Cloud Gazing

A celebration of being nebulous

A few weeks back I took a road trip with my partner, up through California and into the Pacific Northwest. We spent our days hiking, swimming, putzing, snacking. Sticky with sweat and watermelon juice. Aside from the balm of starry nights and daily cold plunges, I found familiar softness in sitting in the car for hours upon end, zoning out. Relishing the lack of internet access and any discernible plan. A fresh-breath-of doing-nothing. 

Amidst the unremitting to-do list of adulthood, I’ve come to cherish this nothing-time as healing and creatively fertile. In transit between two points, slow and meandering. It reminds me of “shower thoughts”… how they can be such ‘aha’ moments. That way we feel creatively unlocked when we permit ourselves to crack the door of our structured lives.

It’s within that spaciousness that I found my attention drifting to the clouds. Cumulous clouds, bruised peach-pink at dusk. Cirrus clouds, wispy and marbled. Stratus clouds, blanketing the landscape like some celestial quilt.

One evening we got hit by a torrential hail storm, caught off guard by gentle skies that turned murky and foreboding in a matter of minutes. We hunkered down in the van as thunder rattled around the valley. I felt a bit uneasy being tucked into the back corner of a tinderbox as lightning scorched the earth. But mostly, I felt reverence for the clouds. These things that are simultaneously the embodiment of softness and the source of such ferocity, cracking all around us.

I frequently use the term nebulous to describe my career as an artist, as it’s so often unclear and ever-changing. But nebulous also means “the form of a cloud”, with etymologic roots in the Latin word nebula. In other words, being an artist is cloud-like. As is, frankly, the act of being alive. In a time of life when my job, identity, sense of place, and sense of purpose all feel relatively undefined, cloud gazing provides an accessible lesson on the art of being alive in a state of creative flux. Rolling, shifting, morphing, storming…an ongoing parade of existing that denies any attempt at containment. 

I find this comforting amidst the reality of life as a non-stop wave of change. A reminder that we’re not just reacting to change but that we are change. Physically and energetically, we embody it down to the cellular level. It’s coded into the composition of our being, which like a cloud, is also full of water and electricity.

I was shocked to recently learn that the average cumulous cloud weighs 1 MILLION pounds. Which makes sense if you envision a cloud as a giant rain-sponge, laden with water. Yet still…if something that substantial can flow through space and time with such grace and permission then so can we. Permission to let go, to be soft, to be angry, to take up space, to redefine, or even to remain undefined. The softest sky, the fiercest storm, and every breath in-between.

I’ve had to learn this lesson time and time again. The urge to define, contain, and quantify tethered like a shadow, chasing me through every threshold. Milestones! Expectations! To resist the comfort of containment is to greet the vast, shimmering expanse of our own ambiguity. Which can be liberating and painful all at once.

In this culture of dichotomous thinking, the act of being nebulous is nothing short of a radical act. A celebration and a protest. A commitment to process, an embodiment of aliveness.

Vast, unknown, and ever-changing.

Happy cloud gazing,

Tess

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1. I recently stumbled upon the Cloud Appreciation Society, a website full of all-things-cloud, including pictures, poems, and art. There’s even a cloud of the month post with fun facts. July’s cloud is the cavum cloud, also known as the hole punch cloud. Wow!

   

   Image source: wikicommons (H. Raab), 2008

2. There’s no one better than Rob Moss Wilson at capturing the bliss of cloud gazing. Rob’s art is amazing and so is he. Worth a look if you want to feel good n’ floaty for the rest of the day.

   

3. I’m having a web-shop sale starting Monday July 31st that will run all week. Everything is 15% off, and helps sustain my ability to continue being a cloud-like artist, which I’m eternally grateful for.