A View Of Clouds

I was out at Shoreline Park this evening for sunset. There were dark heavy clouds, pieces of blue sky and some of those fluffy white clouds that look like you should be able to bounce on them like a feather bed.

As I was driving along Cliff Drive towards the park, I spotted a rainbow hanging out over the ocean. When I pulled into the parking lot, it was faint, fading in and out, virtually unnoticed by the people jogging with their iPods and or huddling inside their coats urging their dogs to "hurry up".

Walking alone along the concrete path that wound up the cliffs, it struck me what an allegory for my life this cold blustery evening was. Wandering in solitude, searching the skies for a rainbow that keeps appearing and fading, hoping for a silver lining in the clouds to materialize.

It would be nice to have a soft place to fall, like one those fluffy clouds that hung low on the horizon. I can’t remember the last time I really felt that I had anyone to depend on other than myself. Maybe I never have.

And I wondered, if I were to vanish in a puff of smoke, without a whimper or a warning, how long would it be before anyone noticed?

How long would it take before someone started to worry? And who in this world knows me well enough to even know where to begin to look, or if there even was a me, out there somewhere left to be found?

I wondered, if I were to walk out on my life, leaving my house with the TV tuned to HGTV , my laptop sitting open on the bed, a cup of tea brewing on the counter in the kitchen – left it all like some kind of modern day Pompeii with everything frozen in a moment of time – would it even matter?

As I turned away from what was left of the sunset, I suddenly saw that the sky behind me had become a beautiful deep rose smeared with dark thunderclouds. If I hadn’t turned around, I would have missed it.

Maybe that’s all I need. Maybe I just need to turn around.