Keep Your Head In The Clouds

Atop the mountain I finally achieved true and complete peace. Up there amongst the clouds my very soul was lifted, as if at that great height it had been released to flow with the wind that rushed all around me. Looking down upon the land that encircled me I couldn’t help but realise how small and insignificant I am. Some people may look upon this idea with disdain but I find it wonderfully liberating, there can be no success or failure on the part of insignifcance, we can just sit back and take pleasure in creating the things we love. To think that this very mountain side was here long before I arrived on this earth and shall remain long after I depart  is a comforting thought, our lives are fleeting but real beauty is immortal.
           That this panoramic view and isolation should be only a few short hours away from every day stresses and strife’s is an immeasurable blessing that I had taken for granted up untill that point. For this is escapism in its purest form, to rise above the world and for the briefest of moments look down as an objective observer is a gift we should all recieve.
 My mind wandered as I looked out into the clouds, wonderful thoughts of a nomadic existence where sights such as the one before me were not a rarity, no; on the contrary they are just another step in your life’s journey. I felt like this is where we belonged. A quixotic view I'm sure but no less fantastic for it.  The rites of passage of tribesmen sent out as boys to hunt and return a man don’t seem so strange and antiquated when you’re out in the wilderness, here it almost seems like a better way to live.

                At first the idea of climbing a mountain seemed pointless to me, why walk up a big hill to walk back down again? Once i was there however there were more reasons to make the trip than I could ever have imagined. Every step I took on my way to the summit was, in all honesty, against my very nature but to be thrust out of my comfort zone was as rewarding as it was exhilerating. Simply to flee the constant torment of the city with its crowds and mephitic air, even for that short time, was a welcome break. A cleansing experience almost for mind, body and soul. Being alone with such an expanse of land all around you seems to free your mind from the trivial thoughts that are a product of modern life and it is remarkably refreshing, as if I had dived into the icy water of the lake that sits at this mountains feet. Like some ancient spirit walk, you can find yourself in a place like this, I mean really delve into your mind and discover things that you were not conscious of before.
After near death experiences people change their lives, for better or worse the experience effects them, I didn’t have a near death experience I had a near life experience. Not since I was a child had I felt so alive, my teenage years were spent doing teenage things, mostly drugs, and I’d forgotten what it meant to be alive. Life had beaten me into submission and I accepted my depressing fate, to spend my days working a job I had no passion for, holding on to my weekends because they were mine when in fact everyday was mine, I don’t have to be a slave shackled down by my own defeatism. If I can climb a mountain what else am I capable of.
Of course this new found enthusiasm for life is difficult to hang on to and after a week back in the real world of work it has dwindled. It was in my mind numbingly menial job that it occurred to me though, the connection between me as a child and the me on the mountain. Hope. As a child we have hope, I knew (I mean it was a certainty) that if I worked hard I could walk out of the tunnel at Old Trafford or write a bestselling book, it is only later in life do we realise that talent and luck also play a huge role in success. That day on the mountain I regressed back to that romantic time where dreams really could come true and I was happier for it.
 A great writer once wrote that hope springs eternal, I had dared not hope for to long, so while the exciting energy I felt that day may have dwindled my hope shall not because without hope we turn to despair and I have had enough of despair.

The City

I found this poem the other day, i've never been into poetry so i was surprised by how much i like it, so much so i thought i'd share it, so here it is my new found faveorite poem

The City
You said, "I will go to another land, I will go to another sea.
Another city will be found, better than this.
Every effort of mine is condemned by fate;
and my heart is -- like a corpse -- buried.
How long in this wasteland will my mind remain.
Wherever I turn my eyes, wherever I may look
I see the black ruins of my life here,
where I spent so many years, and ruined and wasted."

New lands you will not find, you will not find other seas.
The city will follow you. You will roam the same
streets. And you will age in the same neighborhoods;
in these same houses you will grow gray.
Always you will arrive in this city. To another land -- do not hope --
there is no ship for you, there is no road.
As you have ruined your life here
in this little corner, you have destroyed it in the whole world.

Constantine P. Cavafy (1910)