By Nicolette Mallow
As far back into my childhood as I can remember, cloud watching has been a personal pleasure and constant test of my imagination. I made shapes, life forms, faces, symbols and abstract contours out of light and dark clouds. I wondered when the next cloud would catch my eye and form something new in my mind, like a dragon, a giant hand or a woman dancing. Cloud watching isn’t something you learn. It’s something your eye finds as you’re walking, daydreaming or staring into the depths of the sky. Sometimes when you’re looking your hardest for a cloud to make a recognizable form in the sky, you’ll see nothing. Sometimes we can’t force imagination. Or perhaps some days the clouds just don’t feel like creating art for us to admire, like when we lose our muse or inspiration. It’s hard to see a cloud in dark weather or severe thunderstorms.
Cloud watching is also difficult if your mind is in a pessimistic place. There was a time months ago when I looked into the sky and saw nothing. My mind was in a very gloomy place, a downward spiral of negative thinking — like a dark cloud that blocks the sunlight. One day I was lying in the grass at the park staring intently into the deep blue sky. After 20 minutes of imagining, I realized that no matter how hard I tried I could see nothing. My eyes that normally found a castle or a sea serpent in the sky now saw blobs and wisps of clouds. And worse, I recognized that nothing was speaking to me, perhaps because I wasn’t opening myself up to creation.
But trying to imagine something other than a wispy, fluffy cloud can be difficult regardless of the weather, which is why the clouds must speak to you and your imagination. And like any other image, with a little imagination we can always pick out one form or one particular segment of an image and force our minds to imagine something else instead. But sometimes it’s important to let the visual speak to us, like looking at a mass jumble of computer cords and seeing a pile of snakes, or looking at streetlights in the distance at night and picturing they are stars.
For me, cloud watching was not something I sought out. It was something the sky created for me to see. When I walked as a small child and as a young woman, I periodically gazed up to find a swimming mermaid, a large eye or a cotton-tailed bunny rabbit floating in the sky — like atmospheric art. Sometimes the clouds follow me. Sometimes they swoosh by in the wind, morphing into something else. Sometimes they are still, with no wind to disrupt them, waiting for me to retain the image in my memory And eventually, whatever image I’m staring at floats away behind another cloud or building, preventing me from watching it. Or, the cloud transforms back into its downy presence and more “natural” form and continues to move with the air stream.
