratched, as well as ached. Above me that earlier morning blandness in seemingly endless grey had lifted, and it was a nice blue sky. Ohhh. I thought. It would have been a perfect day to fall through such a sky, right now would have been just the ticket! I'm due to fall out of a plane again, to raise funds for the winter night shelters. I'd been delayed this year, waiting for someone, who is now keeping me on a permanent kind of wait. I can't wait any more, unless I lose the opportunity altogether as winter cold and wet truly sets in. I felt panic snipping at my edges...

I wanted to drive somewhere into the countryside, sit in this warm sunshine for a bit. My soul feels cold, and drab, just not alive. But the ache within waved: Yoo hoo! Remember me? I'm a mess of pain and you won't like it if you exert too much, I'll have you know! Oh bluh. I drove home. To sit quietly and find things to do so I won't dwell on my multiple aches too much, and let them dominate my every moment.

And throughout the afternoon, I found my eyes wander out the balcony to watch the sky. There was a moment mid afternoon when the light was just so, catching in various places of what looked like a very complex write-up that God had somehow done with His clouds. I mean, there was a complete mix up of cumulus clouds, cirrus feathers; bubbly rows like the aftermath of a sporty race car burning rubber in the heavens; squirly bits that were ultrabrite and supernova white so it stung my eyes. All this was muddled somehow into a cohesive whole with other off-whites, creamy-whites, blue greyish whites and fish belly whites...It was messy, yet whole, complete. Perfect. I gasped at it.

I dozed off, from the meds I was taking. The body must still be in shock since surgery. Afterall, it took two hours of wrenching, hammering and drilling into a small area in my head; it felt at one point as if I was resting on a Powerplate on the highest setting. The forty winks didn't last - my insomniac instincts are such that even short daytime comas are just that - exceedingly short, so I am in a constant condition of sleep deficit, and consequently in a permanent state of exhaustion. But I opened my eyes suddenly, and the whole picture in the sky had miraculously transformed.

Oh. My. Goodness. Somehow, the entire vista before me had turned a deep, dusty, ominous, Hadean, fury of red. Bowel red, I'd call it. The sun, of course, was trying to set on the opposite side of this net of angry, scarlet sky. There were veins of carmillion-grey irritation all the way across.  They were not unlike mean scratch marks from fiery nails; definitely bloody lesions of sorts. The whole expanse seemed to be like an open mouth screaming, a vortex sucking in air, birds, planes into a wonky drain hole, somewhere in the middle, slightly off centre. I watched it, mesmerised. There were miniscule movements in the overall; I realised it was truly in a state of flux. Like me. This sky was a picture of me on my insides.

I looked away but for a moment, or did I doze off again? But I refocussed, with some effort, pushing away the nagging sleep, and found then that all the red had gone; just drained away. The sun, that orb, that source of warmth and life, had been swallowed up by encroaching night in one greedy gulp. And with that single surrender, that oddly timed dip, the entire sky lost its raw, fuming demeanour.

I felt robbed. Thrown back into the dark. And in my state of sleeplessness, I dreaded the long black night ahead of me. I know that every fibre of my being will yearn towards next light, even if it means a debut of nothing more than a drab, grey blanket of lumpy clouds. I dragged extra layers of woollens and flannel about me, hunkered down to wait for the return of change, any change, that would lift me out of this interminable ache within; and this hunger for transformation into any other state than the present ennui.