Writing the Clouds
You lead as much with your heart as you do with your head. — Alan Cheuse
Today, I cleaned windows at a friend’s house for four hours. Just me, Windex, some paper towels and the Reggae station on Syrius. Oh, and I shouldn’t forget the stink bugs, lots of stink bugs.
I stood at those windows and lost myself in the clouds that danced by outside – clouds stained heavy with rain, wide swaths of what looked to be quilt batting, massive stacks of whiteness layered against the bluest sky that broke through. I worked and watched and wandered into the clouds of my thoughts.
At dusk, as I got ready for dinner, those cloud stacks turned a pink painted with gold. Then, tonight, they became the ellipsis of shadow that dot the waning harvest moon.
The past few weeks the sky has tugged me up into itself, lifting my head from the minutiae of the day, pulling my heart into wider places. I find my writing opening up, too, wider, broader, more vast spacious. . . like the sky itself is modeling for it.
I am not writing a lot of words these days – some every day, yes – but not pages and pages. This could worry me, make me think I’m losing focus. But instead, I’m learning to see the vastness of the sky in my work – days of research that weigh like rain clouds and hours of thinking into the pink-gold of idea. Sometimes all that is happening with this book stacks up in majesties of vapor – not yet solid but there, real, powerful in beauty.
So I will keep writing my bits and looking to the sky for inspiration, to the Lifter of my Head.
What do you see in your every day life that reflects your writing practice these days? A piece of art? Something in nature? A place? A person? Describe this thing and see where the description takes you.