The True Blue

Blue

When I see the colour blue I think of my quest. I have to be true to my destiny, I cannot rest until I find it, I must go on, searching, hunting, never tiring until one day  it will be revealed to me and I can relax after these many long years.

I thought I had found it, deep in a temporal created crevasse in the glacier feeding the Bentley Trench in Antarctica, the lowest land surface on the surface of the earth. It was not to be, it was the spring sunlight filtering through the snow deposited over millenia and changed into ice by the alchemy of time as it snakes its way down the slopes of Mount Vinson.

What about the Tongue of the Ocean, that deep rift in the sea bed close to Andros Island in the Bahamas where the rippling of the currents and the supersaturated water is still creating ooliths ready to form the limestones that will be raised to be the mountains of the future? Not here, another blind alley, the Caribbean sun playing tricks as it rippled down through the waters.

 I asked in neighbouring Yucatan but they didn’t know, it might have been buried in the Chicxulub crater when the asteroid hit but it was so long ago there was no memory of it.

I flew across the great coral reef off Australia’s Eastern shore. This was no barrier to me, I glided down the currents of Magnetic Island, always seeking the true frequency – just a few more Ångstrom please - but it was not to be, the parrot fish had done their work.

I heard a rumour, so it was to holy Mount Kailash next, three times around, a pilgrimage to purge my soul, after helping to lift the pole carrying the flags, a thousand prayers flapped off into the freezing wind. I knew Kailash was still unclimbed so I sought permission from the Dalai Lama,

‘Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible’ he said and allowed me to go to the cave, high on the mountain, above the dry Tibetan plain. I struggled up the crags to the cave, I could feel it now, I was getting closer. I rolled over the lip and lay there, gasping in the thin, cold air.

There it was, on a ledge, just a chip, but I knew, it had to be, its radience undimmed,  Lapis Lazuli – I had found the true blue.

My life would never be the same again.

But I shall go down from this airy space, this swift white peace,

this stinging exultation;

And time will close about me, and my soul stir to the rhythm

of the daily round.

Yet, having known, life will not press so close, and always I

shall feel time ravel thin about me;

For once I stood

In the white windy presence of eternity.

from The Most Sacred Mountain

Eunice Tietjens