Shetland Mid- winter

Each day, my first point of contact with the world is through the sitting room window which frames the sea and the sky.  Some days, the window is full of a sea’s horizon, as if drawn using a spirit level.   Outside, the sky has always drawn my thoughts and gaze, but here, the day is written in clouds so visible in a long 180 degree joined up formation of whisps that colour my day.

On the bench, I look at the horizon thinking I am back in the Himalaya viewing the mountains – which at the time, I thought were clouds.  Here, each cloud edged in pink frills around its south side looks so much like a snow topped mountain range that I could do no other than think of being back in Nepal.

I have moved to a remote place with nature as my ever-reliable friend.  It is the sky that raises my spirits and gaze. I am drawn to the horizon line day after day, where the sea touches the sky and where the clouds rest in a row. Just after 9am, after the sun has risen, we have been having two pure hours of crystalline light where this small point on the earth shines in magnificent, unquestionable glory. 

A string of chandelier crystals, on a wire line, edges the top of the window.  The prisms and nuggets throw rainbows up the northern walls of the sitting room.  Already, I know where the sun rises in this composition of interior thrown light.  The sun rise has slipped southwards.  It throws its light in to the porch and the covered Jasmin.  With the light, I figure out my possibilities. I am alone but not alone.  I have my thoughts and feelings and they run unencumbered – wild and free.