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Interstellar clouds are made up of hydrogen and cosmic dust, the mystical place where new stars are hatched. Creation requires the coming together of things; an experiment, an observable reaction, a bold joining or merging of molecules. The aloneness of the artist is deceptive. The coming together, the connections, are all happening within.
Cumulus clouds, if loosely formed, will mirror the shape of the coastlines and islands they linger above. You have been in many relationships that behaved the same way. Always you were the cloud, he was the island.
Nimbostratus. Stratocumulus. Cirrus. Volutus. Lenticularis. Fractus. Undulatus. Castellanus. Noctilucent. Horseshoe vortex. Pileus. Asperitas. Tuba. Nacreous. Mamma. Diamond dust.
We believe in a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but the arch is really a full circle that continues beneath the surface of the earth. The only gold to be found is in the refracted rays themselves, in the moment of existence, and for us, in the moment of seeing.
Crepuscular rays are also known as Jacob’s Ladder, or Buddha’s Rays, or The Ropes of Maui. An ex-partner called them God Speaks, although he wasn’t a believer. He didn’t believe in anything, in fact, except for the solid, measurable world and the earning of money. You see this now as one of the reasons you are no longer together.
On cloud nine. Every cloud has a silver lining. Head in the clouds. Cloud-cuckoo land. Cloud of suspicion. A cloud on the horizon. Clouding the issue.
During a storm in 1638, a ‘great fiery ball’ crashed through the window of an English church where a service was being held. Four people were killed and sixty-two were injured. Still now ball lightening is a mysterious and transient force, one study suggesting it is actually an hallucination caused by magnetic fields. The death of parishioners seems to contradict this idea, but then, it could be argued that collective faith is a similar kind of illusion.
You once watched a thunderstorm with someone you loved, although both you and he didn’t acknowledge this at the time or for many months after. The rain fell in warm fat drops, the sky abundant with crackling forks and tumbling light and bright flashes of yellow and white. It was slow moving, patient. Much like your love.
Research Source: A Cloud a Day by Gavin Pretor-Pinney, founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society
Sally Gander 