Head in the Clouds

I remember, painfully well, both my parents and teachers, especially during my High-School years, telling me, repeatedly, to get my “Head out of the Clouds”.

They meant well.

Their collective chastisement and reprimand were, of course, sincere, so they thought, speak for my good and better state and frame of mind.

But the more I heard this adult mantra, the more I built my castles in the sky.

For they rationalized, as many grown-ups did during this tumultuous time in history, that life was a hard reality and to focus on what was, not what could be.

But to this insurgent, uprising, middle child, trying to find his way in this world, this conversation of cold reality never quite measured up to my own, private, inner world of warm fantasy.

Little did I know, at the time, I had, unlike my superstar younger brother, the sensibilities and experience of, at best, an average athlete but the sensitivities of a burgeoning artist.

There was a photographer, in me, still to be born. I was creatively pregnant. The birth was imminent.

And this photographer, in the wings, lived in the clouds, not on Barrows road.

Fast forward… 50 years.

I prefer, even today, to have my head on the clouds.

I am, unashamedly, an artist, poet, and lyricist.

I see, through my camera lens, the beauty of life, in full measure, all around me, every step I take and breath I make.

It’s Saturday morning, and I’m alone, listening to the other-worldly sounds of Gabriel’s Oboe.

It’s not just my head in the clouds this morning but my heart and spirit too.

To many, like my parents and teachers before, the clouds represent escapism and needless daydreaming.

To me, the clouds are symbols of beauty, artistry, and fantasy.

Not irritability but irresistibility.

I am truly home, at heart, in the company of clouds.