This earth lullabye

I hated the world today.

Eight in the evening and the sun is in my eyes. I hate it and everything it touches; the wheeze of the bus as it grinds gears, the sharp bursts of carhorns that jump-start my heart, the food in my mouth that I didn't mean to eat, everyone I've ever met and every song ever written. There is a hard knot in my stomach that has been tightening all day, and it tastes so bitter I need to spit.

When I get home and shut the door behind me, I drop my bag and I scream. A curse, any curse. As loud as I can.

Which is not very loud at all, not nearly loud enough to be satisfying.

Once, when I was standing at the edge of a clifftop, I tried screaming, really screaming, over the roar of the Atlantic. It always comes out so much smaller than expected. All that holding it in and it turns out there is very little to be let out.

So I stood in my empty house and listened to the dry silence and felt like thumping something.

Pulled on my running shoes because I couldn't sit still and I thought maybe the road would bring some peace. I used to run, years ago. I have never been athletic, but I liked the way the pounding became a steady pulse, and the passing of the earth below in a smooth silent flow worked its hypnotic power. I ran when I needed to escape, when my thoughts were chasing eachother and tying up my insides, and eventually the rhythm worked its way within and smoothed all the tangles clean.

But I can't find it today. I am out of practise and after a few minutes my throat burns and I have to slow to a walk, and there is nothing to vent the rage on. I hate the flies that gather under the trees, hate the cars that pass and force me into the verge, hate the heat and the pinch of my runners, hate it all with a feriocity that threatens to eat me from the inside out.

I swipe at the long grasses and stray barley heads that I pass, grind my teeth. I want to cry in frustration but the tears won't come.

I turn back and begin the walk home, angry and beaten.

On the rise is an entrance to a barley field, and without thinking I step off the road into it, along the tracks that tractor wheels have cut. The feathered heads reach up to my waist, and soon I am submerged, drowned in the scent of a summer evening.

Somewhere in the middle of the golden sea I stop. I can't see the path anymore, just the gentle nod of barley beards tipping in the breeze.

It feels cool here. Straight ahead down the curve of the hill is the setting sun. I close my eyes and I listen.

Cars on the road below.
Song of the birds hidden in the hedgerows.
Drone of a plane passing far overhead, and the snap of a barley stalk as something scurries by.
Me breathing, in and out.

I open my eyes and everything has changed.

The barley is blue. I have never seen it that way before, but as I stand there I think maybe this is why Van Gogh painted the sky yellow and the cornfields blue. I can see each grain on every head with utter clarity.

I can't explain. But as I walk back out to the road my eyes have changed. What was nearby has faded away, and the background things have come to the fore. Days go by when I don't notice the sky, but it is all I can see now. It is so immense that I hardly feel I exist.

Maybe something happens at sunset, and I never knew it. Because now I have the strange feeling that when I had my eyes closed I heard without hearing a song without words.

Whether it came from the orange sun or the barley I don't know. But it was like being sung to sleep.

I feel tired, and empty. It feels wonderful.

I turn for home.