I was, I don’t know, perhaps eight years old. It was a school trip at lunch or perhaps one summer, I do not remember the details too clearly. I was laying on my back on the grass looking up at the sky. I became mesmerized by the clouds. The slow moving and transforming chaos so filled my consciousness that I totally lost track of time. I can tell this only because I remember at some point a breeze came by and with it time came flooding back into my consciousness. The timeless calm went away but not the captivating qualities of clouds.
Perhaps my love of clouds is wholly astrological, I am a Pisces with Gemini Moon, the fusion of mutable water and mutable air. Or it may simply be that they are transcendently beautiful. Always changing, there is no way to truly capture a cloud. The moment they are there, they are gone once again. Very much like the conscious mind itself it always changes in mood or sensory input or memory or thought. Never the same but echoes and patterns reappear and disappear with alacrity.
I think there is a lot to be learned from clouds. Impermanence. Patience. Tranquility. All these and more are embodied in the life of the cloud. They are change at every level. The counterpart to rivers and lakes and oceans. Before the rain drops fall, after the water evaporates, there are clouds.
Clouds protect us from the constant harshness of the sun. They block a lot of dangerous UV radiation. They can also cause quite a ruckus, storing electricity that unleashes as lightning. From calm to tempest they are powerful and many changing things.
Tags: clouds
a.k.a. nomorepolitics
Nice cloud pictures. Reminds me to update my own collection of cloud pictures.
I never get that ultramarine tinge in my skies. What camera or tint are you using?
nice skies
Re: a.k.a. nomorepolitics
Its just Florida. Lower latitudes tend to have much richer colors, both darker blues and more vibrant pastels.
Florida is fantastic, I want to work here more often.