Art Heals: Clouds

The other day we were treated to the spectacle of the Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds flying in formation straight down our street.  It was a magnificent show and immensely cheering.  Knowing they were coming, but not sure exactly from which direction,  I stood on our balcony, head swiveling from side to side, visually raking the sky, when suddenly to my wondering eyes they appeared, like Santa and the sleigh,  majestic, swift and fleeting.
Afterwards I realized how little time I used to spend looking at the sky.  My apartment is surrounded by high-rises ( actually 12-story buildings, which are what pass for high-rises in DC) so that even though I have floor-to-ceiling windows,  the vast span of the sky is really just a sliver of blue (or, grey, mostly) glimpsed as I walk by.
Ah, but life in the time of corona has made some changes.  Less walking by the window, more time supine on the couch, a position terrible for my posture but pretty interesting for my outlook.   I have been studying clouds.   There is just enough sky visible from that aspect to allow me to track the cloud trains chugging by, slowly like a fully loaded freight train, or with the swiftness of an express.  Often there will be a gap of azure, followed by a hurrying little ball of cotton candy that must have fallen off the train and is trying to catch up.  And sometimes, the nebular mountain peaks fool me into believing I have been transported to the snowy Alps (especially if the air-conditioner happens to kick in just at that moment.)
As Joni Mitchell sings,
I've looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It's cloud's illusions I recall
I really don't know clouds at all.
Back in my pre-covid busy days, I related more to Carly Simon singing that her dreams were clouds in her coffee.  Clouds were obstacles, interfering with the sunshine in my life.
In some ways, my life has gotten smaller.  But in better ways, it has expanded to the vastness of the sky and the majestic, swift and fleeting show offered me there.
We know that so many people in the world face a smaller world every day, through poverty or oppression.  But clouds transcend borders, and are there for all, as in Phoebe Farris’s photograph, Country Without Borders.  Art Heals.