“Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight. Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning.”
predictability . certainty . control
We talk about the future of society . climate . universe
But even our weather predictions are unreliable
red sunsets, blue mountains
the sky creates their color
distance . desire . melancholy
“We treat desire as a problem to be solved … though often it is the distance between us and the object of desire that fills the space in between with the blue of longing.” There is no way to reach the blue mountains. They are never here, always there. Can we “look across the distance without wanting to close it up”?
– Rebecca Solnit
can we feel the weather patterns inside us,
our longing, excitement, fear, relief,
without judgement?
the sky is wild,
we breathe it in
it might kill us
like all uninhabitable skies the Earth has hosted before
if the apocalypse is coming, it’s through the sky, “if not from too much carbon holding too much heat, then from bursts of virus carried on invisible breath.”
– Boyce Upholt
this sky is our sky, only here for a moment
“S hisses with space and air, curves like clouds, like the paths of the wind, the sound of shifting leaves against streets and sidewalks. Which leads to the tall stalk of K, like the edge of a cliff falling into the sky. K—every edge that the sky comes up against. Skyscrapers, peaks, the bark on all the trunks, each rock. … And Y, eye, I. … Eye for all-seeing sky, eye that absorbs its light, its sun god, its glowing, pearly moon. Eye that strains to see as far as the eye can see. And also I. … I am yours, Sky. I belong to you. I am in you.”
– Nina MacLaughlin