staring at the sky
a ritual almost religious
I’ve made a life of walking — my best days are defined by thousands of steps, especially when I can watch day turn to dusk. On these days, I lose the ability to look forward or down, my neck angled upward, my phone’s battery being squeezed dry by my continuous photo-taking. The truly miraculous sunsets fill me with religious fervor. I whisper “wow” quietly to myself over and over again. I consider asking the strangers around me if they’re seeing what I’m seeing and how they can continue their conversations or listen to their headphones or do anything other than look at the kaleidoscopic display all around us. I try different angles for my photos, I try to get the backs of strangers in some of them, especially if they’re sharing in my excitement; a reminder that I shared this moment with others.
I’m inconsistent with meditation and prayer, but this feels like a ritual just as meaningful. Writer Linda Besner describes ritual as “a way of grounding the profound eeriness of human life in the rhythms of nature and the passage of time.” And somehow the sky is grounding. I forget myself as I gaze towards the heavens and let myself be overcome with awe at the scale of what unfolds above me, at the rapidity of the change, of the divinity that I get to experience it at all. I’m forced to be present as I observe the sky, slightly different, even as everything else seems largely the same. There’s consistency in the changes, patterns to be found in when the sun set, which types of days create which colors, but it all serves as a reminder of transience.
When I search the word “sky” in my photos app, it feels like I could scroll forever. The clouds are wispy in some and full cotton balls in others, sometimes shaped like an animal, often not. And the color! Of course there are blues — so many blues, a sea of seas, an ocean of oceans. And the incomprehensible variability of the sunsets: an exhausted sun, a fruit squeezed of its juices, leaving a painted horizon.
Seeing all of these images at once, I feel like a dragon surveying his hoard, content with the treasure I’ve gathered for myself. I’ve been taking pictures of the sky since I got my first camera and have only accelerated the process since I got a smartphone. I used to mainly take them when I traveled, and now I take them wherever I am. There are skies from Atlanta and skies from San Francisco and skies from Miami and skies from London and skies from Tokyo and skies from Los Angeles and my hard drives are overflowing. I have accepted that I must pay a monthly cost just to keep my pictures of skies safe in the cloud.
How can anyone comprehend something so vast and impossibly large as the sky? A single vista extends deep into space, holding celestial bodies that I cannot name but have been named hundreds and hundreds of times since man first learned to speak. I’m grateful to behold it at all, to see any version of it, and how it changes from day to day, season to season, place to place. I’m trying to sink my fingers into even a portion of it as if every beautiful second isn’t slipping through my fingers, as if a camera I can make it tangible enough for me to hold onto it and make it last more than a moment.
I send these photos to my parents, I send these photos to my friends; I love them so much. The photos are never quite accurate to the moment. The human eye sees gradients more clearly than the iPhone camera ever has, even with all of the fancy processing, and even when I edit the photos to look brighter than what reality looks like. They’re imperfect, but communicate the message: the sky is so beautiful and the sky is an ever-changing chameleon and I wish you could’ve seen it like I did but at least you can see this photo.
We must do what we can to push back against the genocide in Gaza. Consider calling your US representatives to support de-escalation and a ceasefire, donating to Care for Gaza, a grassroots organization delivering food to Palestinians, or buying e-SIMs to keep folks connected to their families.
💧 Drops of the Week 💧
ALBUM - New Blue Sun by Andre 3000 - I finally listened to the Andre 3000 flute album and I liked it a lot
POEM - “Diogenes Tries to Forget” by Mary Karr - I think I want a slice of pecan pie, some life sweeter than this