Cloud chasers

Life unfolds on this round­about. The driver is unsure of his exit, so as he explores the myriad options avail­able to him, curs­ing under his breath and becom­ing increas­ingly diz­zied by his own con­fu­sion, I turn inwards to the grass island at our centre. A man in an unne­ces­sar­ily thick winter over­coat sits slumped against the severe arrows, look­ing up at the sky. Appear­ing to plead with it for answers. Lost in the clouds. Even if his point of view is fixed by noth­ing more than the blur of cheap alco­hol seep­ing through his veins, I can’t res­ist fol­low­ing his gaze.

Oh, the tower block. The cranes. The unceas­ing metal­lic grat­ing and mech­an­ical buzz of con­struc­tion going on all around us in this colour-drained boom town. Is he wish­ing for the heav­ens, a warm bed for the night above the teem­ing streets, or merely a place to look down on the scur­ry­ing insects below and mar­vel at how seem­ingly pur­pose­ful they are, des­pite their obvi­ous lack of direction?

I sym­path­ise with him. I want to be up there too, sat dan­ger­ously close to the edge of noth­ing­ness, with the gusts — find­ing them­selves unhindered by con­crete obstacles at such an extraordin­ary height — churn­ing through my hair, blow­ing its limp and dry strands into my face. Suck­ing in the breezes invad­ing my mouth, caus­ing me to gasp and giggle in fits of exhilaration.

Count­ing the clouds in. Count­ing them all out again.

I don’t want to be alone, though. Not alone. Not this time. I want to share the solitude of silent thoughts, and feel ourselves entwined in the act of their think­ing. Hand in hand and crazy notion in crazy notion with one who under­stands; one who wants to be here perched on the pre­cip­ice of all and everything scattered below; one who knows that with a clumsy wrong move we would kiss the air in a single second that would never end; one who wants to share the need to stay in such secur­ity, yet in the same breath taste the heady, unmis­tak­able fla­vour of per­fect dis­aster. Up there, bey­ond the hear­ing of any­one or any­thing that isn’t simply engaged in passing flight, we could shout out the need to escape, escape and some­how escape.

There’s a break in the clouds. Don’t worry your­self. Keep hold­ing tight. There are more on the way over there, just bey­ond the slow-motion bal­let of cranes.

Back to the grass island. Could that be what its single res­id­ent is ima­gin­ing? Maybe. Too late now, because I’ll never know, since my last glimpse of him comes as a shaft of sun­light hits his face and he screws up his eyes against such a blind­ing inva­sion. As the light inside our vehicle sud­denly dis­ap­pears, replaced by the phos­phorus glow of the sub­ter­ranean tun­nel tak­ing us under the harsh con­crete land­scape, I close my eyes and return to the top of the tower.

Almost imper­cept­ibly, I feel myself rest­ing the back of my right hand in the palm of my left. My fin­gers close in on them­selves. Grasp­ing at noth­ing. Noth­ing except the last­ing sen­sa­tion of your hand in mine. Keep clutch­ing, fin­gers locked, and we can shout and scream and face the ele­ments together from on high.

Chase our clouds home. Yours is undoubtedly going to get there first, but I don’t mind. It will be worth it just to see your shy smile of tri­umph when your cloud crosses the fin­ish­ing line formed by jet­streams at thirty-five thou­sand feet.

So, your sky or mine?