Natural beauty....and it's free

I have never been one to get that much satisfaction from material gifts, the hype of "special" occassions or the planning to make things just "perfect". The un-expected, the chance timing and the surprise encounter has always held more magic for me and most people I guess. I realise that just as a child would, I still almost seek it, whereas others perhaps after childhood innocence fades begin to think that wonder and awe are reserved for only these early years, fantasy books and movies. How can this be? The Aurora Borealis just appears. These northern lights have no curtains up schedule, no pre-ordained time to appear, they just happen and one day I might be lucky to see them.

Work follows me to dinner.....

Sitting having a quiet pizza with a friend familiar voices, nuances and gestures around me begin to filter into my awareness. Teenagers!! The place was filled with them and this was my half-term break away from working at college in "their" world.

It made me realise how far I have come....age....maturity......from being "like that", well maybe..... one particular young person, sitting behind me. I couldn't see him and didnt turn around, but I just knew what he was going to look like, what genre he would fit and even had the audacity to summise what his fate in the next few years would be.

Was it the reminder of me or boys i had met or the ones I notice at college. He was talking and talking, an almost professor like confidence, HIS thoughts, philosophies, he had no doubts, not a shadow of them. How he would write that song, create the movie, how cool it would be and of course very important; spot on in terms of educating us all on the clever and un-known information and ideas, only HE (and of course his chosen peers) could have and share with us all.

I was caught in two trains of thought; thinking from a "mature" perspective on how inflated, naieve and vaguely irritating his confidence was, knowing of course from this higher perspective that beneath it all he was deeply inscure! Or the other thought, that perhaps it was my perspective that was a version of his - thinking I knew better about his "youth", his ways, how he would end up disillussioned but not really believing myself either. I was in the end, almost envious of his conviction. It left me with the insight that perhaps I have been laszy with my "fake it till you make it" confidence that I had in younger years and that I dont employ it nearly enough now. In the end it made me grateful to work with and be around young people, even if they did arrive in my world when "off the job", they are showing me much about me and much about staying open to others, whatever their age!

The beginning

I shan't be worrying about my spelling, grammar, punctuation or editing the words on these pages. This is a new beginning for sharing thoughts, ideas, observations and thoughts ...the ones usually retained for sharing with only a few close friends as they often do not befit the situation in time that they occurred. The "real" world and people would surely have thought they were random, provocative and at best just out of context? This is my true voice of reason, the idiosyncratic voice that acutally made sense to me of the most non sensical and sometimes quite challenging times in my life and those of others. The voice that I often kept hidden.

I hope to write retrospectively on many observationa and tales from moments gone by and use this space for current comment too. Liberated, humerous, eccentric and out of the ordinary observations on ordinary life that might just be extraordinary all of the time, if only we could see its many, many layers.......so I have begun...