#305: The Clouds
Why sometimes it’s good to keep our distance
That morning, I had woken to a grey sky heavy with snow. Spring seemed to have retreated in favour of an extra dose of winter. My feet became icily soggy as I walked to work.
But within a day the sky had changed, and as I left, I saw these beautiful, gently glowing clouds resting in the blue.
Clouds aren’t really objects, though they are frequently represented as if they are so. We imagine clouds like fluffy marshmallows or pillows that we can bounce on, sink into and fall asleep on. We even imagine that clouds might really be other objects altogether, staring at them until they become something else in the mind: a hippo maybe, or a boat.
Recently I had the experience of walking through a cloud and my illusion was ruined. The cloud was simply grey, wet and cold: far from the romantic ideal we imagine.
Yet William Wordsworth wrote that he
“wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills”
Wordsworth’s image of a floating cloud fits into our imaginative view of the meteorological phenomenon. Almost turning the cloud into a being itself, Wordsworth compares himself to it. The cloud bobs along placidly, causing no one any harm. Not soaking a single person.
But this cloud is at a distance. It is lonely in the sky. Like the clouds I saw in the blue, Wordsworth’s cloud is too far away to affect the people below. It does little but watch. And like the clouds that I spotted on my way home, we can only presume Wordsworth’s cloud was too small to rain.
Like many things, the way we look at clouds is merely a matter of perspective. And sometimes, keeping our distance, it’s nicer not to disrupt the illusion. It’s calming to keep our more childish fantasies about the sky, to forget the snow and the rain, and just enjoy the peace of a white cloud floating in a blue sky.
And, resting a while on a bench to enjoy the moment, that’s just what I did.
