Cloudy Day
Apr. 4th, 2003 08:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rejectomorphOne of the odd things about clouds is that they can appear both massive and light at once. This afternoon, when the sun emerged at last, the burnished gray clouds which still dominated the sky gave the appearance of tremendous weight that somehow managed to float in air. I wonder what they would look like to someone who had never sen them before? I have no memory of my first sight of clouds. In my earliest memories of them, there is no sense that they might fall and crush me. They have always been part of the air to me, and yet they have always seemed as though they had this weight. In my earliest memories, I imagined the white clouds to be something like whipped cream, and this image was so intense that merely looking at such clouds could make my mouth water. Grey clouds always reminded me of the skins of blimps, and I could picture myself touching them, feeling the cold, slightly pliant material, and seeing the blurry reflection of my hand in it.
Eventually, when I learned that clouds were essentially nothing more than fog banks in the sky, I was briefly disappointed. But I liked fog, as well, and easily reconciled myself to the fact that I would never be able to touch a cloud in the way that I could touch an object, or taste a cloud the way I could taste whipped cream. It was nice to think that I could be enveloped in a cloud, or inhale it, feeling the foggy damp on my skin, smelling and tasting the subtle scents and flavors carried by fog . Still later, when I learned a bit (a very small bit) about physics, and how, at the quantum level, the earth and everything on it consists mostly of empty space in which subatomic particles continually dance, it pleased me that, in essence, everything is clouds, including me. So it isn't a wonder that clouds appear to have more substance than they actually do. It is commonplace. I like having something in common with clouds.
Eventually, when I learned that clouds were essentially nothing more than fog banks in the sky, I was briefly disappointed. But I liked fog, as well, and easily reconciled myself to the fact that I would never be able to touch a cloud in the way that I could touch an object, or taste a cloud the way I could taste whipped cream. It was nice to think that I could be enveloped in a cloud, or inhale it, feeling the foggy damp on my skin, smelling and tasting the subtle scents and flavors carried by fog . Still later, when I learned a bit (a very small bit) about physics, and how, at the quantum level, the earth and everything on it consists mostly of empty space in which subatomic particles continually dance, it pleased me that, in essence, everything is clouds, including me. So it isn't a wonder that clouds appear to have more substance than they actually do. It is commonplace. I like having something in common with clouds.
