Grey

 

It’s funny how grey is not most people’s ideal colour for hope, isn’t it? They wish for nothing but blue skies from now on, a fund of yellow to warm the cold earth and raise those countless greening stems. Yet grey is all there is up there of water, horizons full to the brim moving in our direction. Grey is about the sum of it really, whether soft or hard, fluffy or daggers, clouds as ordinary and indescribable as ever, as morning does it again. The grizzles that greet drizzles replace the complaints that meet heatwaves, and where will it all end? Hopefully, with more water-laden skies, wouldn’t you say? It’s good to know where our next drink is coming from. Such train embankment thoughts move rapidly from those ones to these ones. It was more than a passing thought bubble, as they say, that got this morning this hot air balloon up there. 10% aspiration. 90% perspiration. Yet, for all that, the grey matter takes full responsibility, as the balloon (any colour except grey, or black) proves physics correct one more time and sightseers enjoy the entire map of early morning colours below. It’s funny too to think that the brain must be kept well-watered, the most stupendous grey cloud, up there, that never experiences the full light of day, floating on its own stem in the sepulchral half-light afforded by its dome. Grey matter is a fountain requiring, like the rest of us, more water than we can imagine, and are we grateful? More than we think, who are composed of over 50% water and rely on bone density to walk around, cared for by gravity, and a decent drop. Train windows are ideal frames for such passing bubbles, thoughts seeming set on staying on the move, first hovering on first principles, next moment wafting like so much hot air over a brewery, then evaporating it sees only to return like an autumn shower at some unlikely moment. 10% inspiration. 90% repetition. It’s funny, isn’t it, how for a short time people leave their city down below, where grey brick is the new cream brick, free to exercise their landmark skills or squat in the corner like a basket case. Abbotsford never looked so picturesque, so original, as from a balloon. Heritage tin roofs are painted green and red. Apartment towers crowd for attention, fifty shades of grey. Or rear like thunderheads from the ground down there in condominium satellite suburbs. It is well that the rain holds off, the uplifted sightseers think, hope springing eternal for the duration of the trip. While others, here below, sit in the Jolimont express, a carriage-load of Whistler’s mothers in surgical masks, watching the dapples and greys pass their windows: sunup and clouds and apartments and grassless grey lots and funny-looking inflatable structures the brain invented way back in the Enlightenment sometime.