Cloud Thoughts

January 13, 2016

Cloud Thoughts

Like shower thoughts, but for the sky.

I thought about how the method we use to board planes is SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN to be the slowest and least efficient method of boarding. And yet we still use it.

I thought about how people are generally more emotional on airplanes, myself included. I like to listen to sad music and gaze wistfully out the window, as if I were the protagonist in a movie who had just sent her lover off to war or had recently been widowed, allowing myself to feel maudlin and reflective, even if those sentiments are manufactured.

But once we were up in the sky, I was awestruck by the celestial vista just below me outside my tiny cabin window. Literally as far as I could see, plush opaque clouds expanded to the distant horizon, what would have been sky to me had I been on the ground now topsy-turvied into a pseudo carpet, the real sky now extending outward in a limitless blank canvas above. The scene was otherworldly, and I felt hushed with a sense of privilege to behold a view so perfect and unique and untouched and not afforded to many. It looked like a painting. It looked like heaven. It looked like a painting of heaven. Hazy wisps of water vapor curled upward from and around the cumulus clouds as if they had been pulled apart like cotton balls, suspended and seemingly immobile. Nature itself defied the gravity with which it was bound, appearing as though we were underwater, floating, rather than the complete opposite. The clouds swirled together in a mix of alluring texture and thickness that obliterated any view of lights or even the ground below, creating their own ethereal amalgamation of continents and islands.

As I glanced up from my book to engage this astounding view, my mind was still on the story I’d been reading, fraught with magic and illusions, the twisting of truth, people convincing themselves that what they could see was reality, on the belief that our senses are the most accurate purveyors of truth. From my viewpoint, the clouds below looked full and buoyant enough to bounce on, despite their deceptively insubstantial composition. I thought about how metaphorical this was for the trite and oft-repeated assertion that things are not always as they seem. People’s intents and character don’t always align with their appearance and the preconceived notions we formulate about them. Though it might seem as though all of my peers in my social circles have their acts together financially and their futures orderly planned out, upon further discussion with them individually, I find that we are all floundering a little bit, just trying to keep our heads above water. And despite what Instagram portrays, our lives are messy and confusing, not stylized and trendy, constantly bathed in natural light.

Far in the distance, along (what appeared to be) the horizon, a gauzy wall of clouds extended upward from the cloud carpet below, reaching beyond the limited view of my cabin window. It was so curious and unusual, seemingly impenetrable, though I knew differently. The light of the setting sun was disarmingly majestic and unearthly, bright and vivid though fading fast, diffused and reflected through the clouds so that for a few fleeting moments the entire surrounding sky was an incredible shocking pink, before rapidly fading into a dreamy lilac haze.

Sometimes when I’m working on a cake, I think about all the time and effort I’m putting into a product that will eventually be eaten, and I question whether this endeavor is worth the exertion when I know it won’t last or even exist the following day. However, like a sunset, I believe that something can be inherently beautiful in and because of its transience. Impermanent, that thing, whether a stunning sunset or a cookie, becomes all the more tantalizing in its ephemerality.

Also impermanent: Squishy baby cheeks. Chubby baby thighs. Nephews who think I’m cool. Chase’s gap in his front teeth. (#underpanth) Annie’s toddler hair. Being entirely smitten when someone else drools on me.