Clouds can tell you a lot about the future, or at least what the immediate future portends in terms of weather. Instead of looking at my Iphone all the time for someone to spit out what the weather to me (not always accurate, btw) I should look to the skies and use my natural gifts of sight and intuition.
Just like looking at artificial light in the dark dulls one's night vision, living in L.A. for more than a decade really dulled my ability to sense incoming turbulent weather, and my capacity to plan for the worst. The Chinese have a phrase called 未雨绸缪, or (prepare cloth before the rain has come) which I should do by bringing a light umbrella any time there is any semblance of incoming rain. It starts innocently: a little dark speck in the distance breaking up the monotony of the blue skies, then the sense that the dark cloud is getting closer, then thunder heard roaring in the distance, some small drops hitting my nose or somewhere else on the face, and by then it's really time to seek shelter, because it can turn into a massive downpour very quickly.
The other solution other than bringing an umbrella, of course, is to seek shelter under a big building or get into a bus station and duck into the nearest bus......but like Icarus who flew too close to the sun, anytime I get running and feeling wild and free, especially in the brisk cool autumn air, I start to veer off the cautious path towards the road less taken (Robert Frost was one half of the Jeopardy final jeopardy answer tonight about Pulitzer Prize winners who died in Massachusetts) and it's too late to get to safe harbor before the torrential downpour comes, as I'm lost out in the wilderness like a lonely ship in the deep dark see, with no St. Elmo's Fire or rescue ships to be seen.
Luckily there's the Find My Friends App on Iphone and MJ has so far been gracious about saving me, who's usually huddled in a shivering mess under a tree or shack somewhere trying to wait out the storm, with socks and shoes soaked and feeling cold due to the accompanying drop in tempearture. So next time, before I venture out, I'll remind myself to check the clouds: the puffy, marshmallow-like or cauliflower- shaped ones that accompany blue sky and sun (cumulus), flat and layered clouds (stratus, we're still safe so far), wispy clouds like smoke (cirrus), nimbus (like Harry Potter's broom- except this one comes with rain) and the worst one for me, the menacing cumulonimbus clouds, associated with thunderstorms, thunder and lightening, and Thor throwing hammers at me (that last part is exaggerated).
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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