Clouds are cheap. Wherever you are, they entertain and enshadow, magnifying to immense proportions the proposition that life is ever-varying shades of grey. Boredom is just a state of mind when there are clouds in the sky.

The plumes, puffs, phantasms and pillows parade across the local heavens. Few days are completely bereft of clouds in May and June, at least where I live. Brides keep planning their weddings as if thousands of June weddings hadn’t been obscured and dampened by banks of Cumulonimbus. This is cloud-denial, a common psychological disease. Cloud deniers always act surprised when spring is cloudy. They have a fixed, illusory image of a cloud-free spring that only the right psychotropic medication could cure.

Cumulus clouds are to June what snow is to January. They form in the lower atmosphere and sometimes extend in massive vaporous monuments upward into the stratosphere. Cumulus mediocris look like shredded cotton balls. Cumulus humilis are more reminiscent of clotted cream. Cumulus congestus create muscular heros, suggestive of so many shapes it is not surprising Zeus was believed to create the image of his wife, Hera, out of a cloud. The cloud was violated and Centaurus thus conceived.

Each Cumulus cloud is “the visible summit of a towering transparent column of air – like a bright white toupee on a huge invisible man.” So says Gavin Pretor-Pinney in his wonderful book, The Cloudspotters Guide: The Sciene, History and Culture of Clouds. Clouds satisfy both the scientist and the artist. The scientist looks at the sky and has the urge to measure droplets. He is a cloud-demystifier. The artist sees castles and ascending saints.  Clouds make him more depressed when he is depressed and more jubilant when he is happy. They intensify the inner condition.

I once lived in a place that was not cloudy for a single day for two months. It was a living hell. Thank you, clouds. You are unappreciated and vilified. You are too lofty for us.

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