blue – Ameravith

Every planet is different. But each one, when we are gliding at this height, also has similarities. Beautiful, mysterious. Carrying much hope and potential.

If this is your first trip to this planet, you’d think there was nothing solid below, only a gaseous entity enveloped in multiple layers of assorted clouds. Sheets of white sail by in the upper reaches of the atmosphere. The late evening sun, warm and unhindered, lights the peaks of the clouds, while leaving other parts of the sailing behemoths in shade. A kind of powder blue / indigo lighting creates the illusion, however momentary, that we actually, physically, are flying over a mountain instead of a collection of water vapors.

The wind at this height really stretches the clouds out. I see a pair looking like crocodiles lounging on the surface of a river while soaking in the sun. Other clouds are thick, absorbing the full light of the sun and reflecting it back like giant, glowing cotton candies. As we watch, there now appear pieces of darker blue, among tattered puffs of white. I can’t see what’s there, and the ghostly light and the sheer drop below, makes it hard to tell from our vessel.

Then, as we make a turn, I see – in between the shreds of clouds, past the glowing light, way way below – what appears to be a body of water. A lake perhaps, glinting sunlight off its surface, glass-like. Very small from up here, but clearly containing a reflective substance. It could be water. That would explain the abundance of clouds. And then, around the possible water body, I steal a glimpse – as clouds below move this way and that – of what seems to my eyes to be not just an absence of vegetation, but exposed soil. My heart sinks in recognition, as moving clouds obscure the view once again. Exposed soil may mean one thing: Inhabitants. Such a patch around a water body, if visible at this distance, might also mean large scale land-clearing. It might mean exploitation.

If this is your first trip to this planet, the hope and potential you feel is fragile and may soon be gone. This might turn out to be just another planet.

photo from unsplash.com by Tom Barret

I was the one who was going to deliver the surprise. Neither she nor he knew that I had found out about them. Or about this hideaway of theirs. It was an accidental discovery on my part, just as I had accidentally discovered their affair.

Just after Christmas last year, I was leaving to Mindanao for my project. The timing was poor because everybody, including my Filipino colleagues, were on holiday. But I had a deadline and only I could go to the village outside of Surigao, meet the persons I needed to meet, complete my report and have something to present to the renewable energy committee that paid for the project. Despite the hurry to leave and catch my plane, I had noticed the flip-flops in a corner of the garage that I rarely visited. I had been looking for my seldom used safety boots and there, beside the boots, were these blue house-slippers. They were not mine.

Over three hours later, safely on the plane, I had an epiphany looking down from twenty thousand feet at mountainous white clouds that filled my window. There was a guy in her past who had liked the colour blue. He often wore blue-coloured footwear. I remembered when I began dating her and we were introduced, that that habit was the thing that struck me most about him. He owned several pairs of blue footwear. I know because he wore a different one on each occasion we met, including my wedding day. I was sure it wasn’t a sentimental ornament that she – my wife – kept, because the pair looked new. Next to my dried, mud-caked boots, the flip-flops clearly stood out. In my mind, I was sure there was a more current reason for the presence of the slippers.

Continue reading “The Witness”