I’ve long been accused of having my head in the clouds. An obvious allusion to my family name, but clearly much more than that. Living in a fantasy world, visionary, impractical.
Here are some of the pejorative meanings:
- “Fanciful to the point of being very unhelpful, counterproductive.”
“A vague, dreamy person.”
“Used to indicate that a person is distracted or disconnected from the present situation.”
Of course, none of these actually apply to me. What I think Victoria’s mother meant was that I had too many impractical ideas. Which is odd, given that at the time I was leading Sunwrights, a passive solar design and construction firm that was actually building additions and eventually new homes and other buildings. But perhaps it was because my aspiration, my business idea at the time was to build rooftop greenhouses in the city. This was in 1983, and it was how Victoria and I met: I had traveled to Tarrytown, NY from Ottawa to attend a two-weekend entrepreneur’s seminar to see who might qualify for venture funding. They weren’t actually providing any venture funding, but they were helping groups and individuals who thought they had viable ideas. It was love at first (or perhaps second) sight; as Victoria tells it, at the beginning of the second weekend she found herself running into my arms. I knew from the moment I laid eyes on her that I wanted her to be the mother of my children. But that’s another story.
What I’m here to speak about is a story about building castles in the air, perhaps even in the clouds. Again the pejorative, of course:
- Dreams, hopes, or plans that are impossible, unrealistic, or have very little chance of succeeding.
- Plans, hopes, etc. which are unlikely to become reality
But imagine a world in which humans lived in the air, using wind for energy. Truly living lightly upon the land. They would restore the Earth, and would depend on a restored Earth for food and building materials.