The cloud is a very tall cloud and it depicts two people’s upper halves, with one person chasing another. The first person is raising a hand, and a small wafting of cloud, due to some errant movement of the wind, has formed into an almost sharp point: a knife. The first person’s mouth is wide open: he is yelling in rage. His cloud-knife is aimed at the second figure, who appears to be running away – this person’s shoe is visibly raised in a running motion.
Now the wind blows.
Now the victim’s shoe has been drawn outward, transformed into a knife, and his face is turned around to point at his would-be attacker. And the attacker, now, his cloud-knife blunted, is raising an open hand in fear, trying to defend himself.
I look elsewhere among the clouds.
I see a woman in the stocks with long greasy cloud-hair. Onlookers, two of them, half-formed, are throwing cloud-tomatoes at her face. She is despondent, looking down at me on the ground.
Now the wind blows…
A nativity scene. The woman in the stocks is Mary mother of Christ, and the two throwing tomatoes have now taken the tomatoes in hand, and they’ve become angular, filled-in; they’re boxes of damp, rain-scented frankincense and myrrh. If a plane flew through that cloud, its lights would flash yellow, and they’d offer the gold, too. Mary’s stocks have formed into the child Jesus. I pause. The child the mother’s shackle.
I look elsewhere again.
A dragon, mouth open, is morphed by a gust of wind into a rabbit.
It’s a very windy day. Clouds coeluform the air. Once, this happened to the Earth, too. Continents are formed and drift apart. Now, I can see civilisations among the clouds, building Babel-towers and falling back into their grey atmospheres within atmospheres. The wind picks up and I zip up my coat.
Now I see a colloform bunch of grey grapes, eaten in a moment by a closed mouth of cloud.
Nuages: the place of new ages. Using the solid, unchanging earth as a basis, you can imagine anything into this looming state of constant flux.
I continue looking.
To the north, a sea-urchin, spiny and grasping, extends itself to cover fish- and krill-wisps, eating and growing proportionately. Smiling faces begin frowning, and vice versa; waves of intent sweep across the sky.
It seems obvious that whoever described this realm as a void was wrong. There isn’t nothing here; there’s everything. Provided one can keep up with the endless projected visions.
Now I see a mirror in the sky, a pathetic dot surrounded by emptiness, as though the rest of the clouds are giving it a wide berth. Occasionally, a lone wisp struggles toward it, but, as though the dot of cloud were isolating itself, they’re quickly rejected by short wind gusts, so short and otherwise so ineffectual it’s as if they’re summoned on command and sent away. Slowly, a barrier forms around this speck, but nothing breaks through.
verso folio 