That sky alone would’ve told me I wasn’t in Toronto anymore. Its paler, clearer blue, so angel-high, had a devil sun that seared the fig trees into leather and khaki: Sydney, Australia. By the time I got back home, the standard grade-school tempera-paint green of maple trees shouted with blue and even our most cloudless sky seemed fallen, saturated.
Now, below, my friend Kent’s photo, taken on the road to his family’s home in Shantou, China:
Shorn hills echo of once-great peaks, time-ground to infinite delicacies and resistances. This translucent sky holds mossy jade...
And yet they’re all one sky.
Photograph: Scene from the Road to Shantou, by Kent Lam.
Now, below, my friend Kent’s photo, taken on the road to his family’s home in Shantou, China:
And yet they’re all one sky.
Photograph: Scene from the Road to Shantou, by Kent Lam.
The way new places make new the routine and familiar ones brings new perspectives to light. Your retelling of that type of event reminds me once more never to take what the world gives for granted.
ReplyDeleteI too have travelled the road from Canada to China, and felt that "We're not in Kansas anymore" lump in the throat at the sky, the landscape, the crowds.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, being in Toronto wasn't being in Kansas either. But you know what I mean.
excellent description of place...and a jade sky sounds so magical...each unique even though they are the same...
ReplyDeleteBelated mention of the magnificent dVerse Poets Pub —The Object is Poetics to whom I posted this.
ReplyDeleteYes, wonderful. I remember coming back East after drives out West (in the U.S.) How closed in it all seemed. (It actually changes around Kansas, where when you are going West, the sky suddenly grows.) K.
ReplyDeleteIt is amazing, isn't it, the different skies of the world? I wonder if that green is from pollution. I grew up in the NE U.S. and am now in the SE and one of the most dramatic differences is in the sky. Up north much less color, less dramatic cumulus clouds, seems smaller, flatter. In the south the colors are intense, the clouds tremendous, the sky seems endless.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet they're all one sky.... Ties it together simply and beautifully
ReplyDelete