Not Gold But Something Better

Last night's wind blew newspaper out of the recycling bin (which the binmen haven't emptied this week; I wonder why) and deposited it in various nooks around the exterior of the house, but didn't do any serious damage to the trees. I was feeling grey so I went outside where there is colour and played at doing various jobs and the grey went away. It's cold out there but the sun is shining. The grass where the sun could reach it was a glorious colour; I won't say gold because gold is metallic and heartless whereas this was a heartfelt and radiant yellow- the kind of colour Van Gogh was after with his brilliant new chemical paints and his agitated, impacted brush strokes.

Which puts me in mind of the time Kurosawa went to great expense to spray-paint a field with gold. It was for his movie Ran. He had a picture in his mind but gold paint couldn't give him the colour he was after so the scene went onto the cutting room floor and into the bin and into the incinerator.

Stepping outside generally cheers me up. I may tell myself I'd rather be warm than out in the wind but my essential self knows it was never meant to be shut away.