Risen into another day of grey skies, a treat of Laos coffee as I watch the rain weaving patterns across the not quite focussed world, a patch of lighter sky appearing over Yangminshan coincides with a sudden urgency to get out, the walls closing in around me, maybe one too many coffees. Again.

Sometimes it's the most unexpected and small thing which alters the mood of the day. Crossing rainbow bridge the spittle of rain growing heavier, the misty droplets gathering mass, increasing in frequency, the shower become a downpour as I cycle toward the first available shelter. Standing beneath a bridge I watch as the world disappears, shrinking into a film of grey, glinting raindrops angled in wind, the river truncated. The city's gone now, lost in the thickening.

Pulling out my umbrella, cycling one handed as the breeze swirls, the cycle path underwater, aquaplaning slowly towards the next bridge, the sound of someone letting out a whoop of delight and then, through a widening grin, realising that it was me. Sometimes it feels as if we carry some shard of childish delight in the moment, flickers of clarity reminding us that existence is a temporary and beautiful thing, too often displaced by the baggage of experience and the cynicism which infiltrates the daily grind. Tzu Jan, I think the Taoists call it - the old Chinese poets using wine as a bridge, extinguishing the sense of self just enough to remove the barriers between them and their surroundings, becoming no different to the external world which breaks into being upon our senses.

Another pause, watching the previous bridge fade into the cloak of rain, the next bridge vague but only a few hundred meters away, back on the bike, the delight in the experience rising further, pause. Across the river the underpass where I'll head to find some music, here shelter beneath a soundtrack of rain. Pillars rise from the water, pools of light where the rain, falling between carriageways, finding the river below, splashing and glinting while the pillars fade into familiar distances.

The city reforming itself, adverting screens flashing will o the wisps, cutting through monotone air, slow apparitions of geometry rising towards rooftops, above them the slow curve of the hills dark against rising mists...



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSVWhYWDUGA&list=PL20IcBUGhOc1ZRSyFpy2n2eaRluM0mGVr&index=16