Clouds

There are certain times when I find myself not just acutely aware of my own insignificance in the larger world, but also intimately and inseparably connected to it.  Often when I'm sitting alone in an expansive park -- Central Park, say, or Prospect Park in Brooklyn;  places where one can be, if not completely alone, at least intimately connected to the world around us.

Even more than this -- and I'm at a loss to explain exactly why this is so -- I feel really connected to the world when I'm removed from it.  That is to say, when I'm looking at it from above.  I never have a better sense of the vastness of the world around me, and the universe beyond it, than when I'm flying over it in an airplane.

For reasons that are beyond my understanding, few things stir me as much as simply looking at the clouds as I fly from one place to another.  Leaving my job at the Council means that I'm not really going to have the money to fly as much as I have the last couple of years, but the trip to Pittsburgh afforded some lovely vistas of clouds.  The clouds, of course, blocked my second most favorite thrill:  Seeing the earth from above.  But still, it was a lovely and beautiful flight.  The pictures above and to the right only barely manage to capture the striking vista outside of the airplane window.

I wonder if I'll ever get to the point where flying is routine and fails to stir my soul?  I hope not.

Amy Hartman picked me up at the airport, and delivered me to my rather swell digs for the next seven weeks.  I thought I was staying at The Shadyside Inn's main property at the corner of Aiken and Fifth Avenue (hell, I didn't know there were properties other than the main one), but I'm actually a little further away at the corner of South Highland & Howe Streets, in a very nice little apartment.

I'm tired from a day of traveling, but I'm also really looking forward to getting started on rehearsals.  Those of you with a higher power may want to consider praying for me.  I may need the strength.