Anna Nemeckova-Gulack Week 5 Response

Clouds

1.     Honestly, trying to come up which what to say in a way that doesn’t embarrass me is near impossible. I mean, to most people, clouds are just clouds. Yeah, they can be pretty, but they are mostly just veils that cover the sun.

2.     Ecologically, they are important to the rain cycle. Without them we wouldn’t have rain, which literally everything on earth needs.

3.     Today it is cloudy with a chance or rain, the forecast says.

4.     We look at clouds as harbingers of doom. We find ourselves looking at the dark, imposing colossi in the distance being stuck with lightning, sparks flying across water molecules.

5.     I remember driving down to New Brunswick with my dad at some point when the weather started acting up. I looked out my window to see a blanket of seafoam green clouds approaching and eventually covering us. It was kind of beautiful and fascinating.

6.     I learned later that clouds turn that color when they are extremely full of water. Or when there are tornados around. Or both.

7.     People observe clouds on a sunny day to find shapes in them, like when you’re on a picnic (oh look a bunny!).

8.     I guess I do something similar, at least part of the time. I remember taking a picture of clouds in middle school because I saw a woman lying on her side smiling and I didn’t want to lose it.

9.     I remember seeing a vague shape from the side of a woman kneeling, cupping her hands up, with what looked like a slight bit of fire coming out. She faded away before I could take a picture.

10.  When I look at clouds around New Brunswick, the thing I see the most is streaks of white forming giant flying creatures which huge wingspans that stretch through the sky.

11.  Sometimes the lines form giant feathers that never seem to fall.

12.   Apparently they are called cirrus clouds.

13.  My opinion of what is referred to as cumulus clouds depends on the cloud. Some just look like vague splotches of white that float across the sky, lacking definition and set form.

14.  I love big ones with the light shining on them just right, showing off every little bump and crevice. They look like huge beautiful sculptures.

15.  I especially love seeing these types of clouds during sunsets, when they light up in bright hues of red, yellow, orange, and purple. I remember one particular cloud that became this reddish purple color, but no matter what I tried, the phone couldn’t capture it.

16.  I remember at one point my family was driving to the country when I noticed a cloud on the horizon that struck me with how incredible and HUGE it was. I kept trying to take a picture of it from the car, but it kept getting covered up, and my heart started breaking.  I eventually begged my dad to stop the car. He stopped it by a farm, giving one of the best views I possibly could have had of the formation. I took many pictures of it from different angles, and continued to as its form shifted. My dad and mom waited, but eventually insisted that we would miss out on our favorite pizza place if we didn’t leave.

17.  Apparently I am not alone in my love of clouds. There is a term for a depiction of clouds in are called a cloudscape. That sounds right to me.

18.  I love looking at the clouds from airplanes. It’s almost like I’ve entered another world above ours made of spanning white plains, occasional white mountains shining in the sun’s light, and scattered islands of white that float above the empty sea of sky thousands of meters deep.

19.  Georgia O’Keefe was apparently fascinated with this too, though Sky Above Clouds IV looks like ice floating in water rather than islands floating in the air.

20.  I once went to a deep-meditation session in New York City. While we were deep in meditation, the guy leading us told us to imagine our problems leaving our minds as clouds, and then to imagine the clouds flying away into the air and dissipating. In my case I just had a huge dark cloud above me stretching into the distance. I tried walking out from under it but it kept following me. I was frustrated with myself and my mind for not listening. I decided, well if I can’t leave this behind, I guess I can fly above it. I felt myself fly up and through a hole in the clouds. And I was there, flying above it all, feeling relaxed and successful. I eventually turned myself towards the sky with my eyes closed, feeling the warmth on my face.