HEAD IN THE CLOUDS?

HEAD IN THE CLOUDS?

Summertime again, and these months always send me back to my “ADD” days and childhood fantasies. Back then my head was in the clouds most of the time. And today (many say) it never left. What still sends me there are the summer thermals, those cheek-filled gods blowing their sound and fury clear across the horizon. How could the ancients not have seen gods and goddesses playing out their mesalliances on the vault of heaven? To not see a wooden ship, a face, or beast of prey in a large afternoon cumulonimbus was confirmation that one had no imagination at all.

One may need “some” imaginative skills to try and measure the inside of a cloud, relative humidity, or an occluded front. But that’s not imagination in my view, nor is it creative expression. It’s empirical science merely exacting data. If what he dreamed about as a child got preempted by a more rational need for mere measurements, then (in my opinion) something monumental was lost. We do need scientists. But what is a storm cloud if not a Rorschach of the sky, an overture to magical theater, a ringside seat to a toe-to-toe between celestial giants? Clouds are nature’s poetry, smoky semaphore for telling us who we are and where we came from. Nowhere else will anyone ever see proscenium arches and Corinthian columns so majestically stated as frontispieces to ships or prologues to plays.

Happily (and surprisingly) I’ve recently discovered the existence of an actual cloud-watchers group – and its guidebook. It was like an addict finally finding a support group, validation that being “in the clouds” was not a psychological flaw, an act of evasion or avoidance. And even if it was, there was damn good reason for it. I was henceforth no longer “alone” – even if cloud-watching is an exquisitely private occupation.

Little do earthlings (humanoids with their noses “downward”) realize that what’s happening below is happening in the upper stratospheres at the same time. In fact, the above events presage/prefigure/predict events below, before they even appear on terra firma. It would give us a great advantage if we simply paused a few moments in the day to look upwards – not for some simple, all-seeing monotheistic God (which is an evasion), but a pantheon of natural forces assigned with Latin names. As the cloudwatchers say, whether it’s a “cumulus congestus” or the Norse god Thor, one is merely “a Latin version of the other.” ^*

I don’t know if the sky-gods predated the terrene goddesses, but the consensus is that matriarchy “predated” patriarchy. This has always troubled me. There could not have been the feminine without an acute awareness of the masculine, and visa versa. Opposites appear together and perish together. That said, whatever the “official” genesis was, the sky-gods (feminine and masculine) filled the firmament of my childhood. I saw endless processions of ships, trains, birds, bearded old men, bucolic orchards and valleys, and theriomorphs constantly dueling with tridents and lightning bolts.

Before I even knew their names or what they were doing, three- and four-act Greek dramas were supplying me with the stagecraft for my own scripts and casting. The Greeks had their own plot-lines: Zeus duking it out with Ixion over Hera (a cloud gives birth to Centaurus), an over-sexed Jupiter making love to Io (he hides in a cloud to conceal his philandering), Zephyrus, winged “god of spring,” embracing Hyacinthus (jealousy kills the young Spartan and Apolloan, protector of the young, takes pity and turns him into a flower). All this was happening above and nobody told me.

Then there was also Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (the island of Laputa floating above the clouds), and Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s stories of The Old Woman in the Wood, Rapunzel, Hansel & Gretel, and others with their illustrated pages of clouds wrapped around words printed in Gothic typeface.

Meanwhile, the real clouds above miraculously amplified those dramatic scenes as they were read to me by an aunt or grandmother. They would read, and I’d lean back on the grass and “read” the sky’s spectacular triptychs of storm and stress, pomp and ceremony. If there ever truly was a Greek sophist named “Philostratus,” I was his reincarnation.

The size, texture, shape, and color of a cloud told volumes of its personality and mood. And of course its darkness depended on “which side” you stood of that mood on that particular day. Whether you saw anger and lust or benevolence and love depended on your own place in the drama unfolding before you, where your seat was in that day’s celestial theater. It also occurred to me that if you got up and exited the theater (that is, ran from a storm), all you did was encourage the storm god to follow you. And he’d outrun you every time. But if you remained quiet and stationary (“never make eye contact with a wild animal”) he would find you harmless and breeze by you.

All this aside, what I still defer to for stories of wisdom and guidance are found in the mid- to upper-troposphere, where various deities observe us, warn us, and respond to us every day. They not only respond, they forecast on our behalf. They tell us where we’ve been and where we’re going using the semaphore/metaphor of weather. The countless cloud configurations above (sturm) assume their shapes according to the alarums below (drang). There are many sides to human interaction, which means there are just as many cloud types to be read and translated.

That said, there are simply too many cloud-types to name here, with their siblings, cousins, and descendants. So, I’ll pick a few famous ones which most transfixed me in childhood and still do today. This will be very much like choosing my favorite actors from the silver screen days (and film noir). Clouds are like humans – only more so. Unlike humans, clouds accept the fact that they are always in transition of becoming something else (another cloud) – or simply disappearing. Nothing is static. To freeze-frame a cloud and name it is actually a contradiction of nature, something she abhors and resists. Still, for the sake of understanding, we can commit that transgression just for a few moments.

Even romantics like myself must defer to scientific taxonomies now and then, if only to put things in order. We need a system to help us, a kind of family tree. One such system is a classification by altitude. There happen to be “low, middle, and high” clouds in terms of when and where they are born. I’ll pick one or two from each, starting with those who are born nearest the ground.

Let’s start with the most dramatic of all, the most massive, the champion patriarch of every fairy tale, folkloric legend, and myth ever shared around a campfire. The cumulus dons many faces suited to many moods, responsive to many alliances, marriages, divorces, battles, detentes, and olive branches. He is born at ground level and grows into the highest of monsters. His “species” divides into four categories – humilis (humble, small,wider than they are tall), mediocris (as tall as they are wide), and congestus (very tall and massive). The first two are “fair-weather” clouds. They generate the faces of beneficence and peace. But the third is a dark sibling – Mr. “thunderhead.” Then there is the cumulus fractus – less puffy with its edges beginning to fade away. He is the cumulus of a “ripe old age” – the old man in his eleventh hour just before the winds of time blow him away.

Author Gaven Pretor-Pinney referred to congestus as the “Darth Vader of the cloud world.” He’s tempestuous and defies anyone to stay around and watch him. He tries to obliterate everything before him. His bearded face assumes many expressions – offending and being offended, violating and being violated – as each appears like a ship’s bowsprit. His vertical breath (kundalini) flows fiercely, up and down, creating convention currents which not only endanger aircraft but spin off into “tantrums” and “purges” known as tornadoes. At several miles across and 60,000 feet high he even wears a hat (an incus, Latin for “anvil”) which looks white and calm from above but which consists of ice crystals being tossed across the sky by volatile winds. Thunder and lightning are simply a clearing of the throat announcing his arrival.

Ironically, from a distance, Preter-Pinney also says that he is also “cloud nine.” To be on cloud nine is a pleasant experience. But cumulus can be anything but pleasant. So how can this be? It happened in 1896 when an international meteorological committee convened to hammer out a classification of clouds. Mr. cumulonimbus was number nine (sadly moved to “number ten” in 1995 with new classifications). To be on Cloud Nine simply ignored his wrath – presumably, one simply saw himself on the highest cloud of all, perhaps closest to the heavens.

We’ll end this particular profile by saying that his personality is made up of a unique DNA: huge supplies of warm moist air, low-level (tropospheric) winds, and an unstable atmosphere. It sounds like the incubation process of a Frankenstein being hoisted to the roof during an electrical storm – a favorite Hollywood character.

Next in line is the less-forbidding cousin to cumulus – stratus. This cloud is aptly described as “indistinct, “featureless,” “oppressive,” “a ponderous individual… not known for [his] spontaneity.” He is generally dull and depressing, encouraging people to come inside and engage in indoor activities. He has several cousins of his own whose names befit the mood of a miasmic beast from the swamps. First cousin would be nebulosis – a low-lying featurless gray cloud which extends everywhere across the horizon. It’s like, quoting Pretor-Pinney, walking in “stagnant dishwater.”

Coming from England, I can appreciate Pretor-Pinney’s acquaintance with this entity and yearning, as he says, for just a glimpse of sunshine on occasion. This monster seems to have claimed a monopoly on England itself – and Paris in the “off” season for tourists (the term “off” referring to more than just the weather). Paris can be a miserable place during these months.

Stratus’ second cousin would be nebulus opacus – which hides the sun completely. When this guy is around it could be 10 AM or 6 PM and one would never know the difference. A third cousin which never visits enough would be translucidus which at least lets us know the relative position of the sun – that there still is a sun up there somewhere. It at least lets us know if it’s morning or afternoon. Stratus generally wears the face of a nondescript individual with “no affect” in his personality. There is no rise or fall in his range of emotions. Nothing moves him. He is simply “there” and ubiquitous. He says nothing and feels nothing. “What makes it stand out … is the very fact that it doesn’t stand out.” Yet he feels the need to consume the region and bring everyone down with him.

There is one rare cousin who shows up on occasion: undulatus. The cloud takes on a wavy appearance due to intervening winds. Sometimes he’s provoked by an outside force and actually moved enough to shake free from his comatose state, sometimes just long enough to wake up and go somewhere else.

Stratus’ conception is as follows: no thermals, a huge pocket of air cools, staying low to the ground, becoming dense. Ironically, this guy is associated with “stable” air (unlike thermals), It can be said that stability here is so extreme that it flips into paralysis. His core is a swampy thickness, difficult to breathe, fog when heavily congested. Putting it mildly, he is “profoundly unpoetic.”

About the only redeeming feature I can think of on behalf of stratus is its preference by the film noir industry. The best Sherlock Holmes, Dashiell Hammett, Agatha Christie, and Raymond Chandler flicks all take place in the thickest fog swirling around private dicks in their fedoras and trench coats. It’s almost impossible to distinguish their cigarette smoke from the fog. Films made in black & white were the perfect “gray” monochrome next to these gray backdrops.

Next in line is an “inbreeder” – that is, stratus and cumulus gets together and bears a child. Stratocumulus is like the offspring who sees all the depression around him but decides to think for himself and “bust loose.” He hates where he is, becomes oppositional-defiant, and breaks free. He bolts upward and out from the gaseous dread at ground level. He’s the cloud “in transition” – still low-lying (by definition) but showing texture and form (backbone) for the first time. And his personality shows it – a lightness or darkness of color, reaching for the sun’s brightness but also capable of rain. He breathes vertical movement.

This renegade child possesses the DNA of a truly mongrel breed. He’s literally from “everywhere.” He takes on various temporary “alter” personalities: stratiformis (most common, clumpy layers), castellanus (wavy patterns above a smooth base), and lenticularis (smooth lens-shaped) which in turn sire their own more distinguished progeny having to do with layers, gaps, alignments, and thicknesses: Duplicatus, Perlucidus, Lacunosus, Radiatus, Opacus, Transucidus and Undulatus. – These sound like wayward kids living in a Mount Olympus foster home.

Let’s move on the “mid-level” clouds – the altos. “Alto” in Latin means high, but it refers to the mid-ranges of the troposphere. This makes no sense. I suppose it’s because when the term was invented in 1855, 30,000 feet was considered “high.” But it’s also because the troposphere itself is flexible in terms of its ceiling, and there’s no fixed range for these clouds. The altocumulus is most interesting because here we have the UFO-shaped phenomena (lenticularis – flying saucers) which have stirred “sightings” and superstitions since the beginning of time. They also produce what (to me) look like upside-down tree tops clumped together in rows, like orchards. They can look like smooth perils caressing a mountain top or like fish scales riveted across the skyline.

These clouds love the mountains. They’re born “orographcially” from winds being forced vertically after hitting them and creating some of the most dramatically surreal clouds ever. The most impressive, even awesome, of these to me are the mammatus clouds, or mamma clouds meaning “breasts.” They attach themselves to the underside of many (cumulus, stratus, and cirrus) cloud types and hang like cow udders. Heat radiates upward and violently only to reverse course again and plummet. It’s literally the reverse of the normal convection current where air warms at ground level, rises, cools, and condenses. Here warm air reaches the top of the troposphere and plummets to cool down. They are plump and full when the biggest thunderstorms gather.

By contrast is its cousin – altostratus – a mid-level gray cloud which is almost featureless. This is another “pea-soup” cloud which any traveler hates navigating through. But it allows just enough sunlight through to let you know where the sun is and in fact creates a bluish-yellow “corona” around the sun and moon. As Thoreau said, this cloud can produce an almost mystical-magical effect around dawn and sunset. It’s the kind of Mediterranean feature which gives San Francisco, Provence and the Levant, their romantic appeal. I am bound to say, this is its only “silver lining.”

This should not be confused with its cousin mentioned above – nebulus opacus – the other “stagnant dishwater” cloud, featureless, monotonous, drab and dreary. Here the differences become subtle enough for only cloudspotters to recognize – halos around the sun, shadows, and cloud features (if any), one is produced by ice crystals, the other by condensation, etc. In fact, the one cloud is often in the process of becoming the other. Again, clouds are constantly becoming others or disappearing altogether.

Finally, soaring above all the masculine storm and fury below floats an ethereal version of them all – if that’s possible. In Latin cirrus means a “lock of hair” – definitely a feminine cloud. And this particular lock of hair floats at 24,000 feet and higher. She is literally above the fray of masculine fighting, his dramas of jealousy, envy, greed, and revenge. Like all the other clouds, she has five siblings (variations) and four varieties.

Like the Valkaries, this maiden may seem tranquil and transcendent by sight, but up close she is “precipitous.” No rose is without her thorns. In fact, she forecasts trouble coming in her wake. She’s the harbinger of, and prelude to, the nastiest of tempests. Far away she’s soft and motionless. But up close she’s a package of ice crystals whipped up by winds and constantly trying to crash to the earth – and failing because they’re too high to reach the ground. The crystals fall, condense, and get caught in slower air currents below them. They always look stationary but are really “the fastest-moving clouds of all.” Serenity is her visual lure and seduction, but experienced pilots and cloudspotters know better. They do not stay around to second-guess her gentle whispers.

Well, enough scientific referencing (thanks to the Cloudspotter’s Guide) – very helpful but, for me, it still gets in the way of nature’s poetry. I prefer the wooden ship and blustering bearded gods to relative humidities and pressure gradients.

The indigenous peoples of the earth must have summoned the richest lessons of all from the clouds. They saw them as living organisms. Even scientists today commit a classic Freudian lapsus linguae by (unconsciously?) seeing them as living beings, calling them “cells” – as in “single-cell organisms” (thanks again to the Guide). – It reminds me of an old episode of the Star Ship Enterprise confronting a monstrous single-celled creature in deep space, finding itself locked in its protoplasm, able to free itself only by injecting it with an “antibody.” At least for once it wasn’t “anti-matter.”

We are truly visited by celestial entities every day, ready to impart their impressions of us onto us. Like the dreamy cirrus at 60,000 feet, it tells us to look up and reflect while reminding us that all things are eternally unstable and temporary. A thunderhead is soon to follow in her tracks, replete with stagecraft equipped enough to promise a whole new docudrama in the course of human events. All we need to do is look up and decide which protagonists to side with, which antagonists to fight off with our tridents, and remember that we’re are the ones directing the cosmic play.

© 2019 Richard Hiatt

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*Scientific names and descriptions in this article are taken from Gaven Pretor-Pinney’s book, The Cloudspotter’s Guide: The Science, History, and Culture of Clouds (Penguin Group, 2006).