life. is. nature.
what do you think when you look out of your window?
Hii reflecters! So last night, I turned to my mans and was like “I could probably write you know,” and he said “Really? Right now?” (It’s like 9 pm and I am a disgustingly early morning person) and I said “Yeah, probably should,” to which he replied “I could probably do a puzzle actually.” And I grabbed my laptop and he went to sit by the desktop and we each got on with our separate hobbies.
I tried to write a short story because I’ve been saying I wanted to do so for actual years but it just wasn’t working. But when I looked out of my window and shifted to the writing style below, I couldn’t stop writing.
I feel like I could write about the sky and the trees and nature forever. There’s always something to say and something we can learn from it. So it got me thinking about where I want to take this newsletter. I think I’m finding my style and subject matter I want to focus on (not in a “find your niche” sort of way, I swat the optimisation bros away with a baseball bat for sport). So this may be an avenue I turn down in future. I hope you enjoy these sorts of posts, there will be more to come!
The sky is a cloudless ombré of blue tones and no matter how long I stare at it, I can never catch it fade to black. The moon always suddenly seems to appear in the sky rather than fade into it like the ending of some songs. The births of brand new leaves in the spring always start off as tiny green specks you have to look really closely to notice sometimes, like tadpoles in a lake. Then the next time you look they’ve become fully grown leaves with shapes and veins and petioles. Don’t parents say the same thing about their children? I wonder if trees feel the same.
I wonder how the trees feel in the autumn as the time comes to let their children go. Most animals stay with their young for short periods of time and part with them just before they become adults, some even younger, some only for a couple of weeks. But trees stay with their children for nearly their entire lifetime. It is only until autumn when they start to grow old, that they eventually descend to live a short life on the ground; dance with November winds and skate across pavements lightly dusted with ice. They are free to play without care, without trunks, branches and twigs to grip onto during sharp gales, no safety net during the year’s most intense shift of the seasons, the shift into deep sleep. And soon they will follow. The time trees spend with their leaves is only a few months in comparison to the years we spend with our children. I wonder if the trees are envious of our cycles. How ironic, then, that we always look up to them for comfort and stability.
The monstera in my living room bends towards my windows for more sunlight. Almost like arms reaching over to one side of the body—Standing Half Moon Pose. I love how we imitate each other.
The sky is now one shade of deep navy blue. Not a star in sight, a blanket of colour until a tiny plane flashes white and red lights in the top left of my window before leaving the canvas blank once again. When did the sky change? When do we change? We turn our heads and the brothers and sisters of our best friends from high school have grown taller than us. Our mothers’ hair is grey and wrinkles have graced their faces but we never see the gradient. These things suddenly appear. So much happens when we’re not looking.
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This is so beautiful 🥲 It touched my heart to think of the trees watching their children grow up too fast and leave them. Your writing is gorgeous!
A lovely piece—especially that line about the trees parting with their children. How wonderfully evocative!