Thinking Out Cloud

Cloud.  Just hearing Donnie tell me the word this morning triggered obvious images in my head.

White, puffy clouds.  Happy clouds, as Bob Ross might have called them.  Cotton balls in the sky.  Scenes in my head of a child pointing out shapes in the sky to a parent.  Maybe that kid was me?  Standing in the grassy pasture of my childhood home, surrounded by horses, goats, and wild onions -- chives -- growing everywhere.  Always a pain when they'd first shoot up in the spring.  Goats would eat the chives.  We would milk the goats.  Milk goes in the fridge.  Milk goes on the cereal.  Cereal tastes like onions.  Nobody wanted to be the family member to first eat the onion cereal, serving as the proverbial canary in the coal mine for the rest of the family telling us that,yes, the onions had shot up.  

Cloud:  "a state or cause of gloom, suspicion, trouble, or worry."  A cloud brought on by guilty conscience, following you everywhere like the pesky rainy gray cloud in a cartoon that you just can't shake.  The cloud of worry that descends upon a failed sleeper in the middle of the night, during the twilight hours when the world seems at it's worst and you feel so helpless against its forces.  A cloud that falls over a family or organization when one of its members has passed on.  A cloud of bad luck that is the only explanation for why bad things happen to good people.

Cloud as a verb.  "When the sky becomes overcast with clouds.  Or to make or become less clear or transparent."  I see my feet disappearing into mud, roiling up the soil into swirls around my ankles, my feet disappearing entirely as they sink in the cold slime, me making my way to the back of the pond in the woods of my childhood farm.  Duck eggs crazily laid on the bottom of the pond bed, me wondering if that was intentional or if they just came out of the duck accidentally while she was swimming?  Smashing the egg against a tree.  

Clouded judgment.  Drinking too much too young, making foolish decisions on weekend nights in the barracks.  Having a great time that I don't remember.  Waking up in a haze.

Clouded judgment.  Falling in love.  Rationalizing away any kind of sense.  Hoping for the best, against all odds.  Everything will be alright.  

Cloud.  The haze that hangs over Los Angeles.  Fly in on a good day and you can see the horizon.  People don't complain anymore.  That's just the way it is.  We accept the world in its state that we used to protest about.  Save the Rainforests.  Did we do that?  Or are they gone and nobody wants to bring it up?  Acid rain.  Pollution.  

Clouds.  One of two defining characteristics of my home, Oregon.  The other is rain.  Cloudy, rainy days.  Makes many leave after only a year or so.  Makes some depressed.  Makes some mad.  Makes me long for home.