A cloud is a suspension. Moisture in air, unresolved. Now vapour. Now mist. Now ice. It’s a conditional gathering. Shaped by the unforeseen. Forming and unforming as it drifts. In and out of existence. Between heat and cold. Pressure and vacuum. Movement and stillness.
A cloud hangs in the balance. Of fragile coexistence. Water molecules too small to amass, cling to traces too slight to recall. Ash. Salt. Pollen. Dust. Swept up on the winds and forgotten. The sky is full of lost memories. The seeds of rain and snow. Droplets condense, collide and merge. Crystals deposit and cluster. Accumulation is essential. If a cloud isn’t growing, it’s eroding. Worn down, edges first, by the air around it. If a cloud is growing, it’s expanding. Billowing along the vertical and horizontal. Filling all the volume temperature and humidity will allow. Warm, moist air floats on cool, dry air. It’s a matter of distribution not intuition. A cloud is 99.9% air and hundreds of tons of water. When spread across vast distances, (with each tiny droplet and crystal virtually weightless), a massive, swelling cloud stays aloft on updrafts. But once a single raindrop or snowflake becomes too heavy, it falls right through.
A cloud is an illusion. Of sorts. Water and air are transparent. A cloud is unclear. An ambiguous state. The shape of an instant. In a certain light. From an angle. It manifests. Appearing wherever sunlight is scattered by droplets and crystals. The colour of whatever light it receives. A cloud is white because sunlight, containing all colours, scatters evenly back to us as white. A cloud is grey where it is too thick for light to come through. But the sky is only overcast underneath. A cloud is illuminated as it obscures. At sunrise and sunset, the low sunlight travels furthest, air particles scattering most of its colours on the way. Still, even on the greyest cloud, on the thinnest edge, there is always a chance of pink.
Lani Yamamoto
