7.41am and I glance out my window and spot the long white contrail of a passenger jet in the bright spring sky, far above the slowly awakening city of Canberra.
The jet itself is barely a spot to my eyes, like a blip on a radar, briefly touching my life and senses and quickly being forgotten in the milieu of the day that I am just beginning.
How many people ride a jet like that? Where is it going? Where has it come from? We see them criss-crossing our skies everyday but never do we take a keen interest in the lives of those on board as they briefly intersect with our own reality. Their existence alongside us is fleeting, an encounter measured in seconds.
Hundreds of people are riding that small dot. Heading to who knows where, continuing their own passage through the world, oblivious to those on the ground, mere ants as they glance out from high above. For a split second they are important to me, I’m interested in their journey. I reach out from my own comfortable existence and for a split second I wish I was with them, riding that jet to who knows where.
It makes me think about my own life, my own journey. Where I have been and where I am going.
I’ve been lucky in a lot of ways. I’ve lived a charmed life and while regrets are there I can’t complain about anything. For all the grievances I have with work, politics, the state of the world etc, the crib of my own life is calm, comfortable and satisfying. I can’t ask for more.
I was in Weston yesterday, a suburb of Canberra watching the soccer team Linda manages and her daughters play for go through their paces at the local fields. It was familiar territory to me.
They were at a far flung corner of the complex and I drove to an old car park which I knew of from experience.
It was here, years ago that my friend Paul Daly and I used to come and practice batting and bowling. Paul was a good cricketer and I was drafted into his social team to make up the numbers but he liked to come and practice and as the nets were only over the hill from where I lived it was no bother to me.
As I exited the car park, turning left and pointing my vehicle for home I noticed the large house which former friends of mine use to live. It’s funny to see it now, spruced up and lived in yet many hours of my own life were spent there enjoying the company of those with whom I now no longer communicate. Another time, another world. It’s strange how far we travel in our lives and the friendships that hold up and the friendships which die. It’s the way of the world, now and for eternity.
I feel more settled, more comfortable in my own skin now than I ever have but the distortions of my memory are growing and pictures in my mind of events, people and places are blurring and my life, once a short sprint is turning into a middle distance event. I can only hope it will end up a marathon.
But whilst I’m happy some restlessness remains and I watch that dot in the sky as it slowly disappears and the contrail fades and dies and the hundreds of lives aboard leave my world and carry on in their own and I wonder where they have gone and I wish, for a fleeting moment I could join them.
But reality bites and my senses return and I begin to go through the motions which I know so well and I will survive and I will plan my own adventures with those I love and look forward to the time when I am on that jet and somewhere, sometime over some city some way into the futre, someone will look up and see the contrail of my jet and say “I wonder where they are going?”
Have a nice day.
The jet itself is barely a spot to my eyes, like a blip on a radar, briefly touching my life and senses and quickly being forgotten in the milieu of the day that I am just beginning.
How many people ride a jet like that? Where is it going? Where has it come from? We see them criss-crossing our skies everyday but never do we take a keen interest in the lives of those on board as they briefly intersect with our own reality. Their existence alongside us is fleeting, an encounter measured in seconds.
Hundreds of people are riding that small dot. Heading to who knows where, continuing their own passage through the world, oblivious to those on the ground, mere ants as they glance out from high above. For a split second they are important to me, I’m interested in their journey. I reach out from my own comfortable existence and for a split second I wish I was with them, riding that jet to who knows where.
It makes me think about my own life, my own journey. Where I have been and where I am going.
I’ve been lucky in a lot of ways. I’ve lived a charmed life and while regrets are there I can’t complain about anything. For all the grievances I have with work, politics, the state of the world etc, the crib of my own life is calm, comfortable and satisfying. I can’t ask for more.
I was in Weston yesterday, a suburb of Canberra watching the soccer team Linda manages and her daughters play for go through their paces at the local fields. It was familiar territory to me.
They were at a far flung corner of the complex and I drove to an old car park which I knew of from experience.
It was here, years ago that my friend Paul Daly and I used to come and practice batting and bowling. Paul was a good cricketer and I was drafted into his social team to make up the numbers but he liked to come and practice and as the nets were only over the hill from where I lived it was no bother to me.
As I exited the car park, turning left and pointing my vehicle for home I noticed the large house which former friends of mine use to live. It’s funny to see it now, spruced up and lived in yet many hours of my own life were spent there enjoying the company of those with whom I now no longer communicate. Another time, another world. It’s strange how far we travel in our lives and the friendships that hold up and the friendships which die. It’s the way of the world, now and for eternity.
I feel more settled, more comfortable in my own skin now than I ever have but the distortions of my memory are growing and pictures in my mind of events, people and places are blurring and my life, once a short sprint is turning into a middle distance event. I can only hope it will end up a marathon.
But whilst I’m happy some restlessness remains and I watch that dot in the sky as it slowly disappears and the contrail fades and dies and the hundreds of lives aboard leave my world and carry on in their own and I wonder where they have gone and I wish, for a fleeting moment I could join them.
But reality bites and my senses return and I begin to go through the motions which I know so well and I will survive and I will plan my own adventures with those I love and look forward to the time when I am on that jet and somewhere, sometime over some city some way into the futre, someone will look up and see the contrail of my jet and say “I wonder where they are going?”
Have a nice day.
Strange Notations From a Laborious Life 