If
I should ever cease to be amazed and enraptured by the magic
of clouds, I should wish myself
dead. And I am hardly alone — since the dawn of our species, the water cycle’s
most visible expression in the skies has bewitched artists, poets, and
scientists like as a beautiful natural metaphor for the philosophy that there
in an inherent balance to life, that what we give will soon be replenished.
More than two millennia before poet Mark Strand and painter Wendy Mark joined
forces on their breathtaking love letter to clouds, before
Georgia O’Keeffe extolled the beauty of the Southwest skies,
before scientists figured out why cloudy days help us think more clearly, the
great ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes wrote: “They are the celestial
Clouds, the patron goddesses of the layabout. From them come our intelligence,
our dialectic and our reason.” Indeed, there is a singular quality of
prayerfulness to clouds — a certain secular reverence undergirding their allure
to both art and science.
by Maria Popova
