A Blue True Dream of Sky

 'I never get tired of the blue sky'  ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Finally, it's blue sky season! Is there anything more beautiful than the sight of a big blue sky I ask you? Especially after months of grey murky ones?!

I LOVE blue skies. Blue skies make everything better. Blue skies invoke smiles and grins and giddy fits of glee. Blue skies reveal hidden sights. Notice how everything looks so much better when the day is lit by the sky's blue hue and everywhere, everything shines and shimmers? Blue skies make days brighter and better and bigger. Blue skies are superlative!

I am always reminded of EE Cumming's poem, 'i thank you God' and the line -  'for a blue true dream of sky' when marvelling upon a blue sky. For it is true somehow. It is truth. This is how the world is supposed to be; this is how life should be; bright and cheery and big and vast and beautiful and ever-unfolding and beaming and bursting - this is the truth.

There are all kinds of beautiful blue in a blue sky: azure, cerulean, turquoise, powder blue, cobalt. (If you want to read on the glories of the colour blue, you can check out my previous post on all things blue here: Why So Blue?) It's the kind of blue that will keep you gawping at it for ages upon ages trying to define it - or - just appreciate it. It's a colour that's alive and breathing. A colour that never gets tired or dull or ordinary. A colour that is truly vivid.

Why do I like  blue skies? Because they're banners of good times. They're exultation, exclamation. They're the bastions of new beginnings.  They buoy the spirits. They are the ultimate mascot of  optimism, true blue. 'Excuse me while I kiss the sky' - and yes, Jimi Hendrix, they incite feelings of elation, sheer glad-to-be-aliveness, throw back your head and let your spirit soar kind of happiness. 

Yep, pretty spectacular.

 

Blue skies are celestial. 'And they were canopied by the blue sky,/So cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful,/That God alone was to be seen in Heaven.'  Lord Byron wasn't the only one who saw the heavenly connection in blue skies. Robert Frost did so in his poem 'Fragmentary Blue' where he likens our affinity for blue skies with what lies higher up, the big beyond.  'The sky is the daily bread of the eyes' - Ralph Waldo Emerson noted, the spiritual canvas that is available to all and with as easy an entry as a glance.

There is infinity hanging up there in the big blue, horizons unscaled and plentiful perspective, an accessible kind of transcending. Who doesn't, on occasion, tilt their head skywards and soar with daydreams and flyaway notions of all those castles we yearn to build up there?  The way ahead is much clearer on blue sky days than grey ones. Blueprints all around. 

To me, blue skies  feel exactly like this: In the sky/an infinitude of hope,/a canvas of glory/all possibilities mine. (Terri Guillemets) All possibilities mine. That's it! Blue skies represent possibilities. They are vast and limitless and tell of countless horizons. Maybe that's why we feel so good on a blue sky day?

Blue skies are for daydreamers -  'You can't put your feet on the ground until you've touched the sky,' says writer Paul Auster. Many's a daydream was built on a blue sky and its up, up and away influencing. It is the perfect backdrop for imaginings. But how do you touch the sky? 'Only from the heart can you touch the sky' Rumi maintained. And he was right, there is an element of dreams and belief so evident in contemplating the sky, that in business, there's even a word for it: blue-sky thinking - thinking outside of the box, pushing the boundaries to excel to greatness.

Oh, but how to put it exactly, this feeling of exuberance? 'If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you, if the simple things in nature have a message you understand, Rejoice, for your soul is alive.' ~  Eleanora Duse.  Yes, that's it, a litmus test of being alive. 

And maybe why I find blue skies so cool is because really, they're part of our ordinary landscape that when you look closely at, you realise is truly extraordinary. Up beyond the sky into deep dark space and lo and behold, look back at the earth, this humble little planet of ours, with its banner of blue, glowing in the dark, so welcoming in the black surrounding universe, a miracle really - '...I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in

thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child - our own two eyes. All is a miracle.' (- Thich Nhat Hanh.) Blue skies, the casual reminder of that miracle, alerting us to the very fact of it.

Like Van Gogh, I never get tired of the blue sky either. It is infinitely more entrancing to me than sunsets - sunsets are gorgeous yes, but they announce the darkness, the dimming of the day, an ending. Blue skies are the complete opposite: they are the flags of dawn announcing the day and all the many possibilities it has in store for us. They are heralds of new horizons, harbingers of joy, reminders of what a big beautiful world we actually live in and just how involving it is.  Now, what could beat that?  Blue-sky beaming, ~ Siobhán *** Soundtrack for watching skies by! -