balloon – Don't hold your breath

Daydreams

As if I don’t get time to sit and daydream! I snorted inwardly as I caught myself slipping off into a daydream while taking a boat full of chattering crowds through Hamburg’s harbour. The sight of a red balloon floating in the immensity of the sky had drawn my eye to that emptiness. Our eyes normally ignore the immensity of the space that we float in. Now the sight of that reducing the vast harbour to a tiny nothing filled me with a sense of lightness.

The remains of my salad days! I caught myself dreaming again as I stared at the plate of salad which I’d just finished. The light glancing off the plate, the slow mixing of the immiscible oil and the juice from tomatoes, had drawn me into a fascinated state of mind.

I’d been letting my coffee cool as I stared into a ghost of a town, manifesting itself in the cafe’s window. What was that? A very odd multiple reflection had created this architectural phantom. What a wonder, I thought.

Mellow morning

Some mornings should be quiet. You should be able to gaze at far horizons in the mellow sunlight, and clear your mind to meet the other.

And me? I prefer to have my feet on the ground and a camera in my hand.

Slipstream

Still in light sleep, I registered the fact that The Family had opened the door on to the balcony of our room in Göreme. It was just past sunrise, and the room was full of light in spite of drawn curtains. Then my muzziness was gone when The Family’s excited voice called to me to get up and get my camera. I rushed out with my phone in hand and saw a marvelous sight. There were silent presences hovering in the air above us. It was as if we were inside a story by Franz Kafka, and a tenth of the town’s inhabitants had been turned into delicate teardrops which floated above us.

After some discussion we’d decided against taking a balloon in the morning. It would have been a wonderful sight from up there, but the spectacle from down here was stunning. All the movies about alien invasions, where spaceships come screaming down from the sky, fail to imagine what a stunning sight it is to have a hundred huge things silently floating above you. I went back to sleep, and when I woke later, this was like a strange dream. Only my photo remained to prove to me that what I’d seen was real.

Universality

What photo which can you click in any country on earth? It has to be this! A child unable to tear herself away from the sight of balloons. Another universality which I’m fond of when learning a language is to listen to a child say the same thing over and over again. I do that a lot now in China.