Pushing the sky away.

Then we were in the car...

We'd found a way out of those little timetabled boxes.

We don't realise how close freedom is.






Four hours to get up to Paris to get to the Nick Cave concert.

There was that feeling of apprehension.

Would we get stuck in a horrendous traffic jam around the Péripherique?

Would we find the right exit off the Péripherique?

Would we find the car park?

Then we had arrived.

We walked hand in hand through the autumn colours on the paths leading up to the Zenith.

And then we were there.

For two hours, we were taken up by the music, the emotion, the rage, the beauty of the performance.

There are moments which mark you.

The four hours drive through the night, through that fatigue that amplified the moment.

Excitement fighting against the will to sleep.

A road flashing by, fog in the Combrailles, eery headlights of anonymous co-travellers.

Pushing the sky away.

I got a Facebook message from Sébastien over in Lima in Peru.

At three o'clock, it was the last hour of the class, for him it was eight o'clock in the morning.

He had just come back down from the mountains.

He had a biblically bearded look.

We grouped around the phone.

Fifteen minutes of freedom...amplified by the small size of the screen.

"People say that I am lucky." he said.

"I'm not. I made a choice. I got a ticket. I was scared. Now I am free."

"When you are in those boxes, and you are surrounded by all those messages which make you feel helpless you don't realise how close freedom is."

"You are young, there is a world out there, there are generous people out there. I am free."

Pushing the sky away.

I was feeling hemmed in.

I tweeted Teresa over in the UK.

We chatted.

As we chatted that hemming feeling was transformed into something quite different.

I walked outside into the garden.

Blue Sky, a light breeze, a friendship.

lovely to hangout with @sensor63 and remotely enjoy the blue sky and sunshine in Clermont Ferrand! #warwler #cmc #oie @UNICollaborate

— Teresa MacKinnon (@WarwickLanguage) October 11, 2017

Constraints become canvasses.

We had already moved on.

“All of our days are numbered; we cannot afford to be idle. To act on a bad idea is better than to not act at all because the worth of the idea never becomes apparent until you do it. Sometimes this idea can be the smallest thing in the world, a little flame that you hunch over and cup with your hand and pray will not be extinguished by all the storm that howls about it. If you can hold on to that flame great things can be constructed around it that are massive and powerful and world changing – all held up by the tinniest of ideas.” 
Nick Cave