Head in the Clouds

A solitary cloud drifted aimlessly across the sky. It looked so out of place. It’s lonely up in the air, floating around like a lost balloon in its singularity, light as a feather. Not only that, but it’s no bird or plane, yet it can fly lighter than air. Do clouds feel lonely? I don’t have a clue if they feel anything at all. That cloud may appear to be sad and lonely, but on another level, they have a mind of their own without fear of gravity or doubt of mother nature’s presence up there in the stratosphere. The great maestro of timeless space, conducting the elements of chaos and change.

I’m drawn to clouds in all their manifestations. The principle of aerodynamics is as good as any other law of attraction in the realm of space, the vast emptiness of wide-open skies. Rainy-day clouds are a mass of thick gray fluff, while snow clouds form in layers of white heaviness, an even whiter still cloud cover, blotting out the sun temporarily. It’s a trick of the weather and frozen water droplets. Some meteorological magic of s storm brewing, a winter event of predictable outcomes. Will it snow? Maybe. The ground’s too warm for frozen precipitation now, but you never know.

Topics like daily weather forecasts are always a gamble for official weather forecasters to ensure they don’t miss something important and get it wrong. It happens all the time. The lofty expectations of a clear, concise weather reading are up for debate as far as the weather climate is concerned. Is it too freezing cold or insufferably hot? What about the humidity? How does that factor into the weather equation, anyway?

Barometric pressure and dew points can affect your mood if you’re an emotional conduit to the whims of weather. There’s electricity in the air. I look for updates and changes in temperature fluctuations and can’t figure out how it works. The yo-yo effect of a thermometer on the fritz with mercury in a glass tube is science enough. The rising and falling of temperatures is in tune with the seasonal variations of weather. This isn’t so much a problem as it is an inconvenience. Quickly changing conditions can put a damper on your plans. Better grab an umbrella. You know the time and purpose under heaven routine. The Japanese call it Ukiyo. It’s an expression of living in the moment without any bother or concern for life’s mishaps. In a floating world, like a cloud. A poetic metaphor for life in free fall. Sailing through the clouds like a ghost ship on a cosmic sea.

A romantic notion about the way clouds will travel through air, defying gravity at the whim of prevailing winds. A wing and a prayer for our sorry souls to keep. Look to the skies to discover what is happening. Open the window or walk out of any door. It could be as simple as that but never mind the way clouds form and change in random ways, traveling in different directions at the same time in varying degrees. The consequence of an infinite universe creates every moment in step with those heavenly constellations in the firmament of the astronomical system known as cosmology. As above, so below. Charting stars and planetary bodies in decaying orbits around the solar system’s magnetic poles. Just another unexplained phenomenon in the history of Earth as we know it to exist without any evidence or input from us. They just exist. The Big Bang’s a dud. It has fooled many for millennia. Never mind the cloudscape above your spaced-out heads as you dwell within your foggy mind. That’s part of unfounded science in the divine plan of existence. Suspending belief is mere guesswork. Speculation usually leads to endless chaos and confusion. Including everything in between, having some place to go. It’s automatic. There’s a method to the madness.

There’s a time and place where everything in space can change in an instant. You wouldn’t know it if it smacked you in the face and pulled down your pants and kicked your butt with a chokehold on your throat. There’s some extreme weather for you; a violent storm in the middle of nowhere pops up and a tornado strikes, wiping out an entire town and leveling the surrounding forest. The destructive force of wind is coming from every direction at once. The aftermath of a hurricane or some gale force winds. A crazy vortex that can cause severe damage to the entire ecosystem. Strange how that happens.

Fog’s another example of the effects of the natural environment gone bad. The fog is just clouds that come down to touch ground level and obscure affected areas with low or zero visibility. You’re in a fog when clouds are dense and thicker than the air above your head. You can’t really see too much, except for what’s directly in front of your face. Even then, there’s no way you can maneuver without bumping into something sight unseen. Was that a tree trunk or a utility pole? This is when you feel disembodied and lighter than air, floating around in a fog that’s a cloud coming down to earth. A heavenly body shooting the breeze and casually drifting away across the sky. I’m not the person I was in the past and will never be the same way after. It’s a rarity, the free spirit flying through open skies, unable to distinguish between your head or the clouds. And like us, clouds change and irrevocably disappear.