cumulaic

On the banks of the Charles river, where Cambridge turns the corner into Watertown I lay down on a parkbench, my pack for a pillow, and looked up into the blue sky for half an hour. Just a few clouds in the sky and whenever I look at clouds for more than a few minutes this thread of thought always comes back to me, how much clouds are like people. Because clouds are distinct...but not. Like, you can say this cloud is definitely over there and it is not that cloud that’s over there. But if you try to find the edge of a cloud, where the empty sky ends and the cloud starts, it’s impossible to pin down. People are the same way - try to ascertain who someone is, what they are not and what they are and it’s nonsense because you can’t say to such specificity, you look like a fool if you try. Because people are processes, not things. Just like clouds. What is a cloud? It’s not that white fluffy thing sitting in the sky over there, it’s a region of temperature and humidity differential in this ocean of atmosphere. Try to keep the shape of it in your mind and a minute later you’ve lost it because it’s shifted to over there and it looks like something else entirely. People are the same way, who a person really is, we’re changing all the time, reacting to the others around us, the emotions and relationships and experiences we share with people, we’re streams of person-ness flowing around and through and alongside each other. Process and experience, not meat.

The analogy breaks down pretty quickly though, as the clouds shift and evaporate from the blue, because while people are constantly changing and indefinable, there is also such permanence to our existences, there’s a core of stone and fire at the center of a person and that’s not like a cloud at all. But I’ll need to get up from this bench to find that metaphor.