Cloud Appreciation Society

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Clouds are endlessly fascinating. As children, we used to lie sprawled out in the long grass staring up at them for hours, relating to one another everything we saw. It was a time for imaginations to run riot. And sometimes, we really did see strange things! One particular afternoon, a huge angel with outstretched wings came bearing down on us from a crimson sky, and we ran home in fear to tell our parents.

Some years later at college, when the authorities were looking for new ideas for students’ organizations, I suggested that they start a “Cloud Appreciation Society”. I didn’t expect them to take me seriously. But they did. And to my astonishment, over thirty young freshmen arrived (with notebooks and pencils) to attend our first meeting! It was all great fun. We would drive out into the local countryside and just lie about in the meadows talking, sketching or writing about the clouds. But the secret of "Cloud Appreciation" is that it isn't really about clouds at all: it's about the cloud-gazers. We found ourselves talking endlessly about everything and everyone, until the serious types took over and Science began to rear its ugly head. There was soon talk about "making lists", and "keeping records". Profane words like “stratus" and "cumulus" were bandied about. It was then that I left. I didn’t want meteorology. I wanted the poetry, the imagination, the wildness. So I returned to the meadow and resumed my studies there alone.

But of course, I wasn't allowed to concentrate. Once again, I was made to realize that Cloud Appreciation is not really about appreciating clouds. First the lapwings started flirting with me (from a distance of course); then the grasshoppers came to see what I was doing; the skylarks played "peek-a-boo" above the long grass; the beetles walked over my notebooks trying to read what I'd written. Larger animals also began arriving to study me. A young deer once came so close that I could hear her breathing. I can still see her rounded eyes of surprise as she bounded off into the undergrowth startled by a movement of my pen. It was so difficult to concentrate! I’m sure I would have obtained my PhD in Cloud Appreciation (cum laude) from the University of "Universe-City", if only there had not been so many "distractions".

After all these years, the memory of the meadow has stayed with me while the clouds have disappeared over the horizon of age. I still remember the smell of the long grass, the flash of the buttercups, the pink streaks of foxgloves, the blood-poppies, (and those hussy little yellow poppies that look so fresh and flirty). I’ve always loved poppies, perhaps because they pine away and die the moment you pick them, and are therefore left alone by flower pickers and the commercial companies.

So what I've learned is simply this: if you go into the wilderness with the intention of studying “the wilderness”, you won't notice nearly as much as if you'd gone there to do something else. Heavy deliberation in these matters destroys all the spontaneity, kills the unique wildness, of the moment. You have to be just as wild and free and spontaneous as the things you’ve come to see. It’s like Love: holding too tightly to it is a sure way of losing it: you squeeze the (wild) life out of it. William Blake said it all so much better, of course:

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in Eternity’s sunrise.

© Ryszard Antolak
(Painting: Nina Rahshenas)