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the_elyanAlways write first. the washing-up can wait, the thought may never pass by again.
Travelling home on the train this evening, lost in melancholy thought, I chanced to look out of the window, and felt my heart lift from the sight of the cloudscape before me. Rain was falling across the Fens, in great curving sheets, like the base of the clouds had been ripped by a cutpurse. But between them lay a brief patch of layered cloud, behind which the sun shone like the furnace-light from behind a smithy door, lighting the land below in fitful bands of gold. If the trumpets of the angels had suddenly appeared, I should not have been in the least surprised. A moment later, the sight was gone, swept up in the encroaching grey. The moment was ephemeral, but shone all the brighter for it.
The sight of magnificent skies and cloudscapes is one of the great pleasures of living in the Fens. An infinite horizon promises an eternity of sky, and when the weather is unsettled, the observer has a ringside seat at the battle of the heavens. And as for the sunsets…
Yes, I know clouds are just a mist of water droplets, driven by the wind, sculpted by the prevailing weather conditions at certain altitudes … but, as with so many things, life can be so much more interesting if approached from a different angle.
There are two sights of the clouds I experience, one commonly, one less so. Both have their charms.
Usually, I see the clouds from below, drawing the eye upward toward the sky and the sun (which is rarely a bad thing). There is beauty in the random shapes which pass by, often very like a whale. Sometimes there are cliff-tops of white in the sky, glimpsed between banks of clouds, from which you half-expect to see travellers on the very edge, waving down to us to come on up. The sun’s light is at its most beautiful when bursting through heavy clouds, fringing the edges with fire – two of my clearest memories of the time I’ve spent in Cornwall, for instance, are of standing on cliff-tops (once at Land’s End, once on Greenaway), seeing the turbulent sea turned suddenly to a carpet of gold by unexpected sun-splashes. These are memories which no camera can do justice to, and they lie behind the mind’s eye like jewels.
Even in the immediate prelude to a thunderstorm (such as I got caught in yesterday), the sky can be stunning. The stack of purple and yellow thunderheads, the sudden wall of gunmetal grey, like the sidewall of a battleship before a dinghy – these are forces beyond our control, and one of the few things left which can command the respect of a human race too self-satisfied with its own achievements. In the face of a thunderstorm, we race for our caves in just the same way as our remotest ancestors must have done, and we look at the rainbow with the same sense of wonder. Even though we know how the trick is done, it doesn’t stop us being dazzled.
The other view of the clouds, which in some ways is even more spectacular, is from my rare forays into the air. On an aeroplane, I will kick old women and babes in arms out of the way to get a window seat, because I find the sights from that narrow, scratched plastic pane as stirring as anything I see on the ground. Partly it is the flight over mountains – as most of my flights in recent years have been to Italy, the Alps are a star attraction – but also it is the clouds. There are few moments to compare with bursting through a blanket of rain-clouds, and suddenly coming into a land of brilliant sunshine, and a new world. This is a kingdom of the sky – a plain stretching to the horizon, with rivers, hills, and undiscovered valleys. I can look out at the clouds from an aeroplane, and feel an overwhelming desire to step out from my seat, and explore the lands suddenly laid out before me. The rational part of my mind knows I would freeze to death before I had time even to fall through the treacherous substance of these pipe-dreams, but with the alternative a stewardess trying to flog me scratch-cards and perfume, I will dream of the empire outside my window. I ponder how it might feel to forge pathways across the skies, and what I might find beyond the limits of my vision, between the limiting wingtip of the rational world, and the horizon of the infinite universe beyond. Where earth-rooted mountains pierce the cloud-tops, they evoke a greater mystery – in this new world, they are like icebergs, unknowable and mighty. I dream that if I step out into this world, and keep walking, crossing fast-flowing cloud rivers and conquering cloud-mountains, I might one day meet others who have chosen to take the untrodden ways in the sky, in search of greater wonders than any to be found on earth. Together we will explore every inch of the skies, and by the time we complete the circumnavigation, the map will have been redrawn, and we can start again, forever in anticipation of new discoveries. That would be the life.
Above all this, however, I love the cloudscapes (whether seen from above or below) as an open and free artwork, presented for anyone who has eyes to see, and the desire to appreciate beauty. My love of the clouds is entirely non-intellectual – I have no especial desire to read the Cloud-Spotters’ Guide, and to become versed in the types and clouds and their life-stories in the upper atmosphere, as that would not aid the magic. As a voracious consumer of modern art, I have become accustomed to the apprehension of beauty requiring a context – that the artist’s thought processes or situation become an essential component of the appreciation of the work. This vastly enriches much art, especially of the last century, but it is a joy to be presented with something that is beautiful simply because it is, sufficient only unto itself. I appreciate the endless landscape of the clouds in the same way I do the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites – the artwork needs no accompaniment, it is simply, as the brotherhood itself strove for, Good Art. Appreciation becomes straightforward again, requiring no analysis or critical detachment, only the ability to be filled with awe.
At the end of my favourite of the Sandman books, Season of Mists, Lucifer winds up on a beach in Australia, joined by a man who watches the sunset every night. As he puts it, “any God that can do sunsets like that, a different one every night … ‘strewth, well, you’ve got to respect the old bastard, haven’t you?” And, free at last of his obligations, even Lucifer admits that the sunsets are indeed bloody marvellous. After a lifetime of giving the devil his due, even the devil has to give God his due when it comes to the unceasing theatre of the heavens. For we humbler watchers of the skies, from Keats on down to the hoi-polloi like you and I, it is simply a privilege we are granted, gratis, and should always be thankful for.
Travelling home on the train this evening, lost in melancholy thought, I chanced to look out of the window, and felt my heart lift from the sight of the cloudscape before me. Rain was falling across the Fens, in great curving sheets, like the base of the clouds had been ripped by a cutpurse. But between them lay a brief patch of layered cloud, behind which the sun shone like the furnace-light from behind a smithy door, lighting the land below in fitful bands of gold. If the trumpets of the angels had suddenly appeared, I should not have been in the least surprised. A moment later, the sight was gone, swept up in the encroaching grey. The moment was ephemeral, but shone all the brighter for it.
The sight of magnificent skies and cloudscapes is one of the great pleasures of living in the Fens. An infinite horizon promises an eternity of sky, and when the weather is unsettled, the observer has a ringside seat at the battle of the heavens. And as for the sunsets…
Yes, I know clouds are just a mist of water droplets, driven by the wind, sculpted by the prevailing weather conditions at certain altitudes … but, as with so many things, life can be so much more interesting if approached from a different angle.
There are two sights of the clouds I experience, one commonly, one less so. Both have their charms.
Usually, I see the clouds from below, drawing the eye upward toward the sky and the sun (which is rarely a bad thing). There is beauty in the random shapes which pass by, often very like a whale. Sometimes there are cliff-tops of white in the sky, glimpsed between banks of clouds, from which you half-expect to see travellers on the very edge, waving down to us to come on up. The sun’s light is at its most beautiful when bursting through heavy clouds, fringing the edges with fire – two of my clearest memories of the time I’ve spent in Cornwall, for instance, are of standing on cliff-tops (once at Land’s End, once on Greenaway), seeing the turbulent sea turned suddenly to a carpet of gold by unexpected sun-splashes. These are memories which no camera can do justice to, and they lie behind the mind’s eye like jewels.
Even in the immediate prelude to a thunderstorm (such as I got caught in yesterday), the sky can be stunning. The stack of purple and yellow thunderheads, the sudden wall of gunmetal grey, like the sidewall of a battleship before a dinghy – these are forces beyond our control, and one of the few things left which can command the respect of a human race too self-satisfied with its own achievements. In the face of a thunderstorm, we race for our caves in just the same way as our remotest ancestors must have done, and we look at the rainbow with the same sense of wonder. Even though we know how the trick is done, it doesn’t stop us being dazzled.
The other view of the clouds, which in some ways is even more spectacular, is from my rare forays into the air. On an aeroplane, I will kick old women and babes in arms out of the way to get a window seat, because I find the sights from that narrow, scratched plastic pane as stirring as anything I see on the ground. Partly it is the flight over mountains – as most of my flights in recent years have been to Italy, the Alps are a star attraction – but also it is the clouds. There are few moments to compare with bursting through a blanket of rain-clouds, and suddenly coming into a land of brilliant sunshine, and a new world. This is a kingdom of the sky – a plain stretching to the horizon, with rivers, hills, and undiscovered valleys. I can look out at the clouds from an aeroplane, and feel an overwhelming desire to step out from my seat, and explore the lands suddenly laid out before me. The rational part of my mind knows I would freeze to death before I had time even to fall through the treacherous substance of these pipe-dreams, but with the alternative a stewardess trying to flog me scratch-cards and perfume, I will dream of the empire outside my window. I ponder how it might feel to forge pathways across the skies, and what I might find beyond the limits of my vision, between the limiting wingtip of the rational world, and the horizon of the infinite universe beyond. Where earth-rooted mountains pierce the cloud-tops, they evoke a greater mystery – in this new world, they are like icebergs, unknowable and mighty. I dream that if I step out into this world, and keep walking, crossing fast-flowing cloud rivers and conquering cloud-mountains, I might one day meet others who have chosen to take the untrodden ways in the sky, in search of greater wonders than any to be found on earth. Together we will explore every inch of the skies, and by the time we complete the circumnavigation, the map will have been redrawn, and we can start again, forever in anticipation of new discoveries. That would be the life.
Above all this, however, I love the cloudscapes (whether seen from above or below) as an open and free artwork, presented for anyone who has eyes to see, and the desire to appreciate beauty. My love of the clouds is entirely non-intellectual – I have no especial desire to read the Cloud-Spotters’ Guide, and to become versed in the types and clouds and their life-stories in the upper atmosphere, as that would not aid the magic. As a voracious consumer of modern art, I have become accustomed to the apprehension of beauty requiring a context – that the artist’s thought processes or situation become an essential component of the appreciation of the work. This vastly enriches much art, especially of the last century, but it is a joy to be presented with something that is beautiful simply because it is, sufficient only unto itself. I appreciate the endless landscape of the clouds in the same way I do the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites – the artwork needs no accompaniment, it is simply, as the brotherhood itself strove for, Good Art. Appreciation becomes straightforward again, requiring no analysis or critical detachment, only the ability to be filled with awe.
At the end of my favourite of the Sandman books, Season of Mists, Lucifer winds up on a beach in Australia, joined by a man who watches the sunset every night. As he puts it, “any God that can do sunsets like that, a different one every night … ‘strewth, well, you’ve got to respect the old bastard, haven’t you?” And, free at last of his obligations, even Lucifer admits that the sunsets are indeed bloody marvellous. After a lifetime of giving the devil his due, even the devil has to give God his due when it comes to the unceasing theatre of the heavens. For we humbler watchers of the skies, from Keats on down to the hoi-polloi like you and I, it is simply a privilege we are granted, gratis, and should always be thankful for.
