Did you see our rainbow cloud?
On the day before the shortest day of the year. When we went sea swimming at sunrise. We went into the darkest and deepest part of the water, that was so cold we couldn’t even feel how cold it was, for the first few moments.
That was the day after we saw Robert de Niro in the doorway of Boots. We laughed about it after dinner, and we pretended to be serious people.
Later, when we saw the nacreous clouds, we didn’t realise that we were looking straight at tiny ice particles of reflected light, high above in the stratosphere. We just called them rainbow clouds and we enjoyed them from the sea.
Of course, it wasn’t really Robert de Niro standing in the doorway of Boots. Just someone who looked like him on one of those grey cloud days, that make you sigh. When the streetlights need to stay on all the time, and 2 o’clock feels like 9.
What time is it now, you wonder?
The day clock on the windowsill tells you it’s Tuesday.
He was wearing a long cloak, like a cape.
Earlier that day, before seeing the nacreous clouds, with their iridescent scattered reflections, I spent time with an angry woman. The type of woman who keeps her snakes of contradictions and unkind prejudices in a basket that she carries under her arm. The everlasting greyness was making her angrier, more frightening because it was real.
Hey Bob, I wanted to say, nonchalantly. Are you here researching a role? But now Eurythmics is playing, and the unmistakable voice of Annie Lennox disturbs your thoughts, so you don’t ask Bob anything at all.
Sometimes at this time of year, Dublin looks like steam is coming out of it.
The early mist evaporates back into clouds and the sky is enchanting. The bus into town drives past Glasnevin cemetery, where it’s hard not to think of the dead, as more than a million of them, are buried there.
I don’t mind getting messages, signs, and musings from them.
Let your prejudices lie back in the field, don’t hold them close.
What if you’re wrong, have you thought about that?
Don’t spend too much time talking to me, enjoy the rainbow clouds.
But before Robert de Niro, and the boat ride home, and watching the ballet, and that everlasting tango between the sun and the moon, some gentle hours passed. Not even nacreous clouds can change that.
All the people were laughing so much, so much that we felt like we were waking up from a nap all the time. Now the scene changes and we’re moving up the mountain so slowly and using all our might. We’re walking against the wind, and except now it’s the stairs, not a hill. Why are we carrying a torch inside?
Did we forget the light?
No, says the nice girl who comes to visit sometimes. We saw the rainbow clouds and they are so beautiful and serene.
She says, the rainbow clouds will guide us, through time and days in this room; through it all.
Shorter than me 