Proving God w/ Clouds: [07/27-07/29] A Small Sampling of Strange Clouds

| cloudcalling

I am inclined to go through each image and name what I see as ‘strange’ about these clouds – their elements of form, characteristics of edge and uniformity, dis-uniformity, symbol-seeming structures, the unlikely play of layer and chance to form so many eyes and so many animals unless there are physical rules of the morphology of everything alive that extend their even to the shapes that are made by clouds, the beauty and weirdness of it all.

However, given that I have taken, um…

..a lot of pictures of clouds recently.

It is unreasonable – at this point in time – to document my reflections on each cloud I notice and photograph. However, I do spend a lot of time studying the imagines – which are often multiple shots of the same slowly transforming structure, the process of a congregate dispersing, gathering, concentrating, briefly becoming a bird, a shocked face, and then disappearing.

Right now, I am focusing on finding some sort of practice that helps me to be more efficient in sharing this work so that I may find assistance with understanding why – in the simplest terms possible – the clouds look so weird.

As I have said, if nothing else, I need to know that what I am seeing is just a matter of a raging case of pareidolia, and that I can engage with this distinct way of seeing if I choose to, but can disregard any phenomena of clouds looking like people and gods and trees and war and all these sad-eyed solemn animals and so many fish that my heart breaks for the ocean despite all my gestures toward a scientific grounding.

While I am currently documenting a lot, I am not studying, organizing, or synthesizing experience into shareable media as much as is likely needed in order to address my primary goal of finding people who can help me to understand why I see so much in the clouds and who can tell me – and who I can trust to believe – that I can stop paying attention now, stop taking pictures because the shapes and forms in the sky look like they might be important to someone, like they might mean something to someone.

I would like develop consistent methodology of observation and reporting, as well as a means by which to track outcomes of this project – which is driven by the dual inquiries of:

A) “Why do I see these things in the clouds, and why does that seem important to me?”

B) “What will happen if I try to find out?”

Some of these big galleries of similar seeming clouds are the result of it being somewhat difficult to upload 250+ photos to WordPress at one time and so many photos being lost/timed out in the upload process. I am learning that some of my practices are not producing effective, efficient results. It takes a considerable amount of time to identify select images from hundreds, 1000+ images, and then to select them again to upload, and then to have the small fraction of images that did manage to make it to the media library be all jumbled up and out of the sequence they were selected in, not to mention the sluggishness of the media library load and the inability to organize images or access images beyond scrolling through a chronological record of uploads. I am sure there is a plug-in media file tool that is much, much better – but, like many people, it is easy for me to get comfortable with inefficient processes.

This work very much asks me to get over my hang-ups, tendencies, habits – to, in general, get over myself – and do what I need to do to learn how to present this project and frame this inquiry with consistent integrity, sincerity, and reverence for, if nothing else, the human capacity for curiosity and our longing to find meaning and purpose within our small lives.

It’s not a hoax, or a shock-media scam, or a bid for attention…it really is, and has always been, a very simple set of questions:

“Why do the clouds look weird?”

“Why do I feel/believe like I do about the clouds?”

“Is this important?”

“If so, can you help me to understand why and help me to know what to do?”

“If not, can you please tell me so that I can shift my energies away from semi-vigilant cloudwatching fueled by both focused curiosity, awe, wonder, and the persistent, possibly-erroneous sense that I need to watch the sky as much as I can bear to, and that I need to document as much as possible, because I do not know enough about many things to be able to tell if any of this is important, or why or how this important, but I do know enough about a few things to at least have a wondering about whether or not what I am noticing might be important, and if it is important then it is likely important to somebody, for some reason, and I want them to know, if they do not already?”

I am sure there are people who have done work in the ways that things look like other things – tree faces e-books, etc. – but, I am super curious about the physical (as in the physics of material and form) phenomena underlying these formations that possess general attributes of proportion in feature, recognizable compositions of elements (e.g. a well-spaced arc of small cloudforms), repeating rudiments of form – not even necessarily because the phenomena of how clouds shape up has (at least for me, experientially) spiritual implications, but within a concrete atmospheric/environmental sciences frame of inquiry.

I am sure there are people who have already studied and published extensively on cloud formation, patterns in nature, the physics of common rudiments of form appearing in nature that may be interpreted as symbol – prisms, meanders, branches, lattices, etc. – and ways that elements of the morphology of all living things may be identified both in other living things, but also in the material formations of our physical world?

I want to know who they are, the people who might be able to help me to answer my questions.

5,978 – at least 5,900 of them are probably clouds. It is part of my process of observation, study, and reflection to go through my camera roll at some point in the day, often in the early morning or late at night, and look closely at what I saw, or what I didn’t see, but captured nonetheless. Sometimes, I can’t look at what I am photographing because the light is too bright and my eyes water and close, burn so that I have to look away. I will probably have terrible cataracts at some point, and not be able to really see much at all. When I am not wearing my glasses everything is a blur of tiny circles, pointillism divine to the point of abstraction. I have, ironically, very poor vision if am not wearing corrective lenses. I didn’t get glasses until I was 8, and did not – until that day – recognize that the indistinct darkish greenish blueish line – all the way across the river over miles of unseen marsh – was trees at the very edge of Florida, where fresh water springs flow out of the gold sandy sides of Rose’s Bluff toward the blackish brackish currents of the St. Mary’s River, which itself originates at Trail Ridge in the Okefenokee Swamp at a stream called – I kid you not – the River Styx.