Clouds are a visible mass composed of ice crystals or microscopic water droplets suspended in the atmosphere, but they are much more than that. They are mutant forms that hydrate the imagination and the earth. Lying on the grass, we look for hidden messages or familiar images; a noble way to procrastinate and connect intimately with the environment.
The colors and shapes of the clouds change, leaving the invisible traces of time in their wake. They constantly frame and unframe the sky; So, every day is different. And in that novelty, the exercise of observing its majestic forms is inexhaustible.
For city life, taking a short break to look at the clouds can be very meaningful. It is a moment to feel the body outside the dictatorship of immediacy. Therefore, today we want to share some texts with you to help you cultivate this activity but, above all, to lend you the eyes of other people. With them you may find things in the sky that you have never seen before, and in that surprise there is the possibility of changing the perception you have of clouds and the relationship you have with nature.
Jorge Luis Borges, “Clouds”
There won’t be a single thing that isn’t
a cloud. Cathedrals are
of vast stone and biblical crystals
that time will smooth out. It is the Odyssey,
that changes like the sea. There is something different
every time we open it. The reflection
Your face is already another in the mirror
and the day is a dubious labyrinth.
We are the ones who leave. The numerous
cloud that dissolves in the west
It is our image. Unceasingly
The rose becomes another rose.
You are cloud, you are sea, you are oblivion.
You are also what you have lost.
Shaun Tan
Virginia Woolf, fragments of The Waves
There were the floating gray clouds and the nailed tree, the implacable tree with its chiseled silver bark. The whirlwind of my life was fruitless. I couldn’t get to the other side. He dissipates the clouds of dust that stir in my tremulous, ignominiously agitated spirit, and the memory of the dances around the Easter Tree of the gifts wrapped in paper. It would seem that the entire world was made of floating curved lines: those on earth and clouds in the sky. Through the branches of the trees I look at the sky. It seems like the game was being played up there. Faintly, among the soft white clouds, I hear the cry of: “Run!” or “Arbitration!” The clouds seem to lose strands of whiteness as the breeze ruffles them. If that blue could last forever, if that gap between the clouds could last forever, if this moment could last forever… I take the trees and the clouds as witnesses of my complete integration. …
Bruce Levine, “Clouds”
Clouds
drifting across the sky
in imaginary forms
Clouds
making imaginary images
that only the mind
can put together
Clouds
of varying shades
and shapes
Clouds
metamorphosing
Clouds
morphing
into the unknown
Clouds
metamorphosed
Clouds
floating
like the Goodyear blimp
off on the horizon
Clouds
lost
shapeless
meeting
and reforming
Clouds
like foam on the ocean
endless and everlasting
but empty in their
subtlety
Clouds
like cotton candy
pink then white
shifting shades
of gray
Clouds
filled with rain
or so
ephemeral
ace infinity
ethereal
everlasting
Goethe, fragment of The Game of Heavens
Everything remained the same until dawn. The entire sky was covered with isolated clouds, which rubbed against each other, and of which one part dissolved in the upper layer of the cloud, while the other descended so bristly and ashy that at every moment we expected to see it descend in the form of rain. .
Gabriela Mistral, “The Peacock”
That the wind blew and took away the clouds
and that in the clouds there was a peacock,
that the peacock was for my hand
and my hand is going to dry,
and that I gave him the hand this morning
to the king who came to marry.
Oh the sky, oh the wind, and the cloud
They go with the peacock!