On Clouds

I have been obsessed with them for some time now - my friends used to laugh at me for spending so much time staring up at the massive, weightless things. "Oh look, there's a good one!" I would say and they would barely glance at one that looked like every other cloud to them. To me, it always set my imagination on fire. I wished I could paint so I could represent the beauty of the things, or to write with the eloquence to describe it.

Now that I've learned to paint, and more or less to write, I find little greater joy than to make clouds. If I need to warm up, I make them; if I need to cool down I make more. My final project in 102 this past fall was this:

A self-portrait of me doing the thing I've done the most - cloudgazing.

It was almost life-size, and the various paintings have now dissipated, much like real clouds. One I gave to my sister. Another lives in my living room; another was painted over and reincarnated as something else.

The most beautiful thing about clouds is that things as big and glorious as ancient battleships, or cathedrals, or monuments, can change in an instant. They are not bound to anything - neither the rules of constancy nor to gravity. They are freedom.