My morning

Sometimes the beauty of the world literally makes me unable to breathe. It's as if the beauty has long fingers that burrow into me and squeeze my heart so tightly, stopping my blood flow, crushing my lungs, simultaneously filling them with air and rushing it out, leaving me gasping.

I had to be at Real Work very early this morning. It was pitch dark, I was completely alone (except for the hundreds of spirit creatures who I'm sure wander the halls of this rambling old building that used to be a hospital), here in my Ivory Tower with it's huge window that looks across the flat, city-filled plain, to the mountains way over there, that lead to the rest of Africa. I wrapped myself in it. The aloneness.

Then I put on music, loudly, and watched the beauty unfold, through my huge window. As the whispy cloud-filled sky lightened from black, to navy, to blue and then spectacular pink, as if somebody had woken up and thrown an enormous bucket of pink into the sky. It made me think of the Washerwoman in The Faraway Tree. It may have been her who threw her bucket of water... it was pink so she must've been washing her new red knickers or something. I hope she remembered to separate her whites out.

Then I realised I was not alone in my awe. Just next to me, on the ledge outside, a pigeon friend was staring across at the sunrise too, her pretty grey feathers lighting up, her little pink eyes blinking at the upcoming sun.

And I wondered if her little pigeon heart was squeezing at the beauty too?