a moment in time that will never reoccur
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I've read, in one of those books of 'strange facts' you only ever really glance though, about what happens to balloons when you set them free to the sky. The combination of the cooling of the rubber and the pressure difference causes the balloon to shatter, and thus come back down to the ground. The idea came to me immediately.
I'm a traveller girl.
No one really knows travellers, no non-travellers anyway. The people who profess to know our faults rarely ever know us at all. How can they? We've got no address, so there's no letters, no phone since we've got little money and even less electrical power. Any real-life encounters are short and remain short.
As much as I rue the lack of long term friendships, I wouldn't have it changed. It's a worthy sacrifice. For, though I've never had a friendship lasting longer than a few months, I've met so many people, so many interesting and beautiful people, and I've shared in their lives for a time. I'd never have met them if I'd stayed in one place.
And so I let them go. The balloons, I mean.
I was sat off of a mountain path a couple of days ago, in such a way that people didn't see me as they turned a bend in the footpath, but I could see them. I was watching the sunrise. There's nothing more energising than a sunrise. The shadows from the east are almost intoxicating, especially after a cold night, when you can feel it warming you up. I saw, from a long way off, a man walking the path. He had a dark beard, and age had just slightly lined his features. He reached the turn, and saw the best view on that entire walk, at the best possible time. The sun half way up over the forest on a faraway hills, the long shadows casting themselves across the historically aligned fields, the sheep leaving big streaks across the grass.
I watched him look it over for a second or so, get out his mobile phone, hold it out in front of him, press a button, wait a second or so, and then set off again. The entire operation not taking more than 20 seconds, and he was half way down the hill before I got over my shock.
I suppose I shouldn't have been so surprised. I've seen it a lot, people just... collecting images, without even taking them in with their own eyes. They see everything with the photographer's eye, as an opportunity to take it and hold it captive. Except when he loads up the image on his computer, it won't be a shadow of the beauty and majesty it was when he was there.
That's what it's about really, letting go. Not letting yourself go, not in that way, but letting your life go, letting people go. Most people hoard everything. Images, memories, people, They're obsessed with it, like life is their game park and they have to shoot it all before they leave. You can't truly enjoy something to the full unless you're prepared to let it go when the time comes.
I sometimes get tempted though, to hold onto things. I once had a diary, and the idea of being able to write down what had happened, so it was recorded, was intriguing to me. It wasn't so much that I forgot things in my memory... but that I forgot to remember them later on. Occasionally I'd catch a scent in the air, or pass through a place I'd been before, and the memories of people I'd met and things I'd seen would come rushing back. That I could have this in book form... it was tempting, yes, it was.
So why not? Well, I read back through it all, daily almost, and it never really felt the same. I guess I should have expected it really, that things are so much better if you can only catch snatches of them through the blinding sunlight, rather than having a log of every detail. Some of the details, perhaps, it's best to leave for your imagination to fill in. So, one day, I gave it to someone, the day before I left them. Never saw them again.
I hope they remember me.
~~~
The wind tousled strands of wispy hair into Sarah's face. She curled up the paper and tied the string around it.
She held onto the stem of the balloon for one moment more, waiting for a second of calm. She found one, and let it go.
Balloon number one-hundred-and-twenty-eight.
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Wrote this piece for a smalltime competition. Forgot to actually follow the rules and put 4 of the arbitrarily chosen words in. Still, I enter such things to encourage me to write, and it worked.
In case you're interested, the words were serendipity, ornate, beacon, and suspense.
Sarah is completely colourblind. This doesn't come up in the story explicitly, but it's still in there if you think about it carefully.
It is in there, if you really look.
Very interesting piece, i think. It makes me feel a bit sad... though that would be the memory thing i guess.
I have problems with my memories, long story.
Moving on! The way you write is beautiful. I didn't notice the individual words, just the story behind it. I found it very easy to visualize... but i think i am going to re-read it now that you pointed the colourblind thing out.
+1
Ironically, before even reading the bit about Sarah being colorblind, I imagined this whole thing in grayscale except for the final balloon at the end.
Weird, after I read how she's colorblind, I went back and read the piece and it was in black and white. Most interesting.
Man, I'm gonna be honest, neo. I was starting to get used to the idea of leaving indyfluency behind.
I... I feel so dirty for saying that...
This piece, though, it feels good. It feels like a neoeno kind of piece. I quickly became attached to the narrator, too. Traveling characters always seem to appeal to me. As you sort of alluded to in the story, travelers just experience more in life. They meet so many different people, they see so many things, and they generally just get a much more personal and in-depth understanding of the world. What I was delighted to find, however, was a different focus; not particularly on having those experiences, but on being able to let them go. It's really a very insightful concept.
A particularly enjoyable story, and one I'll have to mention in a possibly perhaps forthcoming newsletter that might be recorded soon, maybe.
also, plus one
What I love about this is how easy it is to visualize everything. It makes me feel calm and actually makes me want to go out and travel, just to experience something like this.
Btw, had you gotten the words in, you would have definitely won. :P
I agree with everybody else, the imagery here is stunning and I can see everything so clearly. Rather than seeing it in my mind in black and white (I read the bit about her being colourblind before the actual piece), I saw it in sepia for some reason, like an old photograph.
I think I am to some extent guilty of the 'look, photograph, leave' attitude described here - photography can so easily slip from being an art form to something used merely to record everything and everyone in your life, and I do indeed find it refreshing now and again to just leave my camera at home (a pretty hard task for me :P).
Certain things cannot be photographed in the traditional sense of the word - that is, I believe there are things, such as the sunrise described here or the magnificent landscapes of north England & Scotland that I've spent most of the last month in, that cannot be given any extra beauty or significance by the photographer. The photographer cannot take credit for photographs like these; they are merely recording the majestic beauty of our world.
It is when the photographer employs skills to bring forth an image the human eye cannot grasp that things like this move into the art world. Long exposures of lakes, star trails, infrared photography etc., are examples of this in nature. Landscape photography must have something extra for me to fully appreciate it on photographic terms.
There is however something to be said for showing people the world through your eyes - everyone has their own unique perspective. :)
Who is Miriam? Sign up, Miriam! Btw. Neo, I don't like the title of this. It's weak, dude. I quite like the rest of it though. I just realized I've commented already.
I read this forever and a day ago and for reasons I don't quite understand this time through it feels like a celebration of individual epiphany and remarkably less melancholic than it did when I first read it. I'm not quite sure what's changed.
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Man I remember reading this as well. And totally spacing out on commenting on it.
I think I might be a romantic for the whole wandering soul notion -- it's something I daydream about pretty often. The story hit a nerve, I think. The ideas of remembering and remembering to remember, I mean.
I remember standing on the elevated platform of the light rail station and it was early in the wintertime and the sun was just about rising over the hillside across town. It was beautiful, and the most cathartic thing was that every person on that light rail had turned at that moment that I looked. They just stopped and soaked in how crazy majestic it was. It's... kinda that sort of moment.
I dunno. Just wanted to share an anecdote haha.
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