Drowning in the sky

posting a half a day late but with extra clouds

When I’m in the middle of something chunky, my brain refuses to allow me to shift focus. Especially for the length of time it takes to write a “proper” Substack article. Doing so risks derailing the Big Thing entirely. I’ve talked about this “one thing at a time”ness before.

The Big Thing currently filling my brain is running the first round of my first online course. It’s been joyous. And surprising. And not nearly as time consuming as I anticipated. My glorious students seem to be quite happy working away on their own and don’t seem to have much need of my support. I nudge them occasionally to ask “are you okay?” But I try not to do so too often. I try not to appear too needy. Because I realise I need to be needed. (Something I thought I had a handle on but obviously needs more work.) So I’m trusting that if they need my help they’ll ask. 

That doesn’t mean I can switch my brain to another task though. My whole attention is occupied with “just in case” and with endless tweaking and fiddling with the course content. 

Now would be a really good time to do my accounts before the next Big Thing which really will need my time and attention, not just my waiting attention. 

Or to sow the early seeds that are patiently sitting on my work bench. All they need is to be implanted in compost, so they can get on and do their thing. 

I could glaze the greenhouse which has been relocated multiple times since we bought at the beginning of lockdown to accommodate the constant movement of building materials, and has never been glazed. It’s finally in its final position and only needs windows to be functional. I could put my new seeds in there.

I could weed the endless pots that are trembling with an impending explosion of spring life. 

I could write an article about any one of the thousand ideas that fill my index card box, my Notes and Scrivener file. 

But no. My mind if fully occupied with the waiting and the watching and the just in case.

When my head is full, when it needs clearing, I turn to the sky.

The sky is one of the reasons I was drawn to live by the sea. I spent most of the first forty years of my life living in London. In the city, even in the suburbs, the sky was something above you between buildings. I could never get enough of it.

When I was in the worst grips of winter depression, I paced the streets with my head tilted upward in search of more light, more sky, a perfect high vantage point that would finally allow me to see the edge of the world and would lift the thick grey fog that filled my head. Looking ever-upward as though the answer to life and happiness was held somewhere up there in a hidden corner of the sky.

As a child, when I drew my world, the sky was always planted firmly at the top—a blue strip along the head of white paper with a gaping space between the sky and the world beneath. Adults laugh or smile indulgently at these drawings—children are so naïve, so precious—but viewed from suburban streets this was how my world was.

When I ran away to the island at the age of eighteen, my favourite place to stand was at the island’s highest point—the central trig point—and revel in the 360 sky dome that never fully grew dark. With nothing to block it, the sky reached all the way from sea’s edge to sea’s edge right the way around the island; creating an endless space—a space I could drown in.

In midsummer midnights, the line between sea and sky glowed with a luminescence that never fully faded.

When I returned to London I missed the sea of course. But I missed the sky with a furious and debilitating passion. Arriving at Paddington station after months of living in island isolation, away from people and cars and noise, I descended into the underground in a daze. I felt the first tingling sensation of the first suggestion of a first mini panic attack.

When I launched into student life, working in dark theatres and city centres, I quashed that half of myself that felt utterly bereft without the sky. 

When we moved out of London, finally, after years of dreaming, we told ourselves we’d never take the sea for granted. Even now, after almost ten years, I still make a point to say “Hello sea!” every day. Even if it’s only from my studio eyrie that looks out across to water to the tip of the South Downs.

But really it’s the sky I don’t want to forget. 

It’s the sky that was my North Star in the darkest of times. It’s the sky that, in companionship with sea, gives me a never-ending supply of colour and drama and light and joy. 

Yesterday, as we were driving home from an inland adventure, we arrived back at the coast just as the rain clouds of the day were clearing. The sky was turning blue just in time for sunset. And then it turned black. And gold. And pink and silver. And just as quickly, it was gone.

So, this week I haven’t written a “proper” article. I just could not focus enough to do that. This week I want instead, to offer you the sky.

Does anyone else share my obsession with the sky? Am I the only one that turns to the sky when the world seems just a bit full?