Vision

‘without vision the people perish’

A famous person said that, so famous I can’t recollect who on earth it was. There’s truth in those five words, one syllable short of the iambic, yet perfectly balanced. True. For about a year my life has been stagnant, claustrophobic, ‘same-y’ (I discovered recently that our American friends don’t use that word, hence the quotation marks). I’ve walked down the same streets, eaten at the same restaurants, stared through the same sky in the city I love, but it’s all been largely without feeling anything much at all. Each week was just a prelude to the weekend. Each weekend a prelude to another week. Though the sun recedes and the leaves fall the feeling remained, until now. These days I’m so excited sleep alludes me, at 3am I’m thinking of a thousand things that are to come. Walking with you on Wimbledon Common I see scarlet and orange and gold and crushed poppy and pale grey and honey leaves, dappled light refracting through elegant trees, life coming up through the soft earth. I stretch out my arms and breathe in the earthy dampness. There’s a path through the trees, and my eyes are looking down it, sparkling.